Sranan Tongo is an English-based creole language that is spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 519,600 people in Suriname.
The Dutch Language Union is an international regulatory institution that governs issues regarding the Dutch language. It is best known for its spelling reforms which are promulgated by member states, grammar books, the Green Booklet and its support of Dutch language courses and studies worldwide. It was founded on a treaty concluded between the Netherlands and Belgium on 9 September 1980. Suriname has been an associate member of the Taalunie since 2004.
IJ is a digraph of the letters i and j. Occurring in the Dutch language, it is sometimes considered a ligature, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character for ij, the two composing parts are not connected but are separate glyphs, which are sometimes slightly kerned.
Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational establishments.
The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal is a dictionary of the Dutch language. It contains between 350,000 and 400,000 entries describing Dutch words from 1500 to 1976. The paper edition consists of 43 volumes on 49,255 pages. It is believed to be the largest dictionary in the world in number of pages. The dictionary was nearly 150 years in the making from 1849; the first volume was published in 1864, and the final volume was presented to Albert II of Belgium and Beatrix of the Netherlands in 1998.
The duit is an old Dutch copper coin. It was manufactured in the territory of the Dutch Republic and became later an international currency. Its value was 1/8 stuiver.
Theodiscus was a term used in the early Middle Ages to refer to the West Germanic languages. The Latin term was borrowed from the Germanic adjective meaning "of the people" but, unlike it, was used only to refer to languages. In Medieval Western Europe non-native Latin was the language of science, church and administration, hence Latin theodiscus and its Germanic counterparts were used as antonyms of Latin, to refer to the "native language spoken by the general populace". They were subsequently used in the Frankish Empire to denote the native Germanic vernaculars. As such, they were no longer used as antonym of Latin, but of walhisk, a language descendant from Latin, but nevertheless the speech of the general populace as well. In doing so Latin theodiscus and the Germanic reflexes of *þiudiskaz effectively obtained the meaning of "Germanic", or more specifically one of its local varieties – resulting in the English exonym "Dutch", the German endonym Deutsch, the modern Dutch word for "German", Duits, and the obsolete or poetic Dutch word for Dutch and its dialects such as Diets. In Romance languages the same word yielded the Italian word for "German", tedesco, and the old French word used for Dutch or, depending on the locality, German speakers, tiois.
The Word list of the Dutch language is a spelling dictionary of the Dutch language. It is officially established by the Dutch Language Union. Because of the colour of its published form, it is better known as the Green Booklet.
Witte Boekje is the popular name for the Spelling Guide of Our Language, a publication of the Genootschap Onze Taal. The first edition was released in October 1998; the latest edition is the tenth and was released in 2004. All these publications are explanations of the official spelling rules, as set by the Dutch Language Union.
Surinamese Dutch is the form of Dutch spoken in Suriname and is the official language in Suriname, a former Dutch colony. Dutch is spoken as a native language by about 80% of the population, most of them being bilingual with Sranan Tongo, Hindustani, Javanese, and other languages. Nevertheless, Dutch is the sole official language of the country. Surinamese Dutch is easily intelligible with other forms of Dutch. Furthermore, as opposed to other languages that have different forms in the Americas the regulation and thus standardised spelling of the Dutch language is done through a joint Dutch–Belgian–Surinamese organization, the Dutch Language Union, and thus has no regional differences regarding spelling. Suriname has been an associate member of this Nederlandse Taalunie since 2004. Therefore, many typical Surinamese words were added to the official Wordlist of Standard Dutch, known as "the Green Booklet".
The history of Dutch orthography covers the changes in spelling of Dutch both in the Netherlands itself and in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in Belgium. Up until the 18th century there was no standardization of grammar or spelling. The Latin alphabet had been used from the beginning and it was not easy to make a distinction between long and short vowels (a / aa). The word jaar (year) for instance, could be spelt jar,jaer,jair, or even yaer and iaer. With the spirit of the French Revolution, attempts were made to unify Dutch spelling and grammar. Matthijs Siegenbeek, professor at Leiden was officially asked in 1801 to draw up a uniform spelling.
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives English and German. Afrikaans is a separate but somewhat mutually intelligible sister language of modern Dutch, and a daughter language of an earlier form of Dutch. It is spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, evolving from the Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa. The dialects used in Belgium and in Suriname, meanwhile, are all guided by the Dutch Language Union.
OpenTaal is a Dutch foundation which provides free Dutch language files to be used in open-source software spell checking, hyphenation, thesaurus and grammar checking.
The Grand Dictation of the Dutch Language was a televised spelling test for adults organized by the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant and the Dutch public broadcaster NTR. In May 2017 it was announced no more dictations would be held due to the number of viewers strongly receding.
Van Dale Great Dictionary of the Dutch Language, called Dikke Van Dale for short, is the leading dictionary of the Dutch language. The latest edition was published in April 2022.
Dutch profanity can be divided into several categories. Often, the words used in profanity by speakers of Dutch are based around various names for diseases. In many cases, these words have evolved into slang, and many euphemisms for diseases are in common use.
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.
Jeannine Clementine Theodora Beeken is a Flemish linguist. Her work in Dutch linguistics includes amongst others the development of the first academic software teaching platform for Dutch, esp. Dutch syntax, in the late 1980s, the discovery of three additional objects in contemporary Dutch and the rules for the revised Dutch spelling system, Groene Boekje 2005.
Johan Hendrik van Dale was a Dutch teacher, archivist, and lexicographer. He created Van Dale's Great Dictionary of the Dutch Language ; first published in 1874, after his death. It was, and in its subsequent editions remains, the leading dictionary of the Dutch language.