title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: In 1926 AD, Jonathan Carnahan presents his sister Evelyn—a librarian and aspiring Egyptologist—with an intricate box and map that lead to Hamunaptra. Jonathan reveals he stole the box from an American adventurer, Rick O'Connell, who discovered the city while in the French Foreign Legion. Evelyn and Jonathan find Rick and make a deal with him to lead them to the city.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Rick guides Evelyn and her party to the city, encountering a band of American treasure hunters led by Rick's cowardly acquaintance Beni Gabor. Despite being warned to leave by Ardeth Bay, leader of the Medjai, the two expeditions continue their excavations. Evelyn searches for the Book of Amun-Ra, made of pure gold. Instead of finding it, she stumbles upon Imhotep's remains. The team of Americans, meanwhile, discover the black Book of the Dead, accompanied by canopic jars carrying Anck-su-namun's preserved organs.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: At night, Evelyn reads from the Book of the Dead aloud, accidentally awakening Imhotep. The expeditions return to Cairo, and Imhotep follows them with the help of Beni, who has agreed to serve him. He regenerates his full strength by killing the members of the American expedition and brings the ten plagues back to Egypt.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Rick, Evelyn, and Jonathan meet Ardeth at a museum, who hypothesizes that Imhotep wants to resurrect Anck-su-namun by sacrificing Evelyn. She believes that if the Book of the Dead brought Imhotep back to life, the Book of Amun-Ra can kill him again and deduces the book's whereabouts in Hamunaptra. Imhotep corners the group with an army of slaves. Evelyn agrees to accompany him if he spares the rest of the group. Although Imhotep does not honor his word, Rick and the others fight their way to safety.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Imhotep, Evelyn, and Beni return to Hamunaptra, pursued by Rick, Jonathan, and Ardeth, who are able to locate the Book of Amun-Ra. Imhotep prepares to sacrifice Evelyn, but she is rescued after a battle with Imhotep's mummified priests. Evelyn reads from the Book of Amun-Ra, making Imhotep mortal, and he is fatally wounded by Rick.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Beni accidentally sets off a booby trap while looting the city of its riches, and is killed by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs as Hamunaptra collapses into the sand. Ardeth bids Rick, Evelyn, and Jonathan goodbye, and the trio rides away on a pair of camels laden with Beni's treasure.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: In the late 1980s, producers James Jacks and Sean Daniel decided to update the original 1932 "Mummy" film for the modern era. Universal gave them the go-ahead, but only if they kept the budget around $10 million. Jacks remembers that the studio "essentially wanted a low-budget horror franchise". In 1987, George A. Romero wrote a film treatment, and was attached to direct. Screenwriter Abbie Bernstein recalled that Universal Studios wanted an unstoppable Mummy akin to the Terminator. Bernstein's story took place in the present; scientists inadvertently bring a mummy to life, who wants to use an ancient device to destroy all life on earth. "[The Mummy] had no more social interaction than the T-Rex did in "Jurassic Park"," Bernstein recalled. Romero drifted away from the project and the script was abandoned.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Next, Jacks and Daniel recruited horror filmmaker/writer Clive Barker to direct. Barker's 1990 treatment and a successive 1991 screenplay by Mick Garris were dark and violent, with the story revolving around an art museum that rebuilds an entire Egyptian tomb in Beverly Hills. Jacks recalls that Barker's take was "dark, sexual and filled with mysticism", and that, "it would have been a great low-budget movie". Barker recalled the concept was too weird for the studio, and that his vision treated the Mummy as a jumping-off point for the film instead of the central character.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Alan Ormsby, unaware of the previous efforts to launch the film, was brought on next. Ormsby pitched a more straightforward update to the 1932 film, again focusing on the Mummy as a relentless Terminator-like character. Joe Dante was attached as director, increasing the budget for his idea of Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy. This version's draft was later re-written by John Sayles. It was set in contemporary times and focused on reincarnation with elements of a love story. It came close to being made—with some elements like the flesh-eating scarabs making it to the final product—but Universal balked at the higher price tag.