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129-738: The Flemish Legion ( Dutch : Vlaams Legioen ) was a collaborationist military formation recruited among Dutch-speaking volunteers from German-occupied Belgium , notably from Flanders , during World War II . It was formed in the aftermath of the German invasion of the Soviet Union and fought on the Eastern Front in the Waffen SS alongside similar formations from other parts of German-occupied Western Europe . Established in July 1941,

258-578: A common ancestor with languages such as English, German, and the Scandinavian languages . All Germanic languages are subject to the Grimm's law and Verner's law sound shifts, which originated in the Proto-Germanic language and define the basic features differentiating them from other Indo-European languages. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in

387-709: A friendly fire incident in the same month. Michael Lippert , the Legion's unpopular German commanding officer, was wounded in April 1942. He was replaced with Conrad Schellong, another German officer, who had previously served in the Wiking Division. The Legion was withdrawn from the front in June 1942 after almost six months in combat but were re-deployed to the region again in August 1942. They were finally withdrawn from

516-467: A schwa . The Middle Dutch dialect areas were affected by political boundaries. The sphere of political influence of a certain ruler often also created a sphere of linguistic influence, with the language within the area becoming more homogenous. Following the contemporary political divisions they are in order of importance: A process of standardisation started in the Middle Ages , especially under

645-601: A synod taking place in Corbridge , England , where the decisions are being written down " tam Latine quam theodisce " meaning "in Latin as well as common vernacular". According to a hypothesis by De Grauwe, In northern West Francia (i.e. modern-day Belgium) the term would take on a new meaning during the Early Middle Ages , when, within the context of a highly dichromatic linguistic landscape, it came to be

774-576: A comparison between the West Germanic languages, see the sections Phonology, Grammar, and Vocabulary. Dutch dialects are primarily the dialects that are both related with the Dutch language and are spoken in the same language area as the Dutch standard language . Although heavily under the influence of the standard language, some of them remain diverse and are found in the Netherlands and in

903-467: A consequence evolve (along with Alemannic , Bavarian and Lombardic ) into Old High German. At more or less the same time the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, moving over Western Europe from west to east, led to the development of Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Old Frisian and Old Saxon . Hardly influenced by either development, Old Dutch probably remained relatively close to the original language of

1032-681: A human reservoir of Nordic/Germanic blood. Conquest of Western Europe gave the Germans, and especially the SS, access to these "potential recruits" who were considered part of the wider "Germanic family". Four of these conquered nations were ripe with Germanic peoples according to Nazi estimations (Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, and Flanders). Heinrich Himmler referred to people from these lands in terms of their Germanic suitability as, " blutsmässig unerhört wertvolle Kräfte " ("by blood exceptionally valuable assets"). Accordingly, some of them were recruited into

1161-582: A minority language in Germany and northern France's French Flanders . Though Belgium as a whole is multilingual, three of the four language areas into which the country is divided ( Flanders , francophone Wallonia , and the German-speaking Community ) are largely monolingual, with Brussels being bilingual. The Netherlands and Belgium produce the vast majority of music , films , books and other media written or spoken in Dutch. Dutch

1290-670: A minority) and the province of Walloon Brabant . Brabantian expands into small parts in the west of Limburg while its strong influence on the East Flemish of East Flanders and eastern Zeelandic Flanders weakens towards the west. In a small area in the northwest of North Brabant ( Willemstad ), Hollandic is spoken. Conventionally, the Kleverlandish dialects are distinguished from Brabantian, but there are no objective criteria apart from geography to do so. Over 5 million people live in an area with some form of Brabantian being

1419-420: A number of closely related, mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the former Old Dutch area. Where Old Dutch fragments are very hard to read for untrained Modern Dutch speakers, the various literary works of Middle Dutch are somewhat more accessible. The most notable difference between Old and Middle Dutch is in a feature of speech known as vowel reduction , whereby vowels in unstressed syllables are leveled to

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1548-579: A political border, because the traditional dialects are strongly influenced by the national standard varieties. While a somewhat heterogeneous group of Low Franconian dialects, Limburgish has received official status as a regional language in the Netherlands and Germany, but not in Belgium. Due to this official recognition, it receives protection by chapter 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . Afrikaans , although to

1677-413: A result, Nederduits no longer serves as a synonym for the Dutch language. In the 19th century, the term " Diets " was revived by Dutch linguists and historians as well, as a poetic name for Middle Dutch and its literature . Old Dutch can be discerned more or less around the same time as Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Old High German , Old Frisian , and Old Saxon . These names are derived from

1806-509: A result, when West Flemings try to talk Standard Dutch, they are often unable to pronounce the g-sound, and pronounce it similar to the h-sound. This leaves, for example, no difference between " held " (hero) and " geld " (money). Or in some cases, they are aware of the problem, and hyper-correct the "h" into a voiced velar fricative or g-sound, again leaving no difference. The West Flemish variety historically spoken in adjacent parts in France

1935-473: A second or third language in the polyglot Caribbean island countries of Aruba , Curaçao and Sint Maarten . All these countries have recognised Dutch as one of their official languages, and are involved in one way or another in the Dutch Language Union . The Dutch Caribbean municipalities ( St. Eustatius , Saba and Bonaire ) have Dutch as one of the official languages. In Asia, Dutch

2064-522: A significant degree mutually intelligible with Dutch, is usually not considered a dialect but instead a separate standardised language . It is spoken in South Africa and Namibia. As a daughter language of 17th-century Dutch dialects, Afrikaans evolved in parallel with modern Dutch, but was influenced by various other languages in South Africa. West Frisian ( Westerlauwers Fries ), along with Saterland Frisian and North Frisian , evolved from

