West Flemish is a collection of Low Franconian varieties spoken in western Belgium and the neighbouring areas of France and the Netherlands.
Holland is a geographical region and former province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th century, Holland proper was a unified political region within the Holy Roman Empire as a county ruled by the counts of Holland. By the 17th century, the province of Holland had risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the newly independent Dutch Republic.
North Brabant, also unofficially called Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to the west, and the Flemish provinces of Antwerp and Limburg to the south. The northern border follows the Meuse westward to its mouth in the Hollands Diep strait, part of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. North Brabant had a population of about 2,626,000 as of January 2023. Major cities in North Brabant are Eindhoven, Tilburg, Breda, its provincial capital 's-Hertogenbosch, and Helmond
The Charter of Kortenberg is an agreement signed and sealed on September 27, 1312, in the abbey of Kortenberg by John II, Duke of Brabant and representatives of the cities of Brussels, Antwerp, 's-Hertogenbosch, Tienen and Zoutleeuw. Creation of the document is of historical and political importance because it retains agreements between inhabitants of a territory with a ruler who had absolute power. This reflected the start of a current that would later be labeled by historians as Brabant's Constitutionalism because residents without control had claimed rights and powers, and had them recorded in writing, which are somewhat comparable to what have come to be called civil and political rights centuries later. In this process, the first simple rules were created for what would develop into a legal order that is now called democratic rule of law.
Limburgish refers to a group of South Low Franconian varieties spoken in Belgium and the Netherlands, characterized by their distance to, and limited participation in the formation of, Standard Dutch. In the Dutch province of Limburg, all dialects have been given regional language status, including those comprising ″Limburgish″ as used in this article.
Hollandic or Hollandish is the most widely spoken dialect of the Dutch language. Hollandic is among the Central Dutch dialects. Other important language varieties of spoken Low Franconian languages are Brabantian, Flemish, Zeelandic, Limburgish and Surinamese Dutch.
East Flemish is a collective term for the two easternmost subdivisions of the so-called Flemish dialects, native to the southwest of the Dutch language area, which also include West Flemish. Their position between West Flemish and Brabantian has caused East Flemish dialects to be grouped with the latter as well. They are spoken mainly in the province of East Flanders and a narrow strip in the southeast of West Flanders in Belgium and eastern Zeelandic Flanders in the Netherlands. Even though the dialects of the Dender area are often discussed together with the East Flemish dialects because of their location, the latter are actually South Brabantian.
Zeelandic is a group of language varieties spoken in the southwestern parts of the Netherlands. It is currently considered a Low Franconian dialect of Dutch, but there have been movements to promote the status of Zeelandic from a dialect of Dutch to a separate regional language, which have been denied by the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs. More specifically, it is spoken in the southernmost part of South Holland (Goeree-Overflakkee) and large parts of the province of Zeeland, with the notable exception of eastern Zeelandic Flanders.
Dutch Low Saxon are Low Saxon dialects from the Low German language that are spoken in the northeastern Netherlands and are mostly, but not exclusively, written with local, unstandardised orthographies based on Standard Dutch orthography.
Modern Dutch is the term for variety of Dutch spoken and written since around the 1500s, this is to distinguish it from the previous phases of the languages, Middle Dutch and Old Dutch. The term Early Modern Dutch has been applied to the Dutch spoken in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Sallaans is a collective term for the Westphalian dialects of the region Salland, in the province of Overijssel, as well as in minor parts of Gelderland and Drenthe in the Eastern Netherlands, and a small part in the North and the East of Veluwe. In the Kop van Overijssel, the Stellingwarfs dialect is spoken.
Dutch is a West Germanic language, that originated from the Old Frankish dialects.
The Kingdom of Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French, and German.
The predominant language of the Netherlands is Dutch, spoken and written by almost all people in the Netherlands. Dutch is also spoken and official in Aruba, Bonaire, Belgium, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten and Suriname. It is a West Germanic, Low Franconian language that originated in the Early Middle Ages and was standardised in the 16th century.
Loosduinen is a former village in the Netherlands that was a municipality unto itself until 1923, when it was annexed by The Hague and subsequently became a district of the city.
Dutch dialects and varieties are primarily the dialects and varieties that are both cognate with the Dutch language and spoken in the same language area as the Standard Dutch. They are remarkably diverse and are found within Europe mainly in the Netherlands and northern Belgium.
Dutch is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders. Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects.
Maastrichtian or Maastrichtian Limburgish is the dialect and variant of Limburgish spoken in the Dutch city of Maastricht alongside the Dutch language. In terms of speakers, it is the most widespread variant of Limburgish, and it is a tonal one. Like many of the Limburgish dialects spoken in neighbouring Belgian Limburg, Maastrichtian retained many Gallo-Romance influences in its vocabulary.
Flemish (Vlaams) is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch, Belgian Dutch, or Southern Dutch. Flemish is native to the region known as Flanders in northern Belgium; it is spoken by Flemings, the dominant ethnic group of the region. Outside of Belgium Flanders, it is also spoken to some extent in French Flanders and the Dutch Zeelandic Flanders.
The Dutch language used in Belgium can also be referred to as Flemish Dutch or Belgian Dutch. Dutch is the mother tongue of about 60% of the population in Belgium, spoken by approximately 6.5 million out of a population of 11 million people. It is the only official language in Flanders, that is to say the provinces of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Limburg, East Flanders and West Flanders. Alongside French, it is also an official language of Brussels. However, in the Brussels Capital Region and in the adjacent Flemish-Brabant municipalities, Dutch has been largely displaced by French as an everyday language.
