Dutch is a national language in the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname in South America and the Dutch Antilles. In Belgium, it’s the official language of Flanders, the Northern region of the country, and is also spoken in Brussels, although the majority of the city’s population speak French. In Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, Dutch is still an official language, but several other languages are spoken there too.

In total, there are over 22 million native speakers of Dutch and it’s a popular second language in Germany, the north of France and increasingly in Eastern Europe. You may also find older native speakers in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada as many Dutch people migrated to these countries in the 1950’s.

Many Dutch words are similar to English ones as both languages come from the same old Germanic root; particularly names for everyday things like fruits and vegetables or colours, e.g.
 appel, apple,
 peer, pear,
 banaan, banana,
 tomaat, tomato,
 blauw, blue,
 rood, red,
 groen, green.

Dutch settlers in the U.S. in the 17th century held on to their language for quite some time and many words made their way into (American) English, such as
coleslaw from  koolsla, cabbage salad,
cookie from  koekje, biscuit, or
Santa Claus from  Sinterklaas / Sint Nicholaas, Saint Nicholas.

Another source of Dutch influence on the English language is through Afrikaans, which in its turn is a Dutch-based creole, e.g.
 apartheid, literally separateness,
 wildebeest, wild beast,
 aardvark, earth pig.
Look at the following Afrikaans sentence:
 My pen was in my hand. You can see that it’s spelled exactly the same in English, even though the pronuncation in Afrikaans would be closer to Dutch.

Dutch is probably the easiest language to learn for English speakers as it positions itself somewhere between German and English. For example, you may know that German has three articles: der, die and das, and English only one: the.
Well, Dutch has two:  de and  het, but it doesn’t have all the grammatical cases like German. However, de and het are quite possibly the hardest part to learn, as you have to memorise which article each noun takes.

Just like German, Dutch sentences often place the verb at the end, which takes some getting used to. It also makes use of so-called modal particles, lots of little words such as
 nou, toch, nog, maar, eens, even, which alter the mood of a sentence, e.g. they make a command less direct, nicer, or a request more urgent. On the whole, they have no direct translations in English.

During the Second World War, the Dutch would identify Germans by asking them to pronounce  Scheveningen. Consequently, the name of this seaside town is a well-known shibboleth, a Hebrew term for a word that, if pronounced correctly, distinguishes you clearly as belonging to a certain group.

Similarly, the Flemish used to ask people to pronounce
 Schild en Vriend, shield and friend, when trying to identify French-speaking spies. As you can see, they all have the sch sound. But it can get harder when you have to combine this with an r. Have a go at the Dutch word for terrible, which is a terrible word to pronounce indeed:  verschrikkelijk. Or how about  herfst, the Dutch word for autumn? Both words have four consonants in a row!

For a real challenge, try this:
 Wij smachten naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten,
we long for eighty eight wonderful nights at eighty eight wonderful canals.

Like its European neighbours, the Dutch language knows many jokes about (blonde) women, relationships or other nations. The Dutch like to joke about the Belgians (by which they usually mean the Flemish) and in return, the Flemish like to joke about the Dutch. Quite often, the content is the same, and the neighbours are made out to be immensely stupid.

In the following joke, substitute 'men' by a Dutchman and a Belgian and interchange them, depending on who you prefer…
 Twee mannen wandelen in de woestijn
Zegt de ene tegen de andere
Waarom zeul je een autodeur mee?
Nou, zegt de andere, als ik het te warm krijg, kan ik het raampje opendraaien!

Two men are walking in the desert.
One says to the other:
Why are you carrying a car door?
Well, says the other, if I get too hot, I can always wind down the window!

Dutch is a member of the West Germanic family tree, and as such, is a cousin of English and German and a sibling to Afrikaans. Another cousin is Frisian, a regional minority language spoken in the North of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Dutch is also related to North Germanic language family members, such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

If you walk into a Dutch café, you won’t find any fry-ups, but you could ask for a beer as a café is more like a bar, although coffee is always served, too.
If you see a sign for  lagere school, it’s simply a primary school.
And if you see  kip on the menu, don’t think you’re getting fish, as it's actually chicken.
Tourists enjoying a cup of coffee in quaint tearooms have expressed surprise at seeing  slagroom on the menu. Rest assured, this means nothing more than whipped cream!

As Dutch has a separate word for male or female friends, beware when introducing a friend as  mijn vriendin, my female friend, or  mijn vriend, my male friend, as this implies this person is your girlfriend or boyfriend. To avoid a misunderstanding, it’s better to say that they’re  een vriend / een vriendin, a friend.

Famous quotes which have found their way into the Dutch and Flemish psyche are often credited to well-known writers. In 1889, the impressionist poet, Herman Gorter, wrote the famous first lines  Een nieuwe lente en een nieuw geluid, a new spring, a new sound, to his lyrical celebration of spring in the long poem
 Mei, May - a useful line for whoever wants to indicate a new dawn is coming.

One of his contemporaries, Willem Kloos, wrote:
 Ik ben een God in't diepst van mijn gedachten, I am a God at the deepest point of my thoughts (1884), which is often used, replacing 'God' with whatever suits the context.

But last words can be famous too, as in the final sentences of Gerard Reve’s iconic post-war novel,  De Avonden, The Evenings, which read:
 "Het is gezien", mompelde hij, "het is niet onopgemerkt gebleven". Hij strekte zich uit en viel in een diepe slaap.
“It has been seen”, he mumbled, “it hasn’t remained unnoticed”. He stretched out and fell into a deep sleep.

A popular myth has it that the oldest Dutch words were discovered in Rochester in the U.K., in the margins of an old Latin manuscript in 1932. These written words date back to the 12th century, and they were probably written by a Flemish monk doing copying work and trying out his pen. They contain the lines of a light-hearted love poem, which goes like this:
 Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu. Wat unbidan we nu?
Have all birds begun nests, except me and you? What are we waiting for?

It’s a true and very sweet story, but they weren’t the oldest words. Older manuscripts have, in fact, been found such as a local law book, the Salic Law, dating as far back as the sixth century.

Dutch makes a distinction in the second person pronoun ‘you’ between the more formal  u and less formal  je / jij. The formal u is normally used for people you don't know and the je in all other cases. There’s been a shift in the last few decades towards an increased use of the informal over the formal and it’s quite normal now to be addressed with je in a bar or a shop by the serving staff, which would have been unthinkable just 40 years ago.

When people meet, they often kiss, up to three times depending on the region, but in more formal setting, handshakes will do.

An interesting custom in the Netherlands is that at a birthday party, guests will not only congratulate the birthday person, but also his or her relatives. They will say:
 Gefelicteerd met je moeder! or Gefeliciteerd met je vader, je zus, je man, je zwager.
Lit. Congratulations with your mother, or, Congratulations with your father, your sister, your husband, your brother-in-law.