NETHERLANDIC LANGUAGE


Meaning of NETHERLANDIC LANGUAGE in English

English Dutch, or Flemish, Netherlandic Nederlands, Flemish Vlaams a West Germanic language that is the national language of The Netherlands and, with French, one of the two official languages of Belgium. Although speakers of English usually call the Netherlandic of The Netherlands Dutch and the Netherlandic of Belgium Flemish, they are actually the same language. Netherlandic, which occurs in both standard and dialectal forms, is the language of most of The Netherlands, of northern Belgium, and of a relatively small part of France along the North Sea, immediately to the west of Belgium. Netherlandic is also used as the language of administration in Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. Afrikaans, which is a derivative of Netherlandic, is one of the official languages of South Africa. The spoken language exists in a great many varieties ranging from Standard Netherlandic (Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands, or General Cultured Netherlandic)the language used for public and official purposes, including instruction in schools and universitiesto the local dialects that are used among family, friends, and others from the same village (these exist in far more variety than does the English of North America). Standard Netherlandic is characterized grammatically by the loss of case endings in the noun. In Belgium efforts were made to give Netherlandic equal status with French, which had assumed cultural predominance during the period of French rule (17951814). In 1938 Netherlandic was made the only official language of the northern part of Belgium. The use of Standard Netherlandic together with the local dialect is much more widespread among the people of The Netherlands than it is in Belgium. The dialects of the area bounded roughly by Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam are closer to Standard Netherlandic than are those of the other dialect areas. Together with English, Frisian, and German, Netherlandic is a West Germanic language. It derives from Low Franconian, the speech of the Western Franks, which was restructured through contact with speakers of North Sea Germanic along the coast (Flanders, Holland) in the period around AD 700. The earliest documents in the Netherlandic language date from approximately the end of the 12th century, although a few glosses, names, and occasional words appeared somewhat earlier.

Britannica English vocabulary.      Английский словарь Британика.