The Dutch Language
Dutch belongs to the Germanic branch of languages and is partly similar to German, Frisian and English-indeed, English has some Dutch loanwords as "yatch" or "cookie".History
Standard Dutch (or alternately, Standard Netherlands) is the official language of Belgium and Netherlands. When Netherlands became independent in the 17th century, its cultural contacts with other countries became more intense; that's when the term Standard Dutch acquired its modern meaning, as in the previous centuries it simply designated any area where German was spoken.The dialect which is spoken in the area around Antperw was the base for the development of modern Dutch, which began its standardization process in the 16th century. Another important step in the shaping of the language was the first version of the Bible in Dutch, which had been translated in order to make the sacred text understandable by the greatest number of people. Later, the first form of Dutch was influenced by the urban dialects of Holland plus Low Saxon dialects.
Dialects
Standard Dutch's main dialect is known as Flemish, a collective term which includes the Dutch varieties of Belgium. Flemish is characterised by the use of archaic words and a quite soft intonation, for this reason it has been defined as a "less harsh" form of Dutch.West-Vlaams, Oost-Wlaams, Limburg and Antweros are the other principal dialects of Flanders. Some of these varieties include French loanwords, which are used as colloquialisms, for instance the Standard Dutch for "fork"-which would be "vork"-has been substituted by "fourchette", a word which was used in old French.
Some dialects differ from Standard Dutch also for phonetics and pronunciation, for instance in the West-Vaalms variety the "soft g" and the "h" sounds are pronounced in the same way.
There also are some variations, such as Limburgs or Low Saxon, which are so different from Standard Dutch which are considered separated languages and they are attributed the status of "streetkaal", or "area language".
Grammar
The continental, West Germanic origins of Dutch result in its complicated word order and a curious tendency to glue nouns together. The result are astonishingly long words, such as "de randjongerenhangplekkenbeleidsambtenarensalarisbesprekingsafspraken" (literaly: the agreements for the negotiations concerning the salary of public servants who decide on the policy for areas where unemployed youth is allowed to hang out), or "hottentottententententoonstellingsmakersopleidingsprogramma" (which means "the curriculum of an education teaching the makers of exhibitions about the tents of the Hottentots").These are not long poems, but grammatically correct Dutch words..In reality, in spoken language such long constructions are usually avoided and the number of words that are glued together is often limited to two or three.
Nowadays, Dutch grammar is a lot simplier than it was one hundred years ago. Given to a process of simplification which took place over the years, there has been a limitation in the use of cases: now, they are only used for pronouns and they do not exist anymore for nouns and adjectives. In addition to this, nouns can only be neuter or common gender, which can create a mess for those learners whose mothertongue is English or a romance language (i.e. Italian or Spanish). Indeed, in these languages nouns' declination includes the concepts of masculine and feminine, something which is totally unknown to Dutch speakers.
Slang
Now it's time to relax with some colorful-and surely less boring than grammar- slang expressions.The first phrases are used by students:
- knor: someone who gets everything wrong, always says the wrong things at the wrong time and is therefore considered a social failure. Example: 'John is een suffe knor!' means as much as 'John is a boring, uninteresting person'.
- brugpieper: a pupil in the lowest class of a lyceum. The word is used by pupils in the higher classes. It is a composition of "brugklas" (bridge-class; the first class being a "bridge" to different types of secondary education) and "pieper" (pipit, young chicken).
Finally, have a look at some "spicy" expressions, very appropriate if you want to offend someone:
A "dombo" is an idiot and a "zeiker" is someone who complains about trivial matters of things that cannot be changed. If you tell that one of your friends is a "Johny" (or Sjonnie), it means you think he is "a non-intellectual male person". The appropriate term to call this guy's girlfriend is 'Anita', which is the female equivalent of "Johny".
These expressions might sound quite offensive, so try to limit their use in cases of emergency-i.e. if you definitely hate that person!