Languages of the Netherlands

Dutch is also spoken and official in the Dutch Caribbean (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the Caribbean Netherlands special municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba) as well as the Flemish Community of Belgium and Suriname.

It is a West Germanic, Low Franconian language that originated in the Early Middle Ages (c. 470) and was standardised in the 16th century.

The Netherlands also has its separate Dutch Sign Language, called Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT).

[11] Between 90%[8] and 93%[12] of the total population are able to converse in English, 71% in German, 29% in French and 5% in Spanish.

[citation needed] The mutual intelligibility in reading between Dutch and Frisian is limited.

Knowledge of foreign languages in the Netherlands, in percent of the population over 15, 2006. Data taken from an EU survey. [ 8 ]
Knowledge of the German language in the Netherlands, 2005. According to the Eurobarometer: 70% of the respondents indicated that they know German well enough to have a conversation. Of these 12% (per cent, not percentage points) reported a very good knowledge of the language whereas 22% had a good knowledge and 43% basic German skills.
Minority languages, regional languages and dialects in the Netherlands and Belgium based on pronunciation differences using Levenshtein distance.