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: George A. Romero returned to the project in 1994 with a vision of a zombie-style horror film similar to "Night of the Living Dead", but which also relied heavily upon elements of tragic romance and ambivalence of identity. Romero completed a draft in October 1994, co-written with Ormsby and Sayles, that revolved around female archaeologist Helen Grover and her discovery of the tomb of Imhotep, an Egyptian general who lived in the time of Ramesses II. Unfolding in a nameless American city in modern times, events are set into motion when Imhotep inadvertently awakens as a result of his body having been exposed to rays from an MRI scan in a high-tech forensic archaeology lab.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Helen finds herself drawn into a tentative relationship with Imhotep while also experiencing clairvoyant flashbacks to a previous life in the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt as a priestess of Isis. Summoning mystical powers through incantation, Imhotep later resurrects the mummy of Karis, a loyal slave. Karis embarks on a vengeful rampage against the grave robbers of his tomb. Romero's script was considered too dark and violent by Jacks and the studio, who wanted a more accessible picture. Romero was unable to extricate himself from another contract he had in negotiation with MGM, and so his involvement with the film was severed and the development of an entirely new script was commissioned.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Mick Garris returned in 1995, developing a script that combined elements of the 1932 film and 1942's "The Mummy's Tomb". This draft was a period piece awash in Egyptian art-inspired Art Deco, but the vision once again proved too expensive for the studio and was discarded for a modern setting. While the project came close to entering production, Universal was sold to Seagram. Sheinberg chose to produce "The Mummy" through his independent company and write a new script. Unable to find a suitable high-profile writer and director (Wes Craven was offered the film but turned it down) the project unraveled again, and Garris left the project for the second time.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Still determined to create a new "Mummy" film, in 1996 Universal hired Kevin Jarre to write a new screenplay. According to Jacks, the executives were now convinced the film should be a larger-budget period piece. Stephen Sommers called Jacks and Daniel in 1997 with his vision of "The Mummy" "as a kind of Indiana Jones or "Jason and the Argonauts" with the mummy as the creature giving the hero a hard time". Sommers had seen the original film when he was eight, and wanted to recreate the things he liked about it on a bigger scale. Discussing other classic horror characters, Sommers recalled that ""Frankenstein" made me sad—I always felt sorry for him. "Dracula" was kind of cool and sexy. But "The Mummy" just plain scared me." He had wanted to make a "Mummy" film, but other writers or directors were always attached.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: After the box office disappointment of "" and other films, Universal needed a hit film. At the time, Universal's management had changed in response to the box office failures, and the losses led the studio to revisit its successful franchises from the 1930s. New chair Stacey Snider distributed packets detailing the studio's holdings—including nearly 5,000 old scripts and films. Sommers received his window of opportunity and pitched his "Mummy" to Universal with an 18-page treatment.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Sommers did not want to remake the original film; instead of making another straight horror movie, he wanted to turn it into a romantic adventure with horror elements. Conscious of how the shambling, bandaged Mummy of the old films had become something of a punchline, he wanted a faster, meaner, and scarier monster. Sommers incorporated his own research and the services of a UCLA archaeology professor to make the ancient Egyptian language accurate. Snider recalled that Sommer's treatment was unique in that it took place in the 1920s, rather than a contemporary setting. Universal liked the treatment so much that they approved the concept and increased the budget, and Sommers spent a year working on the screenplay.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Producer James Jacks offered the role of Rick O'Connell to Tom Cruise (who was later cast in the reboot film), Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but the actors were not interested or could not fit the role into their respective schedules. Jacks and director Stephen Sommers were impressed with the money that "George of the Jungle" was making at the box office and cast Brendan Fraser as a result; Sommers also commented that he felt Fraser fit the Errol Flynn swashbuckling character he had envisioned for Rick perfectly. Fraser's turn in "George" bolstered his perceived star power, yet he remained far cheaper than the biggest actors working. The actor understood that his character "doesn't take himself too seriously, otherwise the audience can't go on that journey with him."


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Evelyn Carnahan was named in tribute to Lady Evelyn Carnarvon, the daughter of amateur Egyptologist Lord Carnarvon, both present at the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. The studio originally considered American actresses, and Rachel Weisz auditioned multiple times before getting the part. Rachel Weisz was not a big fan of horror films, but saw the movie as more of a "hokum" comic book. John Hannah was picked for the role of Jonathan Carnahan, despite the fact that Hannah felt he was not a comedic actor, with Sommers saying that, "He had no idea why we cast him."


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Jacks had previously produced "Hard Target" with Arnold Vosloo. The South African actor liked the "Mummy" script, but told Sommers he wanted to play the role "absolutely straight. From Imhotep's point of view, this is a skewed version of "Romeo and Juliet"." He was offered the role after a single audition. Carrying some extra weight and conscious of it because of Imhotep's skimpy costume, Vosloo lost 10 to 15 pounds for the role by eschewing alcohol and sugar.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Filming began on May 4, 1998, and lasted 17 weeks. The crew could not shoot in Egypt because of unstable political conditions, so principal photography began in Marrakech, Morocco. Marrakech had the extra advantage of being a much less modern city than Cairo, making it easier to dress like the 1920s. The production set up two weeks before filming, taking down telephone wires and cables and shipping in period cars and camels. Locals served as extras for crowd scenes. After shooting in Marrakech, filming moved to the Sahara desert outside the small town of Erfoud. Production designer Allan Cameron found a geologic feature, Gara Medouar, where the exteriors for Hamunaptra could be constructed.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: A concrete ramp was built to allow access into the horseshoe-shaped formation, where the city was built from prefabricated parts shipped from England. A survey of the area was conducted so that an accurate model and scale models of the columns and statues could be replicated back at Shepperton Studios, where all of the scenes involving the underground passageways of the City of the Dead were shot. These sets took 16 weeks to build, and included fiberglass columns rigged with special effects for the movie's final scenes.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: To avoid dehydration in the scorching heat of the Sahara, the production's medical team created a drink that the cast and crew had to consume every two hours. Sandstorms were daily inconveniences, and wildlife were a major problem, with many crew members having to be airlifted to medical care after being bitten or stung. Brendan Fraser nearly died during a scene where his character is hanged. The production had the official support of the Royal Moroccan Army, and the cast members had kidnapping insurance taken out on them.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: After shooting in North Africa, production moved back to the United Kingdom before completion of shooting on August 29, 1998. Here, the dockyards at Chatham doubled for the Giza Port on the Nile River. This set was in length and featured "a steam train, an Ajax traction engine, three cranes, an open two-horse carriage, four horse-drawn carts, five dressing horses and grooms, nine pack donkeys and mules, as well as market stalls, Arab-clad vendors and room for 300 costumed extras".


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The filmmakers reportedly spent $15 million of the budget on the special effects alone. "The Mummy" features hundreds of shots that required optical or digital special effects in post-production. Effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) contributed more than 140 shots to the film, with additional work done by Cinesite (60 shots) and Pacific Title/Mirage (45 shots, and the film's title sequences.)


