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A Dutch speaker. Dutch (endonym: Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts] ⓘ) is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language [4] and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language.
Dutch is a West Germanic language, that originated from the Old Frankish dialects.. Among the words with which Dutch has enriched the English vocabulary are: brandy, coleslaw, cookie, cruiser, dock, easel, freight, landscape, spook, stoop, and yacht.
Dutch is a co-official language, together with Papiamento and English [15] Netherlands: constituent country: Dutch is the official language. [16] Only Friesland and the Caribbean Netherlands have co-official languages. Friesland: province: Dutch is a co-official language, together with West Frisian [15] Bonaire: municipality
English is by far the most-spoken West Germanic language, with more than 1 billion speakers worldwide. Within Europe, the three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. Frisian, spoken by about 450,000 people, constitutes a fourth distinct variety of West Germanic.
The predominant language of the Netherlands is Dutch, spoken and written by almost all people in the Netherlands. Dutch is also spoken and official in the Dutch Caribbean (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the Caribbean Netherlands special municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba) as well as the Flemish Community of Belgium and Suriname.
There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, [7] [13] [14] particularly in written form. [6] [12] [15] Research suggests that mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Afrikaans is better than between Dutch and Frisian [16] or between Danish and Swedish. [15]
The official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. [1] Dutch, English, and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories. [1] Netherlands literally means "lower countries" in reference to its low elevation and flat topography, with 26% below sea level. [15]
Dutch is one of the official languages in all four of the constituent countries of the Kingdom, [5] however English and a Portuguese-based creole-language, called Papiamento, are the most spoken languages on the Dutch Caribbean. [6] The Dutch dialects in the Dutch Caribbean differ from island to island. World map of Dutch-speaking countries: