Spocanian (Dutch : Spokaans) is a constructed language, created by the Dutch linguist Rolandt Tweehuysen. Unlike such invented languages as Esperanto, Spocanian was never intended to be used for international communication; instead, it serves as the language of Spocania, a fictional island group in the Atlantic Ocean, southwest of Ireland.
Spocania and Spocanian are typical examples of early geofiction, predating the Internet. Tweehuysen started working on them when he was still a boy, in 1962. Over the years, they have attracted much press, radio and television attention in the Netherlands. Two travel books about the country have been published. To date, Spocania is one of the most elaborated fictional cultures ever published.
In its fictional setting, Spocanian is a member of the Atlantic language family. As a constructed language, it can be classified as a highly naturalistic a priori language: apart from loan words from European languages, the basic vocabulary and the grammar are unique. Grammar itself is full of "bizarre characteristics":
"Spocanian has not only many rules but also many exceptions to the rules. These exceptions can sometimes be made sense of only by those who know the centuries' old history of the language." [1]
With a dictionary of over 25,000 entries, Spocanian is one of the most elaborated artistic languages ever created.
Sranan Tongo is an English-based creole language that is spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 519,600 people in Suriname.
This article outlines the grammar of the Dutch language, which shares strong similarities with German grammar and also, to a lesser degree, with English grammar.
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.
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.
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.
Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational establishments.
Gerard Nolst Trenité, publishing under the pseudonym Charivarius, was a Dutch observer of the English language.
In a Dutch name, a tussenvoegsel is a family name affix positioned between a person's given name and the main part of their family name. There are similar concepts in many languages, such as Celtic family name prefixes, French particles, and the German von.
Petjo, also known as Petjoh, Petjok, Pecok, Petjoek is a Dutch-based creole language that originated among the Indos, people of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ancestry in the former Dutch East Indies. The language has influences from Dutch and then depending on the region Javanese, Malay, Sundanese and Betawi. Its speakers presently live mostly in Indonesia and the Netherlands. The language is expected to become gradually extinct by the end of the 21st century, due to Indos' shift toward Indonesian in Indonesia and Dutch in the Netherlands.
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.
The Dutch language in its modern form does not have grammatical cases, and nouns only have singular and plural forms. Many remnants of former case declensions remain in the Dutch language, but few of them are productive. One exception is the genitive case, which is still productive to a certain extent. Although in the spoken language the case system was probably in a state of collapse as early as the 16th century, cases were still prescribed in the written standard up to 1946/1947. This article describes the system in use until then. For a full description of modern Dutch grammar, see Dutch grammar. See also History of Dutch orthography.
Javindo, also known by the pejorative name Krontjong, is a Dutch-based creole language spoken on Java, Indonesia, such as Semarang. The name Javindo is a portmanteau of Java and Indo, the Dutch word for a person of mixed Indonesian and Dutch descent. This contact language developed from communication between Javanese-speaking mothers and Dutch-speaking fathers in Indo families. Its main speakers were Indo-Eurasian people. Its grammar was based on Javanese, and its vocabulary was based on the Dutch lexicon but pronounced in a Javanese manner. It shows simplification of morphological verb system from Javanese grammar such as merging verb class, disappearance of verbal subcategories.
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 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.
Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia; it is a separate standard language rather than a national variety, unlike Netherlands Dutch, Belgian Dutch and Surinamese Dutch. An estimated 90 to 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin, so there are few lexical differences between the two languages, however Afrikaans has considerably more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling.
The Peeters directive, officially Circular BA 97/22 of 16 December 1997 concerning the use of languages in municipal councils of the Dutch language area, is a circulaire of the Flemish government regulating the use of languages in municipal councils in the Flemish Region (Belgium), where the sole official language is Dutch. The directive is more in particular aimed at the municipalities with language facilities bordering the Brussels Capital-Region. It stipulates that each and every time French-speakers deal with the government, they must explicitly ask for their documents to be in French.
The subjunctive in Dutch is a verb mood typically used in dependent clauses to express a wish, command, emotion, possibility, uncertainty, doubt, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred.
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.
Adriaen Verwer was a Dutch Mennonite merchant, scholar, philosopher and linguist. He wrote books on language, religion and maritime law. He is best known for his grammar Linguae Belgicae, published anonymously in 1707. He is often regarded as the linguistic mentor of his younger friend Lambert ten Kate.
Cruijffiaans is the name given to the way of speaking, or a collection of sayings, made famous by Dutch association football player and coach Johan Cruijff (1947–2016), particularly "one-liners that hover somewhere between the brilliant and the banal". An example is "Je moet altijd zorgen dat je één doelpunt meer scoort als de tegenstander"