Language fact file – Dutch

Language fact file: Dutch

Dutch is spoken as a native language in: The Netherlands, northern Belgium and Suriname.

Number of native speakers: 25 million

Learn some: English is very widely spoken in the Netherlands, but if you want to be polite, you can ask ‘spreek je Engels?’, which means ‘do you speak English?’

Fast facts:

Dutch is said to be halfway between German and English, making it easy – in theory – for English speakers to learn. However, pronunciation is notoriously difficult!

Like German, Dutch uses a lot of compound nouns – words that are created by lumping lots of nouns together! The longest one in the official Dutch dictionary is said to be meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornissen, which means multiple personality disorders. However in 2007, a Dutch TV show called Lingo held a competition to see who could come up with the longest word and the winning entry was kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedencomitéleden, meaning ‘children’s carnival parade preparation work committee members’! Useful.

Dutch people call their language Nederlands and the German language Duits. The words Dutch, Duits and Deutsch (the German word for German) all come from an old Germanic word meaning the language of the people.