Dutch phrasebook
Dutch (Nederlands) is a Germanic language spoken by about 27 million people world-wide. Most people living in the Netherlands and Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) use it as a first language, while in Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, and the Caribbean Netherlands, it is widely used as a second language. Historically, French Flanders and parts of the Lower Rhine Region in Germany also belong to the Dutch language sphere, and during the age of colonization it also spread to Indonesia and other former Dutch colonies.
Dutch is the ancestor of the Afrikaans language spoken in South Africa and Namibia, which is mutually intelligible with Dutch. Lastly, it is closely related with other West Germanic languages, such as German (especially the Low German), English and West Frisian, and more distantly to the Scandinavian North Germanic languages.
UseEnglish is widely spoken throughout all the areas where Dutch is the primary or secondary language.
Differences between Flemish and Dutch in EuropeIn Flanders, it is much more common to use the polite form to address others than in the Netherlands, where the formal "u" is nowadays mostly reserved to address elderly people.
GrammarStandard Dutch divides nouns into three different genders, namely masculine, feminine and neuter. However, many Dutch dialects merge the masculine and feminine genders into a single "common" gender.
PronunciationDutch has some vowel sounds that are not known in many other languages so they may be hard to learn.
Phrase listMost of the time in Dutch, people will say "alstublieft" when they give you something; before that, you say "dank je": "alstublieft" also means You're welcome.
Sources and licences
- Guide text adapted from the Wikivoyage article "Dutch phrasebook" by its contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikivoyage · Contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0