Dutch language

Dutch
Nederlands
Pronunciation	[ˈneːdərlɑnts]  ( listen)
Native to	Netherlands and Flanders
Region	Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname; also in Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, French Flanders
Ethnicity	Dutch people Flemish people
Native speakers	22 million (2016)[1] Total (L1 plus L2 speakers): 28 million (2018)[2]
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Low Franconian (Frankish) Dutch
Early forms	Old Dutch Middle Dutch
Writing system	Latin (Dutch alphabet) Dutch Braille
Signed forms	Signed Dutch (NmG)
Official status
Official language in	Aruba  Belgium  Curaçao  Netherlands  Sint Maarten  Suriname  Benelux  European Union South American Union Caricom
Regulated by	Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	nl
ISO 639-2	dut (B) nld (T)
ISO 639-3	nld Dutch/Flemish
Glottolog	mode1257
Linguasphere	52-ACB-a
Dutch-speaking world (included are areas of daughter-language Afrikaans)
Distribution of the Dutch language and its dialects in Western Europe
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Dutch (Dutch: Nederlands) is a West Germanic language. It comes from the Netherlands and is the country's official language.^[3] It is also spoken in the northern half of Belgium (the region called Flanders), and in the South American country of Suriname. A language known as Afrikaans was developed from Dutch by the people in southern Africa and is now spoken mainly in South Africa but also in nearby Namibia. About 22 million people around the world speak Dutch.^[4]

1. ↑ Dutch at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
2. ↑ "Dutch". Languages at Leicester. University of Leicester. Archived from the original on 2014-05-02.
3. ↑ "Language". I Amsterdam. Archived from the original on 6 October 2015. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
4. ↑ Wayne C. Thompson, Western Europe 2015-2016 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), p. 201