2193-411: A solid base to be formed on, it also meant that more training was required. It was not until 1 January 1945 that the division was ready to be sent back into the line. The Langemarck was once again attached to III. (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps, now a part of Steiner's newly formed XI. SS Panzer Army located on the lower Oder near Stettin . On 16 February, a kampfgruppe with the most experienced men of

2322-479: A somewhat different development since the late Middle Ages. Two dialect groups have been given the official status of regional language (or streektaal ) in the Netherlands. Like several other dialect groups, both are part of a dialect continuum that continues across the national border. The Dutch Low Saxon dialect area comprises the provinces of Groningen , Drenthe and Overijssel , as well as parts of

2451-424: A source language, mainly for law and history students. In Indonesia this involves about 35,000 students. Unlike other European nations, the Dutch chose not to follow a policy of language expansion amongst the indigenous peoples of their colonies. In the last quarter of the 19th century, however, a local elite gained proficiency in Dutch so as to meet the needs of expanding bureaucracy and business. Nevertheless,

2580-552: A unique prestige dialect and has a large dialectal continuum consisting of 28 main dialects, which can themselves be further divided into at least 600 distinguishable varieties. In the Netherlands, the Hollandic dialect dominates in national broadcast media while in Flanders Brabantian dialect dominates in that capacity, making them in turn unofficial prestige dialects in their respective countries. Outside

2709-826: A western-Germanic state called Burgundia , which would be policed by the SS as a security buffer for Germany. In 1940, the first manifestation of the Germanic SS appeared in Flanders as the Allgemeene SS Vlaanderen to be joined two-months later by the Dutch Nederlandsche SS , and in May 1941 the Norwegian Norges SS was formed. The final nation to contribute to the Germanic SS was Denmark, whose Germansk Korpset (later called

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2838-537: Is kantor , handdoek "towel" in Indonesian is handuk , or bushalte "bus stop" in Indonesian is halte bus . In addition, many Indonesian words are calques of Dutch; for example, rumah sakit "hospital" is calqued on the Dutch ziekenhuis (literally "sickhouse"), kebun binatang "zoo" on dierentuin (literally "animal garden"), undang-undang dasar "constitution" from grondwet (literally "ground law"). These account for some of

2967-521: Is Sranan Tongo , spoken natively by about a fifth of the population. Algemeene-SS Vlaanderen The Nazi idea behind co-opting additional Germanic people into the SS stems to a certain extent from the Völkisch belief that the original Aryan-Germanic homeland rested in Scandinavia and that, in a racial-ideological sense, people from there or the neighbouring northern European regions were

3096-506: 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

3225-466: Is a calque of the aforementioned Roman province Germania Inferior and an attempt by early Dutch grammarians to give their language more prestige by linking it to Roman times. Likewise, Hoogduits ("High German") and Overlands ("Upper-landish") came into use as a Dutch exonym for the various German dialects used in neighboring German states. Use of Nederduytsch was popular in the 16th century but ultimately lost out over Nederlands during

3354-473: Is a monocentric language , at least what concerns its written form, with all speakers using the same standard form (authorised by the Dutch Language Union ) based on a Dutch orthography defined in the so-called " Green Booklet " authoritative dictionary and employing the Latin alphabet when writing; however, pronunciation varies between dialects. Indeed, in stark contrast to its written uniformity, Dutch lacks

3483-537: Is also an official language of several international organisations, 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 university. In Europe, Dutch is the majority language in the Netherlands (96%) and Belgium (59%) as well as

3612-587: Is found in the Salic law . In this Frankish document written around 510 the oldest Dutch sentence has been identified: Maltho thi afrio lito ("I say to you, I free you, serf") used to free a serf. Another old fragment of Dutch is Visc flot aftar themo uuatare ("A fish was swimming in the water"). The oldest conserved larger Dutch text is the Utrecht baptismal vow (776–800) starting with Forsachistu diobolae ... ec forsacho diabolae (litt.: "Forsake you

3741-522: Is mostly Germanic; it incorporates slightly more Romance loans than German, but far fewer than English. In Belgium, the Netherlands and Suriname, the native official name for Dutch is Nederlands (historically Nederlandsch before the Dutch orthographic reforms ). Sometimes Vlaams (" Flemish ") is used as well to describe Standard Dutch in Flanders , whereas Hollands (" Hollandic ")

3870-487: Is occasionally used as a colloquial term for the standard language in the central and northwestern parts of the Netherlands. English uses the adjective Dutch as a noun for the language of the Netherlands and Flanders. The word is derived from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz . The stem of this word, *þeudō , meant "people" in Proto-Germanic, and *-iskaz was an adjective-forming suffix, of which -ish

3999-569: 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. An oddity of the dialect is that, the voiced velar fricative (written as "g" in Dutch) shifts to a voiced glottal fricative (written as "h" in Dutch), while the letter "h" becomes mute (like in French). As

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4128-585: Is sometimes called French Flemish and is listed as a French minority language . However, only a very small and aging minority of the French-Flemish population still speaks and understands West Flemish. Hollandic is spoken in Holland and Utrecht , though the original forms of this dialect (which were heavily influenced by a West Frisian substratum and, from the 16th century on, by Brabantian dialects ) are now relatively rare. The urban dialects of

4257-637: Is spoken in Limburg (Belgium) as well as in the remaining part of Limburg (Netherlands) and extends across the German border. West Flemish ( Westvlaams ) is spoken in West Flanders , the western part of Zeelandic Flanders and also in French Flanders , where it virtually became extinct to make way for French. The West Flemish group of dialects, spoken in West Flanders and Zeeland ,

4386-595: Is taught in various educational centres in Indonesia, the most important of which is the Erasmus Language Centre (ETC) in Jakarta . Each year, some 1,500 to 2,000 students take Dutch courses there. In total, several thousand Indonesians study Dutch as a foreign language. Owing to centuries of Dutch rule in Indonesia, many old documents are written in Dutch. Many universities therefore include Dutch as

4515-662: Is the Modern English form. Theodiscus was its Latinised form and used as an adjective referring to the Germanic vernaculars of the Early Middle Ages . In this sense, it meant "the language of the common people". The term was used as opposed to Latin , the non -native language of writing and the Catholic Church . It was first recorded in 786, when the Bishop of Ostia writes to Pope Adrian I about

4644-404: Is the case with the ( standardised ) West Frisian language . It is spoken alongside Dutch in the province of Friesland . Dutch dialects and regional languages are not spoken as often as they used to be, especially in the Netherlands. Recent research by Geert Driessen shows that the use of dialects and regional languages among both Dutch adults and youth is in heavy decline. In 1995, 27 percent of

4773-530: Is the sole official language, and over 60 percent of the population speaks it as a mother tongue . Dutch is the obligatory medium of instruction in schools in Suriname, even for non-native speakers. A further twenty-four percent of the population speaks Dutch as a second language . Suriname gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1975 and has been an associate member of the Dutch Language Union since 2004. The lingua franca of Suriname, however,

4902-661: The Germanische SS Schweiz . It had very few members and was considered merely a splinter Nazi group by Swiss authorities. Separately from the Germanic SS, a number of so-called Germanic Battalions ( Germanische Sturmbanne ) were established in September 1942 as part of the Allgemeine SS from among Flemish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swiss expatriates and volunteer workers in Germany. A Danish unit in Berlin

5031-408: The kessel (cauldron), suffering heavy casualties and losing the majority of their heavy equipment and vehicles. By early March, the brigade had been reduced to 400 men. At the end of April, the shattered Langemarck was ordered back to Bohemia for reforming. In Bohemia, 1,700 new recruits were waiting to join the division, and soon it was back up to strength. On 19 July 1944, Kampfgruppe Rehmann

5160-531: The 2006 New Zealand census , 26,982 people, or 0.70 percent of the total population, reported to speak Dutch to sufficient fluency that they could hold an everyday conversation. In contrast to the colonies in the East Indies , from the second half of the 19th century onwards, the Netherlands envisaged the expansion of Dutch in its colonies in the West Indies . Until 1863, when slavery was abolished in

5289-578: The Bergakker inscription , found near the Dutch city of Tiel , which may represent a primary record of 5th-century Frankish. Although some place names recorded in Roman texts such as vadam (modern Dutch: wad , English: "mudflat"), could arguably be considered as the oldest single "Dutch" words, the Bergakker inscription yields the oldest evidence of Dutch morphology. However, interpretations of

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5418-455: The Brussels and Flemish regions of Belgium . The areas in which they are spoken often correspond with former medieval counties and duchies. The Netherlands (but not Belgium) distinguishes between a dialect and a streektaal (" regional language "). Those words are actually more political than linguistic because a regional language unites a large group of very different varieties. Such is

5547-554: The High German consonant shift , does not use Germanic umlaut as a grammatical marker, has largely abandoned the use of the subjunctive , and has levelled much of its morphology , including most of its case system . Features shared with German, however, include the survival of two to three grammatical genders  – albeit with few grammatical consequences  – as well as the use of modal particles , final-obstruent devoicing , and (similar) word order . Dutch vocabulary

5676-493: The Low Countries , its meaning being largely implicitly provided by the regional orientation of medieval Dutch society: apart from the higher echelons of the clergy and nobility, mobility was largely static and hence while "Dutch" could by extension also be used in its earlier sense, referring to what today would be called Germanic dialects as opposed to Romance dialects , in many cases it was understood or meant to refer to

5805-591: The Low Franconian languages, paired with its sister language Limburgish or East Low Franconian. Its closest relative is the mutually intelligible daughter language Afrikaans. Other West Germanic languages related to Dutch are German , English and the un-standardised languages Low German and Yiddish . Dutch stands out in combining some Ingvaeonic characteristics (occurring consistently in English and Frisian and reduced in intensity from west to east over

5934-531: The Randstad , which are Hollandic dialects, do not diverge from standard Dutch very much, but there is a clear difference between the city dialects of Rotterdam , The Hague , Amsterdam and Utrecht . In some rural Hollandic areas more authentic Hollandic dialects are still being used, especially north of Amsterdam. Another group of dialects based on Hollandic is that spoken in the cities and larger towns of Friesland , where it partially displaced West Frisian in

6063-537: The Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauptamt , RSHA). Their principal responsibilities during wartime were to root-out partisans, subversive organizations, and any group opposed to Nazi ideas. In other cases, these foreign units of the SS were employed by major German firms to distribute propaganda for the Nazi cause among their compatriots and to police and control workers. In addition,

6192-588: The SS oath of allegiance . The Germans again insisted that the volunteers take the oath in October 1943. Some 200 "rebels" who refused were transferred to other units or penal units . In August, the VNV's leader Hendrik Elias announced that the VNV would not recruit more members for the German army. The allocation of the title Langemarck , in memory of the bloody World War I battle fought at Langemarck, West Flanders in 1914,

6321-656: The SS-Division Wiking . This began a "race" in Flanders to recruit volunteers for the German army although the VNV was initially reluctant to join because it feared it would lose control over its recruits. In contrast with " Walloons ", Flemish volunteers were considered " Nordic " in Nazi racial thinking and therefore racially suitable for the Waffen-SS rather than the German Army . Between April and June 1941,