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Sommers engaged ILM while still developing the script, having previously worked with ILM effects supervisor John Andrew Berton, Jr. on "Deep Rising". ILM was eager for the challenge the film provided, and produced a proof of concept for "The Mummy"s effects in late 1997 to demonstrate the feasibility of Sommers' vision to executives.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The filmmakers sought to make something faster and scarier for the title creature, using cutting-edge techniques to create something never before seen. ILM started developing the look of the Mummy three months before filming started. "We wanted to create a photorealistic corpse that was obviously not a man in a suit, obviously not an animatronic, and obviously alive," he recalled.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Over a months-long period, the designers worked on developing four distinct stages for the Mummy. Stage one was the mummy at its most decayed, with tattered bits of clothing, skin, and sinew hanging over a skeleton. Stage two added areas of regenerated skin, with stages three and four having the Mummy almost fully regenerated with only small areas of its innards showing through. The artists developed black-and-white sketches, then moved on to color treatments before building the creature in the computer; models were also made to use as reference for the digital artists.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The initial states of the Mummy were created entirely by computer, while later stages combined live-action performance. To supplement prosthetics and makeups applied on set, LED lights and pieces of tape served as tracking points so that digital "cutouts" could be applied to Vosloo's face and body in postproduction; Vosloo remarked that walking around the set he felt like a Christmas tree.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The final creature was created with a combination of live-action acting with prosthetics and digital imagery. A digital representation of the Mummy was created in Alias, featuring simulated muscles for much of the body attached to a skeleton. The animators controlled parts of the Mummy via procedural animation; animating the underlying bones in turn controlled the stretch and movement of the overlaid muscles. Finally, layered on top of the procedural animation and motion capture was additional animation to tweak the performance; given the limitations of the technology, subtle movements like facial or hand animations had to be done by hand. Shots that featured Vosloo with overlaid computer-generated prosthetics were the most difficult for the effects team, requiring careful match-moving.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Rather than using a stunt performer, Vosloo performed the motion capture for the character himself. Scenes were blocked out and performed on set during principal photography (first with Vosloo in the scene, then without). The shots were then replicated in the motion capture studio, with Vosloo's performance recorded by eight cameras from different angles.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: In addition to the Mummy, the script called for numerous effects shots to magnify the sweeping adventure of the film. Vistas like a flashback shot of the ancient city of Thebes combined location footage shot in the desert with composited actors shot on green screen, model miniatures, matte paintings, and computer-generated effects. The plagues Imhotep unleashes were accomplished using particle-based computer graphics, with ILM designers swapping out models of different qualities depending on how far from the camera the swarming "insects" were. While the film made extensive use of computer-generated imagery, many scenes, including ones where Rachel Weisz's character is covered with rats and locusts, were shot using live animals.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Another close-up shot used footage of anesthetized locusts attached to a stunt performer combined with extra computer-generated pests. Sandstorms used procedural graphics based on programs used to create tornados in "Twister", while the masses of flesh-eating scarabs used techniques developed for "". A shot of a firestorm engulfing Cairo combined real palm trees, physical models, and matte paintings with computer-generated hail, fire, and rubble. Pacific Title/Mirage also enhanced shots with digital camera shake.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The finale involves an army of mummies coming to Imhotep's defense. Many of these mummies were created by Make-Up Effects Supervisor Nick Dudman, who produced makeup, prosthetics, and animatronic effects in the film. Each suit came with variations for stunt moves or pyrotechnics. After principal photography, the suits were sent to ILM to scan and be modeled in the computer. Using parts of the Imhotep mummy to save time, ILM recreated the underlings digitally to add into the scenes, and used motion capture to animate them. The animators credited Fraser's ability to consistently re-enact his movements in multiple takes as saving time when it came to match the motion-captured digital mummies to the live-action fight scenes.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The score for "The Mummy" was composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith, with orchestrations provided by Alexander Courage. Goldsmith had previously scored "Deep Rising" for Sommers. As he reached the final few years of his career, Goldsmith was coming off a number of action and adventure films in the 1990s, from multiple "Star Trek" films to "Air Force One". Goldsmith provided "The Mummy" with suitably bombastic music, with the traditional European orchestra supplemented with regional instruments such as the bouzouki.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The opening of the film contains nearly all of Goldsmith's major themes for the score, with what music critic Jeff Bond calls an "Egyptian theme" reused in different configurations throughout to establish the epic settings and sense of place for Hamunaptra; a theme for Imhotep/the Mummy that is performed in an understated manner early in the film, before repeating in more forceful, brassy renditions after the Mummy has regenerated; a love theme used for both Imhotep/Anck-su-namun and Rick/Evelyn; and a heroic theme for Rick. In addition to the extensive brass and percussion elements, the score uses sparing amounts of vocals, unusual for much of Goldsmith's work.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The soundtrack was released by Decca Records on May 4, 1999. Overall, Goldsmith's score was well received. AllMusic described it as a "grand, melodramatic score" which delivered the expected highlights. Other reviews positively noted the dark, percussive sound meshed well with the plot, as well as the raw power of the music. The limited but masterful use of the chorus was also lauded, and most critics found the final track on the CD to be the best overall. On the other hand, some critics found the score lacked cohesion, and that the constant heavy action lent itself to annoying repetition. Roderick Scott off CineMusic.net summed up the score as "representative of both Goldsmith's absolute best and his most mediocre. Thankfully […] his favourable work on this release wins out."


