Dutch is part of the Indo-Germanic language family and is related to English and German. The origins are laying in the Middle Franconia and Lower Saxony. Besides the Netherlands Dutch is spoken in Belgian Flandern and in some parts of Germany and Luxembourg.
Dutch is the official language on the Netherlands Antilles and in Suriname. A modification of Dutch is the Afrikaans in South Africa. The whole thesaurus has a Germanic origin. read more...
In the Dutch language many deprecated words alived that disappeared in High German long ago. Sound deferrals are almost nonexistent.
The orthography almost equals the pronunciation in that a simple relationship between sound and spelling is striven.
During its evolution grammar had simplified significant. With adjectives and nouns causes are not used any longer.
Sure Dutch knows three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) but uses only two articles; „de“ for masculine and feminine nouns, „het“ for neuter nouns. Except for some foreign words only two plural endings (–en) and (–s) exist.
Also diminutive forms are more frequently used than in German.