6450-543: The Southern Netherlands (now Belgium and Luxembourg), developments were different. Under subsequent Spanish , Austrian and French rule , the standardisation of Dutch language came to a standstill. The state, law, and increasingly education used French, yet more than half the Belgian population were speaking a variety of Dutch. In the course of the 19th century, the Flemish Movement stood up for

6579-497: The antonym of *walhisk (Romance-speakers, specifically Old French ). The word, now rendered as dietsc (Southwestern variant) or duutsc (Central and Northern Variant), could refer to the Dutch language itself, as well as a broader Germanic category depending on context. During the High Middle Ages " Dietsc / Duutsc " was increasingly used as an umbrella term for the specific Germanic dialects spoken in

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6708-471: The continental West Germanic plane) with dominant Istvaeonic characteristics, some of which are also incorporated in German. Unlike German, Dutch (apart from Limburgish) has not been influenced at all by the south to north movement of the High German consonant shift and had some changes of its own. The cumulation of these changes resulted over time in separate, but related standard languages with various degrees of similarities and differences between them. For

6837-434: The differences in vocabulary between Indonesian and Malay. Some regional languages in Indonesia have some Dutch loanwords as well; for example, Sundanese word Katel or "frying pan" origin in Dutch is " ketel ". The Javanese word for "bike/ bicycle " " pit " can be traced back to its origin in Dutch " fiets ". The Malacca state of Malaysia was also colonized by the Dutch in its longest period that Malacca

6966-509: The military blockade of the city which had begun two months earlier. It was attached to the 2 SS Infantry Brigade . A large-scale offensive aimed to relieve Leningrad was launched by the Red Army in January 1942. The Flemish Legion was involved in heavy fighting and took significant losses. Reimond Tollenaere , a leading figure within the VNV who had enlisted in the unit, was killed in

7095-642: The pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age . The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: East (now extinct), West , and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period . Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots , Frisian , Low German (Old Saxon) and High German . It is characterised by a number of phonological and morphological innovations not found in North or East Germanic. The West Germanic varieties of

7224-459: The 14th to 15th century onward, its urban centers ( Deventer , Zwolle , Kampen , Zutphen and Doesburg ) have been increasingly influenced by the western written Dutch and became a linguistically mixed area. From the 17th century onward, it was gradually integrated into the Dutch language area. Dutch Low Saxon used to be at one end of the Low German dialect continuum . However, the national border has given way to dialect boundaries coinciding with

7353-476: The 16th century and is known as Stadsfries ("Urban Frisian"). Hollandic together with inter alia Kleverlandish and North Brabantian , but without Stadsfries, are the Central Dutch dialects . Brabantian is named after the historical Duchy of Brabant , which corresponded mainly to the provinces of North Brabant and southern Gelderland , the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Flemish Brabant , as well as Brussels (where its native speakers have become

7482-502: The 7th century. It was replaced in France by Old French (a Romance language with a considerable Old Frankish influence). However, the Old Franconian language did not die out at large, as it continued to be spoken in the Low Countries, and subsequently evolved into what is now called Old Low Franconian or Old Dutch in the Low Countries. In fact, Old Frankish could be reconstructed from Old Dutch and Frankish loanwords in Old French. The term Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian refers to

7611-417: The Dutch adult population spoke a dialect or regional language on a regular basis, but in 2011, that was no more than 11 percent. In 1995, 12 percent of children of primary school age spoke a dialect or regional language, but in 2011, that had declined to four percent. Of the officially recognised regional languages Limburgish is spoken the most (in 2011 among adults 54%, among children 31%) and Dutch Low Saxon

7740-409: The Dutch government remained reluctant to teach Dutch on a large scale for fear of destabilising the colony. Dutch, the language of power, was supposed to remain in the hands of the leading elite. After independence, Dutch was dropped as an official language and replaced by Indonesian , but this does not mean that Dutch has completely disappeared in Indonesia: Indonesian Dutch , a regional variety of

7869-424: The Dutch language in Belgium during the 19th century. It became increasingly radical during and after World War I . VNV's ideology was framed in opposition to the Belgian state, calling for Flanders to form part of an racially defined " Greater Netherlands " ( dietsland ) by fusing with the Netherlands . It was also influenced by Catholicism and anti-communism but was initially distrustful of Nazi ideology which

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7998-415: The Dutch standard language is largely absent, and speakers of these Dutch dialects will use German or French in everyday speech. Dutch is not afforded legal status in France or Germany, either by the central or regional public authorities, and knowledge of the language is declining among younger generations. As a foreign language , Dutch is mainly taught in primary and secondary schools in areas adjacent to

8127-466: The Dutch standard language, it is not mutually intelligible with Dutch and considered a sister language of Dutch, like English and German. Approximate distribution of native Dutch speakers worldwide: Dutch is an official language of the Netherlands proper (not enshrined in the constitution but in administrative law ), Belgium, Suriname, the Dutch Caribbean municipalities (St. Eustatius, Saba and Bonaire), Aruba , Curaçao and Sint Maarten . Dutch

8256-408: The Dutch, was still spoken by about 500,000 half-blood in Indonesia in 1985. Yet the Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch: words for everyday life as well as scientific and technological terms. One scholar argues that 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words, many of which are transliterated to reflect phonetic pronunciation e.g. kantoor "office" in Indonesian

