Research topic: Dutch language

Dutch language member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages ). Also called Netherlandish, it is spoken by about 15 million inhabitants of the Netherlands, where it is the national language, and by about 300,000 people in the Western Hemisphere. The written and spoken forms of Dutch differ significantly. For example, written Dutch exhibits far greater formality than spoken Dutch in both grammar and vocabulary. One reason for this divergence is that written Dutch evolved from the Flemish dialect spoken in the culturally... Read more