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133-482: Most European languages feature possessive forms associated with personal pronouns , like the English my , mine , your , yours , his and so on. There are two main ways in which these can be used (and a variety of terminologies for each): Some languages, including English, also have possessive forms derived from nouns or nominal phrases , such as Jane's , the cows' and nobody else's . These can be used in

266-433: A the háza his-house Péternek a háza of-Peter the his-house Possessive determiners are used in combination with a noun, playing the role of a determiner or attributive adjective . In English and some other languages, the use of such a word implies the definite article . For example, my car implies the car that belongs to me or is used by me ; it is not correct to precede possessives with an article (*

399-807: A case ending (see below , and further at English possessive ). In languages that have a genitive case, the genitive form of a noun may sometimes be used as a possessive (as in German Karls Haus "Karl's house"). Languages such as Japanese and Chinese form possessive constructions with nouns using possessive particles, in the same way as described for pronouns above. An example from Japanese is: neko cat no PTCL iro color neko no iro cat PTCL color "the cat's color" In other languages, noun possessives must be formed periphrastically , as in French la plume de ma tante ("my aunt's pen", literally "the pen of my aunt"). In Hungarian ,

532-578: 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

665-516: A possessed case , used to indicate the other party (the thing possessed) in a possession relationship. A similar feature found in some languages is the possessive affix , usually a suffix, added to the (possessed) noun to indicate the possessor, as in the Finnish taloni ("my house"), where talo means "house" and the suffix -ni means "my". The concepts of possessive forms and genitive forms are sometimes conflated, although they are not exactly

798-467: 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

931-601: 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

1064-576: 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

1197-467: 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

1330-409: A group of mixed gender; these are dealt with according to the conventions of the language in question (in French, for example, the masculine ils "they" is used for a group containing both men and women or antecedents of both masculine and feminine gender). A pronoun can still carry gender even if it does not inflect for it; for example, in the French sentence je suis petit ("I am small") the speaker

1463-582: 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

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1596-670: 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

1729-420: 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

1862-579: 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

1995-413: 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

2128-509: 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

2261-473: 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

2394-522: 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

2527-550: A similar pattern); German, where the third-person plural sie (capitalized as Sie ) is used as both singular and plural in the second person in non-familiar uses; and Polish, where the noun pan ("gentleman") and its feminine and plural equivalents are used as polite second-person pronouns. For more details, see T–V distinction . Some languages, such as Japanese , Korean and many Southeast Asian languages like Vietnamese , Thai , and Indonesian , have pronouns that reflect deep-seated societal categories. In these languages there

2660-457: A similar way, as in háza ("his/her house"), formed from ház ("house"). In Hungarian this affix can also be used when the possessor is represented by a full noun, as described in the next section. Pronouns other than personal pronouns, if they have possessive forms, are likely to form them in a similar way to nouns (see below). In English, for example, possessive forms derived from other pronouns include one's , somebody's and nobody's . There

2793-479: 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

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2926-424: 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,

3059-552: 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

3192-537: 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

3325-506: 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

3458-466: 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

3591-473: 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

3724-537: 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

3857-1076: Is common for free pronouns to be reserved exclusively for human (and sometimes other animate) referents . Examples of languages with animacy restrictions on free pronouns include Wanyjirra , Bilinarra , Warrongo , Guugu Yimidhirr and many others. Bound pronouns can take a variety of forms, including verbal prefixes (these are usually subject markers —see Bardi —but can mark objects as well—see Guniyandi ), verbal enclitics (including possessive markers) and auxiliary morphemes. These various forms are exemplified below: Nyimu-lu dog- ERG palu-nya 3 - ABS patjar-nu bite- PST Nyimu-lu palu-nya patjar-nu dog-ERG 3-ABS bite-PST 'The dog bit it' i - 3 - ng- PST - jalgoo fall -ij - PFV i - ng- jalgoo -ij 3 - PST- fall -PFV 'he/she/it fell.' ngunhi =lu=na gave = 3 . ERG = 3 . ABS ngadhi 1SG . OBL ngunhi =lu=na ngadhi Dutch language Dutch ( endonym : Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts] )

