History of the Dutch language
Among the words with which Dutch has enriched the English vocabulary are: brandy, coleslaw, cookie, cruiser, dock, easel, freight, landscape, spook, stoop, and yacht.
Dutch is noteworthy as the language of an outstanding literature,[citation needed] but it also became important as the tongue of an enterprising people,[peacock prose] who, though comparatively few in number, made their mark on the world community through trade and empire.
Countries that have Dutch as an official language are the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Sint Maarten, Curaçao and Aruba.
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.
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.
Quak (2000) for example, reads "Ha(þu)þ[e]was ann k(u)sjam log(u)ns", interpreting it as "[property] of Haþuþewaz.
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").
Arguably the most famous text containing what is traditionally taken to be 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.
The oldest known single word is wad, attested in the toponym vadam (modern Wadenoijen), meaning a ford (where one wades), in Tacitus's Histories.
[2] 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.
[3] In 1637 a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the first major Dutch Bible translation, the Statenvertaling, was published that people from all over the United Provinces could understand.
Ultimately, all regions east of the political border of the Netherlands would adopt a single German Hochsprache, breaking the dialect continuum around the 19th century and onward.
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.
