The opening diphthong pronunciation was probably widespread, and perhaps once universal, as it is nowadays still found in both West Flemish and in Limburgish, at opposite ends of the Middle Dutch language area.

In the vast majority of the Middle Dutch area, it developed through l-vocalization from older /ol/ and /al/ followed by a dental consonant.

L-vocalization occurred only in the modern period in Limburgish, and the distinction between /ol/ and /al/ was preserved, being reflected as ów and aa respectively.

It was an influential dialect during most of the Middle Ages, during the so-called "Brabantian expansion" in which the influence of Brabant was extended outwards into other areas.

Compared to the other dialects, Brabantian was a kind of "middle ground" between the coastal areas on one hand, and the Rhineland and Limburg on the other.

Brabantian Middle Dutch has the following characteristics compared to other dialects: Flemish, consisting today of West and East Flemish and Zeelandic, was spoken in the County of Flanders, northern parts of the County of Artois and areas around the towns of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer.

It was less influential during most of the Middle Ages but became more so in the 16th century during the "Hollandic expansion", during which the Eighty Years' War took place in the south.

It shows the following properties: Limburgish was spoken by the people in the provinces of modern Dutch and Belgian Limburg.

The traditions of neighbouring scribes and their languages led to a multitude of ways to write Middle Dutch.

There was the matter of personal taste, and many writers thought it was more aesthetic to follow French or Latin practice, leading to sometimes rather unusual spellings.

Final-obstruent devoicing was reflected in the spelling, and clitic pronouns and articles were frequently joined to the preceding or following word.

The modern Dutch word maagd ("maiden") for example was sometimes written as maghet or maegt, but also meget, magt, maget, magd, and mecht.

Some texts, especially those in the east, do not do so and write long vowels with a single letter in all cases (as is the predominant rule in modern German).

Feminines in this class were former i-stems, and could lack an ending in the dative singular, a remnant of the late Old Dutch inflection.

The following table shows the inflection of the masculine noun dach "day", feminine dâet "deed" and neuter brôot "bread".

The singular ended in -e. The following table shows the inflection of the masculine noun bōge "bow, arc".

The Germanic distinction between strong and weak, or indefinite and definite inflection, was fairly minimal in Middle Dutch, appearing only in the masculine and neuter nominative singular.

Some adjectives, namely the former ja-stems, had an -e even in the strong and copular form, e.g. die vrouwe is cleine "the lady is small".

Like all Germanic languages, it distinguished strong, weak and preterite-present verbs as the three main inflectional classes.

In Middle Dutch, with all unstressed vowels merging into one, the subjunctive became distinguished from the indicative only in the singular but was identical to it in the plural, and also in the past tense of weak verbs.

The difference between ê and ē, and between ô and ō, found in classes 1 and 2, was a bit more robust, but also eventually waned in the development to modern Dutch.

Class 3, which retained a clear distinction that did not rely on vowel length, was levelled in favour of the o of the plural.

The past tense was formed with a suffix -ed-, which generally lost its e through syncope and thus came to be directly attached to the preceding stem.

Unsyncopated forms, which retain the fuller suffix -ed-, are sometimes found, especially with stems ending in a labial or velar consonant.