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Dutch - Other Languages

Dutch is a West Germanic language that is spoken in the European Union by about 23 million people as a first language—including most of the population of the Netherlands and about sixty percent of that of Belgium—and by another 5 million as a second language. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is said to be roughly in between them. Dutch, like English, has not undergone the High German consonant shift, does not use Germanic umlaut as a grammatical marker, has largely abandoned the use of the subjunctive, and has leveled much of its morphology, including the case system. While Dutch generally refers to the language as a whole, Belgian varieties are sometimes collectively referred to as "Flemish". In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the native official name for Dutch is Netherlands, and its dialects have their own names, e.g. Hollands ("Hollandish"), West-Vlaams ("Western Flemish"), Brabants ("Brabantian"). The use of the word Vlaams ("Flemish") to describe Standard Dutch for the variations prevalent in Flanders and used there, however, is common in the Netherlands and Belgium.Dutch belongs to its own West Germanic sub-group, the Low Franconian languages, paired with its sister language Limburgish or East Low Franconian. Its closest relative is the mutually intelligible daughter language, Afrikaans. The West Flemish group of dialects, spoken in West Flanders and Zeeland, is so distinct that it might be considered as a separate language variant, although the strong significance of language in Belgian politics would prevent the government from classifying them as such. Dutch is an official language of the Netherlands proper, Belgium, Suriname and the Dutch Antilles: Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. Dutch is also an official language of several international organizations, such as the European Union, Union of South American Nations and the Caribbean Community. At an academic level, Dutch is taught in about 175 universities in 40 countries. About 15,000 students worldwide study Dutch at the university.