8385-456: The Flemish Legion was envisaged by the Flemish National League ( Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond , VNV) as a means of maintaining its status as the principal collaborationist party within Flanders since the German invasion of May 1940 . It was formed several months after the VNV had begun recruiting Flemish volunteers for smaller Waffen SS formations and was depicted as the future army of an independent Flemish state. Amid opposition from its personnel,

8514-488: The Franks. However, the language did experience developments of its own, such as very early final-obstruent devoicing . In fact, the find at Bergakker indicates that the language may already have experienced this shift during the Old Frankish period. Attestations of Old Dutch sentences are extremely rare. The language is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and loan words from Old Dutch in other languages. The oldest recorded

8643-472: The Netherlands and Flanders . In French-speaking Belgium , over 300,000 pupils are enrolled in Dutch courses, followed by over 23,000 in the German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia , and about 7,000 in the French region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (of which 4,550 are in primary school). At an academic level, the largest number of faculties of neerlandistiek can be found in Germany (30 universities), followed by France (20 universities) and

8772-412: The Netherlands and Belgium, the dialect spoken in and around the German town of Kleve ( Kleverlandish ) is historically and genetically a Low Franconian variety. In North-Western France, the area around Calais was historically Dutch-speaking (West Flemish), of which an estimated 20,000 are daily speakers. The cities of Dunkirk , Gravelines and Bourbourg only became predominantly French-speaking by

8901-467: The Netherlands, although there are recognisable differences in pronunciation, comparable to the pronunciation differences between standard British and standard American English. In 1980 the Netherlands and Belgium concluded the Language Union Treaty . This treaty lays down the principle that the two countries must gear their language policy to each other, among other things, for a common system of spelling. Dutch belongs to its own West Germanic sub-group,

9030-440: The Netherlands, and Norway as co-bearers of a greater Germanic empire, Hitler refused to grant them the same degree of independence despite ongoing pressure from ranking members of the SS. The purpose of the Germanic SS was to enforce Nazi racial doctrine , especially anti-Semitic ideas. They typically served as local security police augmenting German units of the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst (SD), and other main departments of

9159-426: The SS against Danish Jews, who totaled about 6,500, but most of them managed to go into hiding or escape to Sweden before the senior German representative in Denmark, SS-General Werner Best , could marshal the SS forces at his disposal and complete his planned raids and deportations. The following countries raised active Germanic SS detachments: An underground Nazi organization also existed in Switzerland, known as

9288-493: The SS and enjoyed the highest privileges as did foreign workers from these regions, to include unrestrained sexual contact with German women. Eager to expand their reach, Nazis like Chief of the SS Main Office , Gottlob Berger considered the Germanic SS as foundational for a burgeoning German Empire. Himmler's vision for a Germanic SS started with grouping the Netherlands, Belgian , and French Flanders together into

9417-536: The Schalburg Corps) came into being in April 1943. For the SS, they did not think of their compatriots in terms of national borders but in terms of Germanic racial makeup, known conceptually to them as Deutschtum , a greater idea which transcended traditional political boundaries. While the SS leadership foresaw an imperialistic and semi-autonomous relationship for the Nordic or Germanic countries like Denmark,

9546-674: The United Kingdom (5 universities). Despite the Dutch presence in Indonesia for almost 350 years, as the Asian bulk of the Dutch East Indies , the Dutch language has no official status there and the small minority that can speak the language fluently are either educated members of the oldest generation, or employed in the legal profession such as historians, diplomats, lawyers, jurists and linguists/polyglots, as certain law codes are still only available in Dutch. Dutch

9675-586: The VNV announced its intention to recruit a "Flemish Legion" to fight as part of the German forces on the Eastern Front . In propaganda, the Legion was depicted as the first step towards the creation of an independent Flemish army. It was advertised that the unit would be commanded by Flemish officers, and volunteers who had previously served in the Belgian Army were told that they would be able to retain past ranks and privileges. Approximately 560 men were recruited between July and August 1941. In practice, most of

9804-577: The VNV recruited 500 to 800 Flemish volunteers for a mixed Flemish-Dutch unit known as the SS-Volunteer Banner Nordwest ( SS-Freiwilligen Standarte Nordwest ) which the German authorities had promised would not be deployed in combat roles. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 expanded the activities of collaborationist groups in Belgium and elsewhere in German-occupied Europe . On 8 July 1941,

9933-534: The Waffen-SS. In addition to the veterans of Flandern , the Sturmbrigade now gained a contingent of new Flemish volunteers, an anti-tank Panzerjäger company, an assault gun battalion equipped with StuGs and a FlaK battalion. In October 1943, the brigade was renamed 6th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade Langemarck . In December 1943, the Langemarck was ready to be sent to the front. The total unit strength

10062-621: The West Indies, slaves were forbidden to speak Dutch, with the effect that local creoles such as Papiamento and Sranan Tongo which were based not on Dutch but rather other European languages, became common in the Dutch West Indies. However, as most of the people in the Colony of Surinam (now Suriname ) worked on Dutch plantations, this reinforced the use of Dutch as a means for direct communication. In Suriname today, Dutch

10191-399: The allied invasion of Belgium, many Belgian fascists fled the country to Germany. The result of this was that both the Langemarck and the 5th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade Wallonie were redesignated as divisions on 18 October 1944. The new Langemarck division was designated 27th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Langemarck . While the influx of displaced Flemings meant that the division had

10320-508: The area around Altdamm, the last defensive position east of the Oder. On the 19th, the unit fell back behind the Oder. As a part of Steiner's XI SS Panzer Army, the Langemarck , now reduced to a Kampfgruppe, began falling back towards Mecklenburg where it surrendered to the Red Army on 8 May 1945. Dutch language Dutch ( endonym : Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts] )