3990-467: Is done using the ending -'s , as in Jane's , heaven's , the boy's , those young men's , or sometimes just an apostrophe, as in workers', Jesus', the soldiers'. Note that the ending can be added at the end of a noun phrase even when the phrase does not end with its head noun, as in the king of England's ; this property inclines many linguists towards the view that the ending is a clitic rather than

4123-587: 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

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4256-560: Is generally a small set of nouns that refer to the discourse participants, but these referential nouns are not usually used ( pronoun avoidance ), with proper nouns, deictics, and titles being used instead (and once the topic is understood, usually no explicit reference is made at all). A speaker chooses which word to use depending on the rank, job, age, gender, etc. of the speaker and the addressee. For instance, in Japanese, in formal situations, adults usually refer to themselves as watashi or

4389-519: Is generally limited to such adverbs as more , less , or as much ... as ( comparative ) or mostly ( superlative ), for example in This is more my team than your team and This is mostly my team . Substantive possessive pronouns are used on their own and cannot be used to describe a noun, playing the role of noun phrases , so mine may stand for "my cat", "my sister", "my things", etc. In some languages these may require articles or other determiners, as

4522-574: Is however a distinct form whose for the possessive of the interrogative and relative pronoun who ; other languages may have similarly functioning words, such as the Russian чей chey ("whose?"). Another possessive found in Russian and other Slavic languages is the reflexive possessive, corresponding to the general reflexive pronoun ; the Russian form is свой svoj (meaning "one's (own)", "my (own)", etc.). In some languages, possessives can be formed from nouns or nominal phrases . In English, this

4655-445: Is male and so the pronoun je is masculine, whereas in je suis petite the speaker is female and the pronoun is treated as feminine, the feminine ending -e consequently being added to the predicate adjective. On the other hand, many languages do not distinguish female and male in the third person pronoun. Some languages have or had a non-gender-specific third person pronoun: Some of these languages started to distinguish gender in

4788-475: Is more common to say you should hold your oar in both hands . In many languages, personal pronouns, particularly those of the third person, differ depending on the gender of their antecedent or referent. This occurs in English with the third-person singular pronouns, where (simply put) he is used when referring to a man, she to a woman, singular they to a person whose gender is unknown or unspecified at

4921-522: 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 ")

5054-448: Is not the same as the possessive form " dogs' pack" (though it is the same as "dog pack", which is not possessive). The personal pronouns of many languages correspond to both a set of possessive determiners and a set of possessive pronouns . For example, the English personal pronouns I , you , he , she , it , we and they correspond to the possessive determiners my , your , his , her , its , our and their and also to

5187-487: 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

5320-569: 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

5453-421: Is something other than the default the implied in the usual possessive determiner. The terminology used for possessive words and phrases is not consistent among all grammarians and linguists . What some authors refer to as possessives , others may call genitives , and vice versa. Nowadays, however, the term genitive is most commonly used in relation to languages with a developed case system (in which

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5586-585: 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

5719-637: 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 ,

5852-595: 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

5985-662: 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

6118-404: 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

6251-647: Is the possessive particle. Similarly in Mandarin Chinese , "my" or "mine" is wǒ de , where wǒ means "I" and de is the possessive particle. An alternative to the pronominal possessive determiner, found in some languages, including Finnish and Hungarian , is the possessive affix , usually a suffix, attached to the noun denoting the thing possessed. For example, in Finnish the suffix -ni means "my", producing forms such as taloni ("my house"), from talo ("house"). Hungarian possessive suffixes are used in

6384-530: 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,

6517-502: Is true of both German and English, and also of the Romance languages , which (with the exception of Romanian ) have lost the Latin grammatical case for nouns, but preserve certain distinctions in the personal pronouns. Other syntactic types of pronouns which may adopt distinct forms are disjunctive pronouns , used in isolation and in certain distinct positions (such as after a conjunction like and ), and prepositional pronouns , used as

6650-410: Is used here purely to signify the grammatical sense; personal pronouns are not limited to people and can also refer to animals and objects (as the English personal pronoun it usually does). The re-use in some languages of one personal pronoun to indicate a second personal pronoun with formality or social distance – commonly a second person plural to signify second person singular formal – is known as

