One of the most striking events of the last World Cup was the arrival in Brazil of several thousand fans from the orange Land of Tulips. It is also a European state that has two almost equal geographical names at once - Holland and the Netherlands. And the main language in which both "orange" fans and football players who became bronze medalists of the championship spoke in Brazil is called Dutch or Dutch, as well as Flemish and even Afrikaans.
Orange tongue
Despite the presence of several options at once, officially the country, the symbols of which are orange and the tulip, is called the Netherlands. And its main language is called, respectively, Dutch. As for the Dutch, this name originated by analogy with the name of two provinces of the country - North and South Holland, and it is not considered a mistake in pronunciation even in the country itself. The Flemish language is more related to the Belgian region of Flanders, where many immigrants from the neighboring Netherlands live. Having become Flemings in Belgium, they nevertheless managed to preserve the culture and traditions of their ancestors.
Attention to Germany
The language spoken in the world, according to statisticians, at least 23 million people, including 16.8 million in the Netherlands itself, originated in the days of the Frankish tribes in Europe. It comes from the West Germanic language of the Indo-European group, which was once spoken by the Coastal Franks. Old English (thanks to which almost every inhabitant of the Netherlands knows modern English), Frisian and Low German are considered "relatives" of Dutch.
In addition to the Netherlands itself, it is also most common in Belgium. Where, however, there is a huge number of dialects (there are more than two and a half thousand of them). Flemish in this country is one of the two official languages, it is spoken by over six million Belgians. And in Flanders, he is the only official one. Surely they did not have time to forget Dutch in the former overseas colonies - in Indonesia (Dutch East Indies), Suriname, in the Dutch Antilles and Aruba. Small communities of the Dutch, who have also preserved their language, exist in the border regions of Germany, in the north of France (French Flanders), in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in some other countries.
According to official data, 96% of the inhabitants of the "orange" country consider the Dutch language their native language. The remaining four percent identify themselves as native speakers of West Frisian (the official language of the province of Friesland), Lower Saxon dialects of German, which are spoken mainly in the north-east of the country and northern Germany, and Limburgish dialects of Lower Franks, common in the southeast of the Netherlands and Germany. All these languages are recognized as regional by the government of the Netherlands and are supported by it in accordance with the European Charter of Languages of National Minorities signed by the country.
Afrikaans derivative
The languages that appeared on the basis of or with the active participation of Dutch include several that were once common in some countries of Asia and Central America. Among them are the already deceased Creole languages in Guyana, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Sri Lanka, and javindo, petio and others still used in Indonesia.
But the most widespread derivative is Afrikaans, which is very popular in Namibia and South Africa (South Africa). Moreover, from 1925 to 1994, he was, along with the English, the main in the country, discovered and founded in the 17th century by Dutch sailors. Later they were called Afrikaners or Boers. In 1893, in Burgersdorp, one of the cities of the Cape province, in which the bulk of the settlers lived, Afrikaans even erected a monument with the inscription "Victory of the Dutch language". Afrikaans lost its state status only after the overthrow of the white apartheid regime in the mid-90s and the coming to power of representatives of the indigenous population from the ANC (African National Congress).