10449-724: The area known as the Low Countries goes back further in time, with the Romans referring to the region as Germania Inferior ("Lower" Germania). It is a reference to the Low Countries' downriver location at the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta near the North Sea . From 1551, the designation Nederlands received strong competition from the name Nederduytsch (literally "Low Dutch", Dutch being used in its archaic sense covering all continental West Germanic languages). It

10578-624: The borders of other standard language areas. In most cases, the heavy influence of the standard language has broken the dialect continuum . Examples are the Gronings dialect spoken in Groningen as well as the closely related varieties in adjacent East Frisia (Germany). Kleverlandish is a dialect spoken in southern Gelderland , the northern tip of Limburg , and northeast of North Brabant (Netherlands), but also in adjacent parts of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Limburgish ( Limburgs )

10707-479: The case with the Gronings dialect , which is considered a variety of the Dutch Low Saxon regional language, but it is relatively distinct from other Dutch Low Saxon varieties. Also, some Dutch dialects are more remote from the Dutch standard language than some varieties of a regional language are. Within the Netherlands, a further distinction is made between a regional language and a separate language, which

10836-553: The close of the 18th century, with (Hoog)Duytsch establishing itself as the Dutch exonym for German during this same period. In the 19th century Germany saw the rise of the categorisation of dialects, with German dialectologists terming the German dialects spoken in the mountainous south of Germany as Hochdeutsch ("High German"). Subsequently, German dialects spoken in the north were designated as Niederdeutsch ("Low German"). The names for these dialects were calqued by Dutch linguists as Nederduits and Hoogduits . As

10965-472: The course of fifteen centuries. During that period, they forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, and influenced or even replaced Old Saxon spoken in the east (contiguous with the Low German area). On the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in present-day France and Germany. The division into Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, since

11094-540: The declaration of independence of Indonesia, Western New Guinea , the "wild east" of the Dutch East Indies , remained a Dutch colony until 1962, known as Netherlands New Guinea . Despite prolonged Dutch presence, the Dutch language is not spoken by many Papuans, the colony having been ceded to Indonesia in 1963. Dutch-speaking immigrant communities can also be found in Australia and New Zealand. The 2011 Australian census showed 37,248 people speaking Dutch at home. At

11223-603: The development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of the Salian Franks who occupied what is now the southern Netherlands , northern Belgium , part of northern France, and parts of the Lower Rhine regions of Germany. The High German consonant shift, moving over Western Europe from south to west, caused a differentiation with the Central and High Franconian in Germany. The latter would as

11352-474: The devil? ... I forsake the devil"). If only for its poetic content, the most famous Old Dutch sentence is probably Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan, hinase hic enda tu, wat unbidan we nu ("All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for"), is dated to around the year 1100, written by a Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester , England . Since the sentence speaks to

11481-509: The division was ordered on the offensive as a part of Operation Sonnenwende , the operation to destroy a Soviet salient and to relieve the troops besieged in the town of Arnswalde . The offensive had been conceived by Generaloberst Heinz Guderian as a massed assault all along the front, but had then been reduced by Hitler to the level of a local counterattack. Despite initial gains, the attack soon bogged down after III. (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps, with Nordland, Langemarck and Wallonie in

11610-489: The end of the 19th century. In the countryside, until World War I , many elementary schools continued to teach in Dutch, and the Catholic Church continued to preach and teach the catechism in Dutch in many parishes. During the second half of the 19th century, Dutch was banned from all levels of education by both Prussia and France and lost most of its functions as a cultural language. In both Germany and France,

11739-615: The first months of the occupation, the VNV's privileged position was increasingly challenged by smaller and more radically collaborationist groups including the Algemeene-SS Vlaanderen and DeVlag which embraced Nazi ideology and were more explicitly pro-German. In September 1940, the Algemeene-SS Vlaanderen announced its intention to recruit Flemish volunteers for the Waffen-SS , initially sent to

11868-415: The imagination, it is often erroneously stated as the oldest Dutch sentence. Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch . The year 1150 is often cited as the time of the discontinuity, but it actually marks a time of profuse Dutch writing; during this period a rich Medieval Dutch literature developed. There was at that time no overarching standard language ; Middle Dutch is rather a collective name for

11997-430: The inclusion of other Germanic peoples was part of the Nazi attempt to collectively Germanize Europe, and for them, Germanization entailed the creation of an empire ruled by Germanic people at the expense of other races. One of the most notorious groups was in the Netherlands , where the Germanic SS was employed to round-up Jews . Of the 140,000 Jews that had lived in the Netherlands prior to 1940, around 24,000 survived

12126-711: The influence of the Burgundian Ducal Court in Dijon ( Brussels after 1477). The dialects of Flanders and Brabant were the most influential around this time. The process of standardisation became much stronger at the start of the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp . The 1585 fall of Antwerp to the Spanish army led to a flight to the northern Netherlands, where the Dutch Republic declared its independence from Spain. This influenced

12255-563: The language now known as Dutch. In the Low Countries Dietsch or its Early Modern Dutch form Duytsch as an endonym for Dutch gradually went out of common use and was gradually replaced by the Dutch endonym Nederlands . This designation (first attested in 1482) started at the Burgundian court in the 15th century, although the use of neder , laag , bas , and inferior ("nether" or "low") to refer to

12384-629: The least (adults 15%, children 1%). The decline of the West Frisian language in Friesland occupies a middle position (adults 44%, children 22%). Dialects are most often spoken in rural areas, but many cities have a distinct city dialect. For example, the city of Ghent has very distinct "g", "e" and "r" sounds that greatly differ from its surrounding villages. The Brussels dialect combines Brabantian with words adopted from Walloon and French . Some dialects had, until recently, extensions across

