With approximately 23 million speakers today, Dutch ranks among the forty most frequently spoken languages in the word; within the European Union it ranks number eight by numbers of native speakers. It is the official language of the Netherlands, and one of the official languages of Belgium. Outside of Europe, Dutch is an official language in Suriname and on six Caribbean islands, which still form part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. As such, Dutch is a global language that has found its way to remote parts of the globe.

This chapter discusses how the Dutch language developed throughout history, and was shaped by interaction with other languages and cultures. It will specifically address the relation with German and English, the languages in between which Dutch is geographically located. But let us start by introducing the language itself.

Some General Properties of Dutch

Firstly, two of the most important phonological properties of Dutch are worth discussing. Dutch, in contrast to English, devoices word final consonants: the word final voiced d-sound in hond (dog), audible in honden (dogs), is pronounced as its voiceless counterpart t, and the word is uttered as hont. When people speak a foreign language, their native language is usually detectable in the pronunciation of the foreign language: most Dutch speakers will transfer this phonological rule of devoicing final consonants to their English pronunciation and hence may not utter the word hound as hound, but as hount.

Some sounds in Dutch are particularly hard for nonnative speakers. A native speaker of German, for instance, would have great difficulty in correctly pronouncing the Dutch consonant cluster sch, as it involves a rasping g-sound – more or less the sound you make when clearing your throat – that German lacks. During the German occupation in the Second World War, the Dutch allegedly made use of a so-called shibboleth – a sound or a group of sounds to distinguish native speakers of a language from non native speakers – to identify German spies: they asked people to pronounce the name of the famous seaside resort Scheveningen.

The diphthongs are also quite a challenge for some nonnative speakers, so, for instance, the au-sound (also written as ou) in blauw (blue), vrouw (woman), lauw (lukewarm), etc. This sound resembles the English ou-sound in house or mouse.