As petite and seemingly adorable as the Netherlands may be, the language spoken here has been around for a good while. As an Indo-European language, Dutch finds its origins well before the common era. Over time, it has evolved into what it is today, with all its perks and quirks. Let’s see how we got there, why parts of it look so familiar, why other parts don’t, and how it has spread across the globe, in this brief history of Dutch.
This isn’t going to be a lesson in grammatical or spelling rules, it’s much more a history lesson. There won’t be a test afterwards, promise.
Dutch roots
Dutch is a member of the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family – just like English and German are, as well as (West) Frisian, about which I’ll explain some more later. It’s derived from the Proto-Germanic language, which spread across this neck of the woods around 500 BCE – or close to this neck of the woods, for the Netherlands was mostly bottom of the North Sea and swamp back then.
Proto-Germanic evolved into different languages, one of which was West Germanic. Another series of subdivisions took place, splitting West Germanic into several different languages, giving rise to, among others, Old Low Franconian.
This is where the main separation from nowadays English took place. English, influenced by French and Scandinavian languages, went through the infamous High German Consonant Shift – as did German -, but we stuck with what we had and kept some of the distinct features we still have today, such as our strange G sound, for example.
Old Dutch
Up until this point, around the year 500, we were happily sitting in our swampy river delta, speaking our Old Low Franconian, but since the Roman Empire was now in ruins (or should I say: ruïns), and the language came in contact with others, we began to develop some more distinct features.
These features were mainly spoken, rather than written, which is why there aren’t any real records from the first true versions of Dutch, making it difficult to put a proper timestamp on it. The sentence that’s considered to be the one of the first ever written one in Dutch, dating back to the late 11th century, is the following:
Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu, wat unbidan we nu.
Hebben alle vogels nesten begonnen behalve ik en jij, waar wachten we op.*
All birds have begun nests except me and you, what are we waiting for.
*In modern day Dutch, we would use a version of to be as the auxiliary verb, rather than to have, but oh well. Also, we use a different word order these days.
(There are older sentences, and even longer texts, dating back as far as the 6th century, but this one is easily the most famous, mainly due to its poetic nature. Also, it’s a bit easier to read for Modern Dutch speakers, compared to the other examples.)
Back then, partly due to influences from Latin and Frankish, we used a lot of complex conjugations and grammatical cases. Most of these have been phased out over time – thankfully! – but some still exist, especially in older, more archaic phrases.
Middle Dutch
During the late stages of the Middle Ages, between about 1100 to 1500, Dutch took flight. It evolved into a blanket of different dialects all over the (not yet officially existing) country. There was no common set of rules yet, so every town had its own, influenced by villages nearby. This lead to still-existing regional dialects such as Flemish, Brabantian, Limburgish and Hollandic, which, even today, still differ a whole lot, both in spelling and pronunciation.
This was the time when Dutch grew into a written language as well. Though still hand-written, books did emerge, both religious as well as romantic and even satirical ones. There was still a great deal of difference between the dialects, which was shown in the written texts as well, but these texts do give us a lot more insight in the general development of the language.
Early Modern Dutch
By the end of the Middle Ages, one of the most important inventions in the history of time had been done: the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. As was the case for other European languages, this invention played a large role in standardizing all of the different dialects into a single, unified language – although many of the regional dialects are still very much alive and kicking today.
Another important moment was the Statenvertaling (Eng: States Translation), the first official translation of the Bible into Dutch. Not only did this allow everybody who could read to learn more about Christianity, it also made for a great language benchmark, helping a great deal towards the standardization of Dutch.
A third major event was the expansion of the Dutch influence through trade and colonization. Through the Dutch East India Company, or VOC, we adopted a lot of words from Portuguese, Spanish, French and English, as well as Asian languages. The Dutch also left their mark on several places around the world, especially Indonesia and South Africa – in many ugly ways, but also when it comes to language.
Modern Dutch
And so we arrive at the Dutch we speak today – more or less, for there are some important notes here. Even in recent times, Dutch has gone through some changes, the last major one taking place in 2005, with a large spelling reform. This most recent version is called Algemeen Nederlands (Eng: Common Dutch), and it’s the official language of the Netherlands and the Belgian region of Flanders, as well as some other places, including Suriname, where it is the only official language, spoken by about 60% of the population (although it is not the lingua franca there).
As you may remember from the paragraph about Middle Dutch, there are some dialects, often tied to one of the provinces, that almost feel like a completely different language. I’ve already mentioned Limburgish and Brabantian, but this is also the case for, for example, Tweants and Gronings. Exactly how much a speaker of Common Dutch understands from these dialects does vary, but it can be quite tricky indeed.
There’s also the distinction between Dutch and Flemish. While technically, Dutch is one of the official languages in Belgium, in practice, the variation spoken in Flanders, Flemish, does differ quite a bit, especially in speech. Both variations use the same main dictionary in most situations, the Van Dale, but it’s usually quite easy to distinguish Flemish from stock Dutch. I’ll definitely do a post about this in the near future, too.
What about Frisian?
Right, Frisian! Another one that deserves its own post. Frisian, or West Frisian in English, is spoken in the province of Friesland (Fryslân), and as opposed to the other dialects and regional variations, it’s officially regarded a completely separate language. Although Frisian is easily most closely related to Dutch, it has closer ties with English than regular Dutch does. This is because its ancestor is Old Frisian, which was very, very similar to Old English or Anglo Saxon.
Dutch and Frisian are not mutually intelligible, and while almost everyone in Friesland also speaks Dutch to some extent, they do sometimes prefer to stick to their own language, which, for an outsider, is pretty much incomprehensible – although more so in written texts than in speech.
Fun fact: most of the world calls the language West Frisian. In Dutch, however, Westfries is a dialect spoken in parts of the province of North Holland, which lies to the west of the province of Friesland. The West Frisian language is simply called Fries in Dutch – sometimes also Westlauwers Fries, or Frysk in West Frisian.
Long story short
So there you have it! Dutch originated as a part of the Indo-European and Proto-Germanic languages, evolving from West Germanic through Old Low Franconian into what can now be considered Old Dutch. From there, it kept evolving further, separating itself from what eventually became modern English and German. These three, plus Frisian, are still part of the same language family, which is why they have a lot of similarities, although all of them are old enough to have developed a lot of differences, too.
While there’s only one official Common Dutch language, there are tons of regional varieties and dialects. Frisian is its own separate language, as well as Afrikaans, a daughter language of Dutch, spoken in South Africa and Namibia due to our colonial ties. Spoken in the northern half of Belgium, Flemish is not officially a separate language.
All these dialects and variations make sense when you realize how old the Dutch family tree is, and when Dutch separated itself from old English and German languages. Today, it has ended up as a somewhat difficult, not always entirely comprehensible, yet delightfully quirky and gorgeous little language that will bring about both a headache or two as well as a lot of smiles on your face.