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Test audiences reacted poorly to the film's title, which conjured up negative impressions of an old horror film, but domestic marketing president Marc Shmuger recalled that they decided "we would redefine the myth with the film" rather than change the title. Enthusiasm for the film was low, but Universal took out a television spot for the Super Bowl (reportedly costing $1.6 million) that Sommers recalled immediately reversed the discussion of the film's prospects.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The producers were concerned that the imminent release of "The Phantom Menace" would sink the film's box office fortunes, resulting in them moving the release date from May 21 to 7. "The Mummy" was the number one film in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend, grossing $43 million in 3,210 theaters. Its weekend take was the highest non-holiday May opening, and ninth-biggest opening of all time. The film later fell to second place behind "The Phantom Menace". "The Mummy" grossed over $155.4 million in the United States and Canada and $261 million internationally, grossing over $416.4 million worldwide.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: "The Mummy" received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 61%, based on 101 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9 out of 10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 48 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film a positive review, writing, "There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased." Critics such as "Entertainment Weekly"s Owen Gleiberman and "The New York Times" Stephen Holden concurred with the sentiment of the film as a breezy crowd-pleaser.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Less positively, Keith Phipps of "The A.V. Club" wrote that the film's attempt to create a big, "Indiana Jones"-inspired action film felt "forced" and the result was unsatisfying. Other reviews complained of an overstuffed plot or recycled elements from better movies. Reviewers comparing the film to the 1932 original sometimes favored the original's focus on atmosphere and dread, though others welcomed the change to a more energetic "Indiana Jones"-type film.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The effects were generally praised, especially the title creature. Ernest Larson's review for "Jump Cut" felt that the effects were too similar to ILM's other work, and that the effects alone could not support the weight of the rest of the movie. Bob Graham of the "San Francisco Chronicle" and Hal Hinson from the "Dallas Observer" agreed that the effects never overshadowed the human aspects of the film. Gleiberman noted that the horrors of the effects were undercut by the lightheartedness of the film, while the BBC's Almar Haflidason felt that the effects were occasionally unconvincing, and the heavy reliance on cutting-edge computer-generated imagery would likely date the film heavily as time passed.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Critics generally praised the acting, with Haflidason writing that the efforts of the cast sold material that would otherwise have been cheesy. David Hunter of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that all the actors managed to hold their own amid the special effects, although he felt Vosloo was largely wasted after Imhotep regenerates and the screenplay gives him little to do. Reviews from "USA Today", the British Film Institute, and The A.V. Club noted the film featured questionable casting of ethnic roles and occasionally traded in stereotypes of Arabs.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Writing to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the film's release, writer Maria Lewis noted that on paper, "The Mummy" should not have been a success, as yet another period adventure film coming after a decade of failed period adventure films. Its connection with audiences, if not critics, was down to its successful blend of "heart, humour, [heroics], and horror." She declared it the "pivotal blockbuster of the nineties." Emma Stefansky, writing for "Thrillist", noted it was "the beginning of the end" for action-adventure films, as superhero films would soon supplant it in the coming years. "Rotten Tomatoes" called the film ""Indiana Jones" for a new generation." Reviewers noted Fraser's portrayal of Rick set a new mold for action heroes that more films would follow in the years after, while also considering Evelyn a character allowed to break free from a traditional damsel in distress role.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: "The Mummy" was released on home video in VHS and DVD formats in September 1999. The title was a tremendous success for Universal on home video, selling 7 million units on VHS and 1 million on DVD, making it the year's best-selling live-action VHS and second-best-selling DVD (behind "The Matrix"). "The Mummy"s performance helped Universal gross over $1 billion in home video sales. The film was later digitally remastered and received a Blu-ray release in 2008. It was subsequently re-released on 4K Ultra HD in 2017 as both a stand-alone title and in a trilogy pack with its sequels.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: "The Mummy"s box office performance led to numerous sequels and spinoffs. The film sequel "The Mummy Returns" (2001) features most of the surviving principal characters. As a married couple, Rick and Evelyn confront Imhotep and the Scorpion King. The film also introduces the heroes' son, Alex. A second sequel, "" (2008), takes place in China with the "Terracotta Emperor" inspiring the villain, and Rachel Weisz replaced with Maria Bello.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: The films inspired both an animated TV series titled "The Mummy", which lasted two seasons, and a spin-off prequel, "The Scorpion King" (2002). Universal announced plans in 2012 to reboot the franchise; a new film, also titled "The Mummy", was released in June 2017 to poor critical and box office performance.