12513-648: The line in March 1943 in anticipation of the unit's reorganisation. Soon after arriving at Dębica, the Legion was ordered to move on to Milovice in Bohemia . In May 1943, the Flemish Legion was amalgamated with other Flemish volunteers to form the new SS- Sturmbrigade Langemarck on the orders of Heinrich Himmler . Tensions between the Flemish volunteers and the SS, however, led to some members refusing to take

12642-437: The modern standard languages . In this age no standard languages had yet developed, while a perfect West Germanic dialect continuum remained present; the division reflects the contingent future contribution dialect groups would have to the later languages. The early form of Dutch was a set of Franconian dialects spoken by the Salian Franks in the 5th century. These happened to develop through Middle Dutch to Modern Dutch over

12771-533: The original Dutch language version dating from colonial times remains the authoritative version. Up to half a million native speakers reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined, and historical linguistic minorities on the verge of extinction remain in parts of France and Germany. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English, and is colloquially said to be "roughly in between" them. Dutch, like English, has not undergone

12900-527: The predominant colloquial language out of the area's 22 million Dutch-speakers. Limburgish , spoken in both Belgian Limburg and Netherlands Limburg and in adjacent parts in Germany, is considered a dialect in Belgium, while having obtained the official status of regional language in the Netherlands. Limburgish has been influenced by the Ripuarian varieties like the Colognian dialect , and has had

13029-411: The provinces of Gelderland , Flevoland , Friesland and Utrecht . This group, which is not Low Franconian but instead Low Saxon and close to neighbouring Low German, has been elevated by the Netherlands (and by Germany) to the legal status of streektaal ( regional language ) according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . It is regarded as Dutch for a number of reasons. From

13158-412: The rear side of the town of Narva could be protected. KG Rehmann was tasked with defending Orphanage Hill. Fighting alongside men of the 11. SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier Division Nordland , the 5th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade Wallonien , the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) , the 4th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Brigade Nederland and several German formations, the Langemarck

13287-476: The recruits had been active members of the VNV. The creation of the Flemish Legion also forced the Rexist Party , a largely French-speaking group in Belgium, to recruit a " Walloon Legion " rather than the "Belgian Legion" it had originally advocated. The volunteers were transported to Dębica in modern-day Poland in August 1941. The first signs of dissatisfaction began to emerge as it became apparent that

13416-515: The rest of the text lack any consensus. The Franks emerged in the southern Netherlands ( Salian Franks ) and central Germany ( Ripuarian Franks ), and later descended into Gaul . The name of their kingdom survives in that of France. Although they ruled the Gallo-Romans for nearly 300 years, their language, Frankish , became extinct in most of France and was replaced by later forms of the language throughout Luxembourg and Germany in around

13545-423: The rights of Dutch speakers, mostly referred to as "Flemish". However, the dialect variation was a serious disadvantage in the face of the standardised francophony . Since standardisation is a lengthy process, Dutch-speaking Belgium associated itself with the standard language that had already developed in the Netherlands over the centuries. Therefore, the situation in Belgium is essentially no different from that in

13674-687: The roughly 1,000-strong formation was given a notionally independent status as an SS Volunteer Legion Flanders ( SS-Freiwilligen Legion Flandern ). It subsequently sustained heavy casualties on the Eastern Front in fighting around Leningrad . The Flemish Legion was officially disbanded in May 1943 and reformed within the Waffen-SS as the SS Assault Brigade Langemarck ( SS-Sturmbrigade Langemarck ). 200 soldiers refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler in October 1943 and were transferred to other units or penal units . It

13803-524: The same branch of the West Germanic languages as Old English (i.e. Anglo-Frisian ) and are therefore genetically more closely related to English and Scots than to Dutch. The different influences on the respective languages, however, particularly that of Norman French on English and Dutch on West Frisian, have rendered English quite distinct from West Frisian, and West Frisian less distinct from Dutch than from English. Although under heavy influence of

13932-455: The set of Franconian dialects (i.e. West Germanic varieties that are assumed to have evolved from Frankish ) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages , from around the 5th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French. Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in

14061-532: The so-called Flamenpolitik which gave preferential treatment to the Flemish population over the French-speaking Walloons in areas such as the repatriation of Belgian prisoners of war . The VNV hoped to use German support to expand its own political influence within Flanders. After the start of the occupation, it shifted its ideological position to be more compatible with Nazi ideas and suspended demands for Flemish secession from Belgium. In

14190-530: The start and its personnel wore standard Waffen-SS uniforms with only a small shield-shaped badge depicting a Flemish lion to mark them out. In its first months, it was officially designated the SS Volunteer Legion "Flanders" ( SS-Freiwilligen Legioen Flandern ). The Flemish Legion was declared to be battleworthy and was deployed to the sector around Leningrad in November 1941 to participate in

14319-545: The time are generally split into three dialect groups: Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic), Istvaeonic (Weser–Rhine Germanic) and Irminonic (Elbe Germanic). It appears that the Frankish tribes fit primarily into the Istvaeonic dialect group with certain Ingvaeonic influences towards the northwest, which are still seen in modern Dutch. The Frankish language itself is not directly attested, the only possible exception being

14448-482: The time of the German invasion in May 1940 that were broadly sympathetic to the authoritarian and anti-democratic ideals represented by Nazi Germany . In Flanders , the largest and most important of these groups was the Flemish National League ( Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond , or VNV). The VNV was the successor of the Flemish Movement which had originated as a response to the marginalisation of

