History of Dutch

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Dutch is a West Germanic language, that originated from the Old Frankish dialects.

Among the words with which Dutch has enriched the English vocabulary are: brandy, cole slaw, cookie, cruiser, dock, easel, freight, landscape, spook, stoop, and yacht. Dutch is noteworthy as the language of an outstanding literature, but it also became important as the tongue of an enterprising people, who, though comparatively few in number, made their mark on the world community through trade and empire. Dutch is also among some of the earliest recorded languages of Europe. Countries that have Dutch as an official language are Aruba, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Dutch Antilles and Suriname.

[edit] Before the Franks

Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, ca 500 BC-50 BC. The area south of Scandinavia is the Jastorf culture.

Dutch is grouped within the Indo-European language group, which means it shares a common ancestor (which is estimated to be spoken around 5000 BC) with languages such as Greek, Iranian, Polish, Spanish and many others.

There is no direct evidence of this ancestral Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), because it was never written down. All PIE sounds and words are reconstructed using the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction. The asterisk is used to mark reconstructed PIE words, such as *wódr̥ "water", *ḱwṓn "dog", or *tréyes "three (masculine)". Many of the words in the modern Indo-European languages seem to have derived from such "protowords" via regular sound changes (e.g., Grimm's law).

Proto-Germanic is the common, but not direct, ancestor (proto-language) of Germanic languages such as Proto-Norse, Anglo-Frisian, Old High German, Old Dutch and Gothic, and the contemporary Germanic languages. There are no known documents in Proto-Germanic, which was unwritten, and virtually all our knowledge of this extinct language has been obtained by application of the comparative method. There are a few surviving inscriptions in a runic script from Scandinavia dated to c. 200 which many feel represent a stage of Proto-Norse immediately after the "Proto-Germanic" stage, if not exactly identical.

Proto-Germanic is itself descended from the earlier mentioned Proto-Indo-European.

[edit] West Germanic

Main article: West Germanic

From the time of their earliest attestation, the Germanic dialects were divided into three groups, West, East and North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, and they remained mutually intelligible to some degree throughout the Migration period, this means some individual dialects are difficult to classify. The Western group would have formed as a dialect of Proto-Germanic in the late Jastorf culture (ca. 1st century BC).

During the Early Middle Ages, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of Middle English and related Old Frisian, the High German consonant shift, and the relatively conservative (in respect to common West Germanic) ancestors of Low Saxon and Old Dutch.

[edit] The Frankish language

Main article: Old Frankish

The Frankish language, also Old Frankish was the language of the Franks. Classified as a West Germanic language, it was spoken in areas covering modern France, Germany, and the Low Countries in Merovingian times, preceding the 6th/7th century. The Franks first established themselves in the Netherlands and Flanders before they started to fight their way down south and east. The language had a significant impact on Old French. It evolved into Old Low Franconian in the north and it was replaced by French in the south, Old Frankish is not directly attested and is reconstructed from loanwords in Old French, and from Old Dutch.

[edit] Old Dutch

Main article: Old Dutch

Area in which Old Dutch was spoken.

Old Dutch, is the language ancestral to the Low Franconian languages, including Dutch itself. It was spoken between the 6th and 11th centuries, continuing the earlier Old Frankish language.

The present Dutch standard language is derived from Old Dutch dialects spoken in the Low Countries that were first recorded in the Salic law, a Frankish document written around 510. From this document originated the oldest sentence that has been indentified as Dutch: "Maltho thi afrio lito" as sentence used to free a serf. Other old segments of Dutch are "Visc flot aftar themo uuatare" ("A fish was swimming in the water") and "Gelobistu in got alamehtigan fadaer" ("Do you believe in God the almighty father"). The latter fragment was written around 900.

Arguably the most famous text containing "Old Dutch" is:"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"), dating around the year 1100, written by a Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester, England. For a long time this sentence was considered to be the earliest in Dutch, but some scholars now believe it to be Old English.

The oldest known single word is vadam (modern Dutch wad, English: mudflat), from the year 107 CE.

The Hebban olla vogala fragment.

[edit] Middle Dutch

Main article: Middle Dutch

Linguistically speaking, Middle Dutch is a collective name for closely related dialects which were spoken and written between about 1150 and 1550 in the present-day Dutch-speaking region. There was at that time as yet no overarching standard language, but they were all highly mutually intelligible.

In historic literature Diets and Middle Dutch (Middelnederlands) are used interchangeably to describe the ancestor of Modern Dutch. Although almost from the beginning, several Middle Dutch variations emerged, the similarities between the different regional languages were much stronger than their differences, especially for written languages and various literary works of that time.

Within Middle Dutch we can distinguish five large groups:

1. Flemish, (sometimes subdivided into West and East Flemish), was spoken in the modern region of West and East Flanders;
2. Brabantian was the language of the area covered by the modern Dutch province of North Brabant and the Belgian provinces of Walloon Brabant, Flemish Brabant and Antwerp as well as the Brussels capital region;
3. Hollandic was mainly used in the present provinces of North and South Holland and parts of Utrecht;
4. Limburgish, spoken by the people in the district of modern Dutch and Belgian Limburg;
5. Low Saxon, spoken in the area of the modern provinces of Gelderland, Overijssel, Drenthe and parts of Groningen.

The last two of the Middle Dutch dialects mentioned above show features, respectively, of Middle High German and Middle Low German, since these two areas border directly onto the areas of Middle Low and High German, as can be seen from a historical map of the regions of that time.

[edit] Standardization and Modern Dutch

Main article: Dutch language

A process of standardization started in the Middle Ages, especially under 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 standardization became much stronger in the 16th century, mainly based on the urban Brabantic dialect of Antwerp. In 1585 Antwerp fell to the Spanish army: many fled to Holland, influencing the urban dialects of that province. In 1618 a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the first major Dutch bible translation was created that people from all over the United Provinces could understand. It used elements from various dialects, but the spoken form was mostly based on the urban dialects from the province of Holland. A linguistic saying therefore is that "The Dutch language was born in Flanders, grew up in Brabant and reached maturity in Holland."

Linguistically speaking, Dutch has evolved little since the late 16th century; differences in speech are considered to be negligible especially when comparing the older form with modern regional accents. Grammar has been somewhat simplified though, but a great deal of the grammar lost in comtemporary Dutch is preserved in many much-used expressions dating back to or before that time.