6783-531: 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

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6916-578: 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

7049-455: 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

7182-554: 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

7315-493: 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

7448-536: 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

7581-531: 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

7714-543: 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

7847-504: The T–V distinction , from the Latin pronouns tu and vos . Examples are the majestic plural in English and the use of vous in place of tu in French . For specific details of the personal pronouns used in the English language , see English personal pronouns . Pronoun is a category of words. A pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses

7980-497: 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

8113-471: 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

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8246-434: 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

8379-642: 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

8512-466: The subject of a verb, from the oblique form ( me , you , him , her , it , us , them ), used principally as the object of a verb or preposition. Languages whose nouns inflect for case often inflect their pronouns according to the same case system; for example, German personal pronouns have distinct nominative, genitive, dative and accusative forms ( ich , meiner , mir , mich ; etc.). Pronouns often retain more case distinctions than nouns – this

8645-459: The "genitive case" often has a wider range of functions than merely forming possessives), while in languages like English, such words are usually called possessives rather than genitives. A given language may have distinct genitive and possessive forms, as in the example of Russian given above. (The English possessive in -'s is sometimes called the Saxon genitive ; this alludes to its derivation from

8778-540: The "possessed", or both. In French (and most other Romance languages ) the third-person singular possessives do not indicate the gender of the possessor, instead they agree with the possessed ( son , sa and ses can all mean "his", "her" or "its"). In Spanish the number is always indicated but the gender is only indicated for possessive pronouns, not possessive determiners; mi padre, mi madre, mis hermanos, mis hermanas (my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters), but mío, mía, míos, mías when used as "mine" to refer to

8911-574: The (substantive) possessive pronouns mine , yours , his , hers , its (rare), ours and theirs . In some instances there is no difference in form between the determiner and the pronoun; examples include the English his (and its ), and informal Finnish meidän (meaning either "our" or "ours"). In some languages, possessive determiners are subject to agreement with the noun they modify and possessive pronouns may be subject to agreement with their antecedent , in gender , number and case . For example, French has mon , ma , mes , respectively

9044-518: 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

9177-538: 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

9310-688: 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

9443-417: 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

9576-490: 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

9709-415: 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

9842-531: 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

9975-408: 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

10108-602: 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

10241-417: The French le mien etc. In English, the -'s possessives formed from nouns or noun phrases can be used in the same way; the president's may stand for "the president's office", "the president's policies", etc., as determined by the context. A related use is that of the predicative expression , as in sentences like the book is mine . Here mine may be considered to be a predicate adjective (like red in

10374-524: 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

10507-412: 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

10640-539: 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,

10773-674: 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

10906-621: 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

11039-661: 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

11172-410: The book is red ) rather than a pronoun; in English, however, the same possessive form is used. Other languages may use differing forms; for example French may use ...est à moi for "...is mine". A particular use of possessive pronouns and noun forms in English is that illustrated in phrases like a friend of mine and that coat of Fred's , used to form possessive expressions when the desired determiner

11305-624: 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 )

11438-479: 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

11571-553: 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

11704-901: The complement of a preposition. Some languages have strong and weak forms of personal pronouns, the former being used in positions with greater stress . Some authors further distinguish weak pronouns from clitic pronouns, which are phonetically less independent. Examples are found in Polish, where the masculine third-person singular accusative and dative forms are jego and jemu (strong) and go and mu (weak). English has strong and weak pronunciations for some pronouns, such as them (pronounced /ðɛm/ when strong, but /ðəm/ , /ɛm/ , /əm/ or even /m̩/ when weak). Some languages—for instance, most Australian Aboriginal languages —have distinct classes of free and bound pronouns. These are distinguished by their morphological independence/dependence on other words respectively. In Australian languages, it

11837-429: The construction Mária háza is used ("Maria's house", literally "Maria her house", where the final -a in háza is the possessive suffix meaning "her"). The possessor noun can carry an additional dative marker, in which case an article appears before the noun. For example, "Peter's house" may be translated either as: Péter Peter háza his-house Péter háza Peter his-house Péternek of-Peter