14577-466: The transition between them was very gradual. One of the few moments when linguists can detect something of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. The development of the Dutch language is illustrated by the following sentence in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch: Among the Indo-European languages , Dutch is grouped within the Germanic languages , meaning it shares

14706-455: The unit would actually be commanded purely by Germans and that many of the other promises made during the recruitment campaign would not be kept. Discipline was harsh, and Flemish volunteers were often subject to "systematic humiliation". At the time, the Germans attempted to amalgamate the new volunteers into the Wiking formation. The majority of the new recruits refused to join the Waffen-SS and

14835-400: The units were instead joined into a new battalion -sized Flemish Legion, itself associated with the larger Volunteer Legion Netherlands . In practice, the autonomy of the Flemish Legion would be increasingly ignored by the German military authorities and the VNV was unable to protest without compromising its own political position. As with some other formations at the time, the Flemish Legion

14964-484: The urban dialects of the province of Holland . In 1637, a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the Statenvertaling , the first major Bible translation into Dutch, was created that people from all over the new republic could understand. It used elements from various, even Dutch Low Saxon , dialects but was predominantly based on the urban dialects of Holland of post 16th century. In

15093-460: The vanguard, reached Arnswalde. Heavy Soviet counterattacks threatened to encircle the corps, and so after evacuating all civilian survivors, Steiner canceled the operation and ordered the corps back to the area around Stargard and Stettin. The Soviet offensive of 1 March pushed Langemarck along with the rest of the III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps before it. By 4 March, the division was falling back to

15222-542: The war by hiding. Despite their relatively small numbers, a total of 512 Jews from Oslo were hunted down by the Norwegian Police and the Germanske SS Norge (Norwegian General SS); once caught, they were deported to Auschwitz. More Jews were rounded-up elsewhere, but the total number of Norwegian Jews captured never reached a thousand throughout the course of the war. Similar measures were planned by

15351-425: Was 2,022 men. On 26 December 1943, Langemarck was sent to Ukraine to act as a part of Army Group South . Fighting alongside the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich , the brigade participated in the heavy defensive battles in the region of Kiev and Zhitomir . In January, 1944 the Langemarck and elements of Das Reich were encircled by Soviet forces near Zhitomir . Despite this, they fought their way out of

15480-520: Was disbanded in January 1943 amid a lack of personnel. In total, the total number of members was only 2,179 in March 1944. After the war, many Germanic SS members were tried by their respective countries for treason. Independent war crimes trials outside the jurisdiction of the Nuremberg Trials were conducted in several European countries, such as in the Netherlands , Norway and Denmark , leading to several death sentences; an example being

15609-625: Was engaged in very heavy combat against the Soviets. Over the next few months, Langemarck , along with the remainder of Steiner's Corps, executed a fighting withdrawal into the Kurland Pocket , the brigade being in combat for much of the retreat. In September 1944, the remains of KG Rehmann were evacuated by ferry over the Baltic to Swinemünde and joined the rest of the Brigade. Following

15738-601: Was formed, commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Rehmann . KG Rehmann, consisting of the Langemarck's 2nd battalion was sent to the Narva front to become a part of Felix Steiner 's III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps which was defending the Tannenberg Line . The Tannenberg Line was anchored on three strategic hills. Running west to east, these were known as Hill 69.9 ( 69.9-Höhe ), Grenadier Hill ( Grenadier-Höhe ) and Orphanage Hill ( Kinderheim-Höhe ). From Orphanage Hill,

15867-559: Was intended to represent Flemish-German camaraderie. However, the Flemings themselves did not understand why they had been given a title which represented the losses suffered by German soldiers trying to take over their country in 1914. The Flemings felt a jealousy that their French speaking countrymen, the Walloons , were granted as a title their home region. Despite this, significant numbers of Flemings continued to sign up for service with

15996-500: 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. In South America, it is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname , and spoken as

16125-498: Was seen as anti-clerical . Nonetheless, the VNV became increasingly influenced by fascist ideas . At national elections in April 1939 , VNV received approximately 15 percent of the Flemish vote. After the Belgian Army's surrender on 28 May 1940, a Military Administration was created to govern the German-occupied Belgium. Hoping to expand its support in Flanders and influenced by Nazi racial ideals , it adopted

16254-515: Was subsequently reorganised on several occasions and was officially designated as a division in September 1944 but remained around 2,000-strong and never expanded beyond brigade -strength. It participated in fighting in Ukraine , Estonia, and Pomerania. Its remaining personnel finally surrendered to the Red Army at Mecklenburg on 3 May 1945. There were several political parties in Belgium at

16383-412: Was technically a "legion" attached to the Waffen-SS rather than a part of the Waffen-SS itself. According to the historian David Littlejohn, "the Germans were anxious to convey the impression of a semi-independent national unit" but the distinction was always illusory and was eventually abandoned in 1943. In practice, the Flemish Legion was effectively indistinguishable from other units of the Waffen-SS from

16512-527: Was under foreign control. In the 19th century, the East Indies trade started to dwindle, and with it the importance of Malacca as a trading post. The Dutch state officially ceded Malacca to the British in 1825. It took until 1957 for Malaya to gain its independence. Despite this, the Dutch language is rarely spoken in Malacca or Malaysia and only limited to foreign nationals able to speak the language. After

16641-461: Was used in the Dutch East Indies (now mostly Indonesia ) by a limited educated elite of around 2% of the total population, including over 1 million indigenous Indonesians, until it was banned in 1957, but the ban was lifted afterwards. About a fifth of the Indonesian language can be traced to Dutch, including many loan words . Indonesia's Civil Code has not been officially translated, and

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