title: The Mummy (1999 film)

text: Developer Konami Nagoya published two video game adaptations of "The Mummy" under license from Universal Interactive Studios, in 2000: an action-adventure game for the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows developed by Rebellion Developments, as well as a Game Boy Color puzzle game. There was also a 2002 video game based on the 2001 animated series, published by Ubisoft for Game Boy Advance. The film also inspired a roller coaster, "Revenge of the Mummy", found in three Universal Studios Theme Parks: Hollywood, California; Orlando, Florida; and Sentosa, Singapore.


title: Greek language

text: Greek (, ; ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy (Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.


title: Greek language

text: The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics.


title: Greek language

text: During antiquity, Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world. It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek. In its modern form, Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora.


title: Greek language

text: Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary.


title: Greek language

text: Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages.


title: Greek language

text: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia: the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki, the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa, meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek, used today for all official purposes and in education.


title: Greek language

text: The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, "Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English".


title: Greek language

text: Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has some basic knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey, though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and throughout the European Union, especially in Germany.


title: Greek language

text: Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, in what are today Southern Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, and Libya; in the area of the Black Sea, in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia, Monoikos, and Mainake. It was also used as a liturgical language in Christian Nubian kingdom of Makuria which was in modern day Sudan.


title: Greek language

text: Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish). Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages. Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania and used co-officially in some of the municipalities in Gjirokastër and Sarandë. It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Greek is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine.


title: Greek language

text: The phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it.


title: Greek language

text: Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts. The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details):


title: Greek language

text: In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes, a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive). The verbal system has lost the infinitive, the synthetically-formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood. Many have been replaced by periphrastic (analytical) forms.


title: Greek language

text: Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual, and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun.


title: Greek language

text: The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for:


title: Greek language

text: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language. Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO.


title: Greek language

text: Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts; they include a large number of Greek toponyms. The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian, and Turkish. During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from South Slavic (Macedonian/Bulgarian) and Eastern Romance languages (Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian).


title: Greek language

text: Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: "mathematics", "physics", "astronomy", "democracy", "philosophy", "athletics, theatre, rhetoric", "baptism", "evangelist", etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as a basis for coinages: "anthropology", "photography", "telephony", "isomer", "biomechanics", "cinematography", etc. Together with Latin words, they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary; for example, all words ending in "–logy" ("discourse"). There are many English words of Greek origin.


title: Greek language

text: Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian, which most scholars suggest may have been a dialect of Greek itself, but it is poorly attested and it is difficult to conclude. Independently of the Macedonian question, some scholars have grouped Greek into Graeco-Phrygian, as Greek and the extinct Phrygian share features that are not found in other Indo-European languages. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian) or the Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan), but little definitive evidence has been found for grouping the living branches of the family. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian by some linguists. If proven and recognized, the three languages would form a new Balkan sub-branch with other dead European languages.


title: Greek language

text: Linear B, attested as early as the late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary, which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A, has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek, is the earliest known form of Greek.


title: Greek language

text: Another similar system used to write the Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet.


title: Greek language

text: Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet, with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit a faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill.


title: Greek language

text: The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase (majuscule) and lowercase (minuscule) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word:


title: Greek language

text: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs: three different accent marks (acute, grave, and circumflex), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on the stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks (rough and smooth breathing), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis, used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of the acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography.


title: Greek language

text: After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system), is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek.


title: Greek language

text: In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the "ano teleia" (). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ("ó,ti", 'whatever') from ("óti", 'that').


title: Greek language

text: Ancient Greek texts often used "scriptio continua" ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon, or bi-directional text, was also used in Ancient Greek.