11970-413: 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

12103-540: 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

12236-603: 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

12369-474: 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

12502-489: 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,

12635-472: The even more polite watakushi , while young men may use the student-like boku and police officers may use honkan ("this officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquial atashi , and men may use the rougher ore . Pronouns also often take different forms based on their syntactic function, and in particular on their grammatical case . English distinguishes the nominative form ( I , you , he , she , it , we , they ), used principally as

12768-682: The first use of possessive as a noun occurs in 1591, the first use of possessive case (which notes that it is like the Latin genitive, and may be called the genitive case in reference to English also) occurs in 1763, and the first use of possessive adjective dates from 1870. Personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as I ), second person (as you ), or third person (as he , she , it ). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender , case , and formality. The term "personal"

12901-452: The gender (and number and case) of the thing possessed. In languages that have a genitive case , the possessive forms corresponding to pronouns may or may not resemble the genitive of those pronouns. For example, in Russian , the genitive of я ja "I" is меня menya ("of me"), whereas the corresponding possessive is мой moy ("my, mine", in masculine singular nominative form). In German

13034-493: The genitive case that existed in Old English . It may also be called the prenominal genitive ; this also applies to analogous forms in languages such as German.) Words like the English my and your have traditionally been called possessive adjectives . However, modern linguists note that they behave more like determiners rather than true adjectives (see examples in the § Syntax section above), and thus prefer

13167-415: 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

13300-487: The inanimate pronoun it to refer to a person (except in some cases to a small child), and although it is traditional to use the masculine he to refer to a person of unspecified gender, the movement towards gender-neutral language requires that another method be found, such as saying he or she . A common solution, particularly in informal language, is to use singular they . For more details see Gender in English . Similar issues arise in some languages when referring to

13433-711: 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

13566-563: 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

13699-629: 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

13832-415: The masculine singular, feminine singular and plural forms corresponding to the English possessive determiner my , as well as the forms le mien , la mienne , les mien(ne)s corresponding to English possessive pronoun mine . Since personal pronouns may also agree in number and gender with their own antecedent or referent , the possessive forms may consequently show agreement with either the "possessor" or

13965-437: 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

14098-576: The my car ) or other definite determiner such as a demonstrative (* this my car ), although they can combine with quantifiers in the same ways that the can ( all my cars , my three cars , etc.; see English determiners ). This is not the case in all languages; for example in Italian the possessive is usually preceded by another determiner such as an article, as in la mia macchina ("my car", literally "the my car") or quel tuo libro ("that book of yours", literally "that your book"). Some languages place

14231-533: 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

14364-407: The plurals ils and elles ). Sometimes natural and grammatical gender do not coincide, as with the German noun Mädchen ("girl"), which is grammatically neuter but naturally feminine. (See Grammatical gender § Grammatical vs. natural gender for more details.) Issues may arise when the referent is someone of unspecified or unknown gender. In a language such as English, it is derogatory to use

14497-522: The possessive after the noun, as in Norwegian boka mi ("my book"). Here again the equivalent of the definite article – in this case the definite ending -a on the noun bok – is used in addition to the possessive. However, the forms min bok or mi bok , where the noun bok is in the indefinite form, are equally correct. Possessive determiners may be modified with an adverb , as adjectives are, although not as freely or as commonly. Such modification

14630-527: 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

14763-559: The previous. This contrasts with standard Dutch and English, where the form of the possessives ( zijn , haar; his , her , its ) indicates the grammatical or natural gender of the possessor, but does not depend on properties of the possessed. Additionally, German and several Dutch dialects additionally inflect their possessives, thus giving agreement with both possessor and possessed; German has sein and ihr meaning "his" and "her" respectively, but these inflect to give (for example) feminine forms like seine and ihre , depending on

14896-411: 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

15029-515: 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

15162-423: 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

15295-524: 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

15428-427: The same content as) another word , phrase , clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. Pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns. In [1], the pronoun it "stands in" for whatever was mentioned and is a good idea. In [2], the pronoun it doesn't stand in for anything. No other word can function there with

