Gramática Prática do Neerlandês

Publication date: 2009
Number of pages: 84Dutch belongs to the Indo-European family, Germanic group, West Germanic subgroup, and is spoken by 20 million people, (nearly 14 million in the Netherlands). Standard Dutch, "Netherlandic", is used everywhere in writing and educated speech. "Flemish" is an alternative name for Dutch in Belgium and Westhoek in France but is not a "Dutch dialect". The development of the Dutch language may be divided into three main periods. The only important surviving work in Old Dutch, which extends to 1100, is a translation of the Psalter, a religious text. Middle Dutch extends from 1100 to 1550, a period during which the language underwent changes in sounds and inflections. No standard written form was recognised until the 1200s.