Any tourist who is going on a trip to the Land of Tulips and windmills, involuntarily thinks about what language is spoken in Holland. Should I learn at least a few expressions to communicate as necessary in a cafe, shop, hotel? Or is it better to take a phrasebook with you? This question is especially interesting for those tourists who are planning a trip to the Dutch province. After all, as you know, in small towns and villages, not all residents know English. Tourists who speak German or French are wondering if they will be understood in Holland? Let's study this question. From this article you will learn what is the official language in Holland.
Statistics
Despite the fact that the small Kingdom of the Netherlands is surrounded by big powers, it has preserved its ancient and original language. Moreover, Dutch significantly influenced the development of other dialects. Due to the fact that the locals in the XVI-XVIII centuries were unsurpassed navigators, many words of this language became part of navigational terms. In the XIX century, Holland owned numerous overseas territories. This caused not only vocabulary borrowings, but also the emergence of new languages. For example, Afrikaans is a combination of Dutch and dialects of tribes living in the Republic of South Africa. Thus, the question should be reformulated: not “What language is spoken in Holland?”, But “How many people in the world communicate in this dialect?”. It turns out to be much more than the number of inhabitants of this small country. In Europe alone, more than 22 million people speak Dutch. These are residents of Belgium, the northern parts of France and Germany. And this language, albeit modified, is spoken in Aruba, Antilles, Suriname, South Africa, Indonesia.
Dutch and Russian
Do not flatter yourself: local residents are unlikely to understand the native speaker of the “great and mighty language”. But, carefully listening to the local dialect, the Russian tourist no, no, and he will catch a familiar word. And this applies not only to the terms of shipping or hydraulic engineering. Such simple and ordinary words as “chair”, “corpse”, “trousers”, “colander” came to us from Holland. Rather, they arrived with merchants, engineers and sailors, who were invited by Peter I. And this proves the advantage that Holland had in the economic and technical development. The language of the country of windmills was enriched with only one Russian word - "fool" (doerak).
Prevalence
More than 60 thousand French citizens living in the north-west of their country consider Dutch their native language. Also, hundreds of thousands of Germans living in the lower reaches of the Rhine speak it freely. Moreover, the national language of Holland is, in combination, one of the official dialects of the Kingdom of Belgium. By the way, Flemish has slight differences: it has borrowings from French, but there are no Frisian words. European students who are obliged to learn in addition to their native language also any language of the EU country often choose Dutch. He is taught at two hundred and fifty universities in the world. And at the same time, the government and residents of the Netherlands are making great efforts to popularize the Dutch language. And they even erected a monument to him in 1893. It is dedicated to the struggle for the right to officially speak Dutch in the Cape Colony (then owned by Britain). The modern society, The Dutch Language Union, created by activists, defines the rules for spelling and pronunciation of words.
Connection with Germanic dialects
Many people who have been to Amsterdam or Utrecht, when asked what language they speak in Holland, thoughtlessly answer: in German. Yes, local rumor is part of a rich family of Germanic dialects. You could even say that an ordinary German will 90% understand the one who speaks Dutch. For his ear, the speech will sound somewhat unusual in pronunciation, as if the interlocutor choked on a fish bone, but still can not cough it up. But most of the words he still understands. The Dutch language is similar to German in the construction of sentences and a craving for long, complex nouns. This is due to the common Germanic origin of the two dialects. However, a German-speaking tourist should not rely on his knowledge. In closely related languages there are words with the same spelling and pronunciation, but with completely different meanings. For example, in the Netherlands you can often see the inscription Huren on buildings. The tablet says that the room is rented, and not at all that the services of the priestess of love are provided here, as a German-speaking person might seem.
English and French
There are also a lot of British words in the local dialect. This is due to the close cultural and historical ties that Holland had with this island country. What language is spoken in the northern part of the Netherlands, in Friesland? It may seem to an ignorant person that on a wonderful mixture of English and Scandinavian. But this is not so. This language is called Frisian and has the status of an official regional in the north of the Kingdom. If Dutch is associated with German grammatical structures, then vocabulary is related to the English dialect. But from French, the local language took less borrowing. You can even say that Romanesque words are only a vestige of the era when Latin was the official language of all of Europe.
Origin
The history of the language begins in the 450s. It was then that the rumor of local residents began to roll toward German dialects, increasingly moving away from the common Frankish. “Salic truth” (a legal document of the early Middle Ages) is a vivid example of the Old Dutch language. Like the whole German group, it went through two stages of development. From 1150 to 1500, the language was enriched with French borrowings, since the region was part of the Duchy of Burgundy. The dialects of Brabant and Flanders became the basis for modern speech in the Netherlands. If you conduct a study of what language is spoken in Holland, it turns out that these are the dialects of its two provinces. The process of standardization of written and spoken language was completed in 1637, when the Bible was translated into a language that was understandable to all residents of the region.
Holland: what language do tourists speak?
Is it worth hoping for your own linguistic stock of knowledge, planning to go to the Kingdom of the Netherlands? Oh sure! Unlike other countries where English is only spoken freely in the capital, and even educated youth, in the Netherlands this is normal. The level of education, including linguistic, in the country is quite high. In the Netherlands, even primary school children and retired housewives speak the language of international communication. So a tourist who knows English will not be lost in this country. Especially in Friesland, whose 400 thousand inhabitants speak an dialect belonging to the British-Scandinavian group. It is even easier for a tourist who knows German to reach an understanding with the Dutch.