15561-1118: The same meaning; we don't say "the sky is raining" or "the weather is raining". So, it is a pronoun but not a pro-form. Finally, in [3], did so is a verb phrase, not a pronoun, but it is a pro-form standing for "help". Languages typically have personal pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons : As noted above, within each person there are often different forms for different grammatical numbers , especially singular and plural. Languages which have other numbers, such as dual (e.g. Slovene ), may also have distinct pronouns for these. Some languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns – those that do and do not include their audience. For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and clusivity, such as mitripela ("they two and I") and yumitripela ("you two and I"). Some languages do not have third-person personal pronouns, instead using demonstratives (e.g. Macedonian ) or full noun phrases. Latin used demonstratives rather than third-person pronouns (in fact

15694-476: The same two ways as the pronoun-derived forms: Jane's office or that one is Jane's . Possessives are sometimes regarded as a grammatical case (the possessive case ), although they are also sometimes considered to represent the genitive case , or are not assigned to any case, depending on which language is being considered. On the other hand, some languages, such as the Cariban languages , can be said to have

15827-424: The same. The genitive form, which does not exist in modern English as a productive inflection outside of pronouns ( see below ), represents an of relationship, which may or may not be possessive; in other words, the possessive is a subset of genitive. For example, the genitive construction "speed of the car " is equivalent to the possessive form " the car's speed". However, the genitive construction "pack of dogs "

15960-424: The second person, depending on the degree of formality or familiarity. It is common for different pronouns to be used when addressing friends, family, children and animals than when addressing superiors and adults with whom the speaker is less familiar. Examples of such languages include French, where the singular tu is used only for familiars, the plural vous being used as a singular in other cases (Russian follows

16093-402: 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

16226-623: The term possessive determiner . In some other languages, however, the equivalent words behave more like true adjectives (compare the Italian example above, for instance). While for most authors the term possessive pronoun is reserved (as in this article) for possessives like mine and yours that do not qualify an explicit noun, the term is sometimes taken also to include all possessive forms that correspond to pronouns even though they behave as determiners. Some authors who classify both sets of words as possessive pronouns or genitive pronouns apply

16359-456: The terms dependent/independent, weak/strong or adjectival/substantival to refer, respectively, to my , your , etc. and mine , yours , etc. Thus my is termed a dependent (or weak or adjectival ) possessive pronoun , while mine is an independent (or strong or substantival ) possessive pronoun . According to the OED , the first reference to possessive pronouns is found in 1530;

16492-525: The third person pronoun due to influence from European languages. Mandarin , for example, introduced, in the early 20th century a different character for she (她), which is pronounced identically as he (他) and thus is still indistinguishable in speech (tā). Korean geunyeo (그녀) is found in writing to translate "she" from European languages. In the spoken language it still sounds awkward and rather unnatural, as it literally translates to "that female". Many languages have different pronouns, particularly in

16625-423: The third-person pronouns in the Romance languages are descended from the Latin demonstratives). In some cases personal pronouns can be used in place of indefinite pronouns , referring to someone unspecified or to people generally. In English and other languages the second-person pronoun can be used in this way: instead of the formal one should hold one's oar in both hands (using the indefinite pronoun one ), it

16758-545: 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

16891-418: The time that the pronoun is being used or to a person who does not identify as either a man or a woman, and it to something inanimate or an animal of unspecific sex. This is an example of pronoun selection based on natural gender; many languages also have selection based on grammatical gender (as in French , where the pronouns il and elle are used with masculine and feminine antecedents respectively, as are

17024-466: 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

17157-597: The two sets of forms are quite similar (for example, the genitive of ich "I" is meiner , the corresponding possessive pronoun is also meiner in the masculine singular nominative, and the possessive determiner is mein with various endings). Some languages have no distinct possessive determiners as such, instead using a pronoun together with a possessive particle – a grammatical particle used to indicate possession. For example, in Japanese , "my" or "mine" can be expressed as watashi no , where watashi means "I" and no

17290-484: 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

17423-500: 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

17556-527: 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

17689-461: 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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