17 Apr Dutch interesting facts

Posted at 21:56h in Language translation

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(Last Updated On: April 17, 2019)

Dutch interesting facts. Languages are special, not just to the people who speak them but also in their individuality. Have you ever wondered why English language is different from Spanish? Why Dutch language has so many long words? Why Mandarin letters are actually signs and they all have meanings? We never ever thought about the stories of the origins of the languages we speak on daily basis.

Language is a system established for communication. Languages can have different types, different dialects and different situational forms such as Braille, sign language and interpretation. According to the recent stats, the number of languages spoken in the world range from 5000 to 7000. However, this data is not concrete enough.
National languages are listed and their sub usage is also recorded. But people living in far off areas such as the tribal areas in Africa and Tibet, are so hard to reach that there’s hardly any evidence of the languages that are spoken there. The scientific studies of languages is called linguistics. Linguistics is directly related to Anthropology. As Anthropologists study cultures and explore their findings, linguists work on the languages and their origins.

Long story short, language is such an important phenomenon that ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Gorgias have debated on the derivation of language and argued that it originated from emotions. And today, we don’t know what we would do if one day we wake up and we forget our language. From texting, slang, chatting to negotiation, agreements and singing, we are absolutely clueless without the language or languages that we use.

Dutch is one such language that has been spoken in different parts of the world for hundreds of years. Around 23 million people speak this West Germanic language as their first language, with more than 5 million speaking it as a second language. Let us give you a sneak peek of the Dutch language, its origin etc.

The Origin

Dutch is a west Germanic language derived from Frankish, a language that also influenced the Old French. Dutch is a very old language. The documents found written in Dutch date back to the 12th century. Wonder who was the first person to say something in Dutch but it still has seen a long journey to where it is right now.

Official Status

The Dutch language is the official language of both Netherlands and Belgium. The majority of Dutch speakers live in both the countries. Interestingly, Dutch has the official language status in two countries at the same time.

Longest Words

Dutch language is famous for its compound words. Dutch is filled with words that are made up of different smaller words. The longest word in the Dutch language is:

Kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan

Which means, “preparation activities plan for a children’s carnival procession”.

Vervoerdersaansprakelijkheidsverzekering

Another word here, meaning “carrier’s liability insurance” There are several other words like the ones above, don’t know how they pronounce them but they sure are there.

Borrowed Words

For such a unique and rich language, it’s quite an interesting fact that most of it is borrowed. Around 70% of
the whole language has borrowed words from French. As mentioned above, the old roots of the Dutch
language link to French and as it comes to light, it is mainly French with a little individuality of its own. A
funny thing though is the fact that it’s the rest of the world that calls the Dutch language as Dutch whereas
the native speakers call it as Netherlands and they call the German language Duits. Surprising, eh?

Dutch Business

Dutch businesses largely rely on the Dutch language for the local audience. Even the companies that belong to different parts of the world use localization services for translating their websites in Dutch.
As a translation company, we also have a profound love for languages. And when it comes to the languages in which we offer translation services, we want our customers to know everything about it. Not only that we educate them about the Services we provide and how we can deliver fast with convenience and affordability but also the interesting facts about the languages that we all cherish.

If you are among the people who love to read more about the facts and figures of different languages or Dutch to be more specific, we have a surprise at the end of this post. The surprise that you can also share with your friends, colleagues and even college professors who might have an interest in knowing about the Dutch language.
We hope that your interest is already piqued and your curious mind wants to know about the surprise that we talked about. Well, it’s a free to download brochure with interesting facts about the Dutch language. If you don’t know about the words that are same in English and Dutch, you can find out about them in the brochure. All you have to do is just click the link and the brochure will be downloaded immediately.