title: Greek language

text: Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script, especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics. The term / applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because / is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe was under the control of the Frankish Empire). / (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios. Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications.


title: Greek language

text: The Yevanic dialect was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet.


title: Greek language

text: Some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet. The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina. This usage is sometimes called aljamiado, as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet.


title: Dutch language

text: 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 German and English. "Afrikaans" is a separate but somewhat mutually intelligible daughter language 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 (including Flemish) and in Suriname, meanwhile, are all guided by the Dutch Language Union.


title: Dutch language

text: In Europe, most of the population of the Netherlands (where it is the only official language spoken countrywide) and about 60% of the population of Belgium (as one of three official languages) speak Dutch. Outside the Low Countries, Dutch is the native language of the majority of the population of the South American country of Suriname, a former Dutch colony, where it also holds an official status, as it does in the Caribbean island countries of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Up to half a million native speakers reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined, and historical linguistic minorities on the verge of extinction remain in parts of France, Germany and Indonesia.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is colloquially said to be "roughly in between" them. Dutch, like English, has not undergone the High German consonant shift, does not use Germanic umlaut as a grammatical marker, has largely abandoned the use of the subjunctive, and has levelled much of its morphology, including most of its case system. Features shared with German include the survival of two to three grammatical genders—albeit with few grammatical consequences—as well as the use of modal particles, final-obstruent devoicing, and a similar word order. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic; it incorporates slightly more Romance loans than German but far fewer than English.


title: Dutch language

text: In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the native official name for Dutch is "Nederlands" (historically before the Dutch orthographic reforms). Sometimes "Vlaams" ("Flemish") is used as well to describe Standard Dutch in Flanders, whereas "Hollands" ("Hollandic") is occasionally used as a colloquial term for the standard language in the central and northwestern parts of the Netherlands.


title: Dutch language

text: English is the only language to use the adjective "Dutch" for the language of the Netherlands and Flanders or something else from the Netherlands. The word is derived from Proto-Germanic . The stem of this word, , meant "people" in Proto-Germanic, and was an adjective-forming suffix, of which is the Modern English form. "" was its Latinised form and used as an adjective referring to the Germanic vernaculars of the Early Middle Ages. In this sense, it meant "the language of the common people". The term was used as opposed to Latin, the "non"-native language of writing and the Catholic Church. It was first recorded in 786, when the Bishop of Ostia writes to Pope Adrian I about a synod taking place in Corbridge, England, where the decisions are being written down "tam Latine quam theodisce" meaning "in Latin as well as common vernacular".


title: Dutch language

text: In northwestern West Francia (i.e. modern Belgium) the term would take on a new meaning during the Early Middle Ages, when, within the context of a highly dichromatic linguistic landscape, it came to be the antonym of "*walhisk" (Romance-speakers, specifically Old French). The word, now rendered as "dietsc" (Southwestern variant) or "duutsc" (Central and Northern Variant), could refer to the Dutch language itself, as well as a broader Germanic category depending on context. During the High Middle Ages "Dietsc/Duutsc" was increasingly used as an umbrella term for the specific Germanic dialects spoken in the Low Countries, its meaning being largely implicitly provided by the regional orientation of medieval Dutch society: apart from the higher echelons of the clergy and nobility, mobility was largely static and hence while "Dutch" could by extension also be used in its earlier sense, referring to what to today would be called Germanic dialects as opposed to Romance dialects, in many cases it was understood or meant to refer to the language now known as Dutch.


title: Dutch language

text: In the Low Countries "Dietsch" or its Early Modern Dutch form "Duytsch" as an endonym for Dutch gradually went out of common use and was gradually replaced by the Dutch endonym "Nederlands". This designation (first attested in 1482) started at the Burgundian court in the 15th century, although the use of "neder", "laag", "bas", and "inferior" ("nether" or "low") to refer to the area known as the Low Countries goes back further in time, with the Romans referring to the region as "Germania Inferior" ("Lower" Germania). It is a reference to the Low Countries' downriver location at the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta near the North Sea.


