AI overview
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken primarily in the Netherlands and Belgium. It matters because it's the native language of millions of people and serves as an important medium for communication, culture, and commerce in its regions.
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Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- Low Franconian
- Named after
- Low Countries
- Country
- Sint Maarten
Show 18 more facts
- P6106
- proper noun
- P4132
- fusional language
- P1018
- Dutch Language Union
- P3161
Article
A young woman speaking Dutch (1:32)
Dutch (Endonym: Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts] , Nederlandse taal) is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders (which includes 60% of the population of Belgium). Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects.
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Accuracy disputes from June 2022Dutch languageGermanic languagesLanguage articles citing Ethnologue 19Language articles with Linguasphere codeLanguages of BelgiumLanguages of Saint Martin (island)Languages of the Dutch CaribbeanLanguages of the NetherlandsLanguages with ISO 639-1 codeLanguages with ISO 639-2 codeLow Franconian languages