title: Dutch language

text: From 1551, the designation "Nederlands" received strong competition from the name "Nederduytsch" (literally "Low Dutch", "Dutch" being used in its archaic sense covering all continental West Germanic languages). It is a calque of the aforementioned Roman province "Germania Inferior" and an attempt by early Dutch grammarians to give their language more prestige by linking it to Roman times. Likewise, "Hoogduits" ("High German") and "Overlands" ("Upper-landish") came into use as a Dutch exonym for the various German dialects used in neighboring German states. Use of "Nederduytsch" was popular in the 16th century but ultimately lost out over "Nederlands" during the close of the 18th century, with "(Hoog)Duytsch" establishing itself as the Dutch exonym for German during this same period.


title: Dutch language

text: In the 19th century Germany saw the rise of the categorisation of dialects, with German dialectologists terming the German dialects spoken in the mountainous south of Germany as "Hochdeutsch" ("High German"). Subsequently, German dialects spoken in the north were designated as "Niederdeutsch" ("Low German"). The names for these dialects were calqued by Dutch linguists as "Nederduits" and "Hoogduits". As a result, "Nederduits" no longer serves as a synonym for the Dutch language. In the 19th century, the term "Diets" was revived by Dutch linguists and historians as well, as a poetic name for Middle Dutch and its literature.


title: Dutch language

text: Old Dutch can be discerned more or less around the same time as Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Old High German, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon. These names are derived from the modern standard languages. In this age no standard languages had yet developed, while a perfect West Germanic dialect continuum remained present; the division reflects the contingent future contribution dialect groups would have to the later languages. The early form of Dutch was a set of Franconian dialects spoken by the Salian Franks in the 5th century. These happened to develop through Middle Dutch to Modern Dutch over the course of fifteen centuries. During that period, they forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, and influenced or even replaced Old Saxon spoken in the east (contiguous with the Low German area). On the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in present-day France and Germany. The division into Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, since the transition between them was very gradual. One of the few moments when linguists can detect something of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. The development of the Dutch language is illustrated by the following sentence in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch:


title: Dutch language

text: Among the Indo-European languages, Dutch is grouped within the Germanic languages, meaning it shares a common ancestor with languages such as English, German, and the Scandinavian languages. All Germanic languages are subject to the Grimm's law and Verner's law sound shifts, which originated in the Proto-Germanic language and define the basic features differentiating them from other Indo-European languages. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in the pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age.


title: Dutch language

text: The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: East (now extinct), West, and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period. Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German (Old Saxon) and High German. It is characterized by a number of phonological and morphological innovations not found in North or East Germanic. The West Germanic varieties of the time are generally split into three dialect groups: Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic), Istvaeonic (Weser-Rhine Germanic) and Irminonic (Elbe Germanic). It appears that the Frankish tribes fit primarily into the Istvaeonic dialect group with certain Ingvaeonic influences towards the northwest, which are still seen in modern Dutch.


title: Dutch language

text: The Frankish language itself is not directly attested, the only possible exception being the Bergakker inscription, found near the Dutch city of Tiel, which may represent a primary record of 5th-century Frankish. Although some place names recorded in Roman texts such as ' (modern Dutch: ', English: "mudflat"), could arguably be considered as the oldest single "Dutch" words, the Bergakker inscription yields the oldest evidence of Dutch morphology. However, interpretations of the rest of the text lack any consensus.


title: Dutch language

text: The Franks emerged in the southern Netherlands (Salian Franks) and central Germany (Ripuarian Franks), and later descended into Gaul. The name of their kingdom survives in that of France. Although they ruled the Gallo-Romans for nearly 300 years, their language, Frankish, became extinct in most of France and was replaced by later forms of the language throughout Luxembourg and Germany in around the 7th century. It was replaced in France by Old French (a Romance language with a considerable Old Frankish influence).


title: Dutch language

text: However, the Old Franconian language did not die out at large, as it continued to be spoken in the Low Countries, and subsequently evolved into what is now called Old Low Franconian or Old Dutch in the Low Countries. In fact, Old Frankish could be reconstructed from Old Dutch and Frankish loanwords in Old French.


title: Dutch language

text: The term "Old Dutch" or "Old Low Franconian" refers to the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. West Germanic varieties that are assumed to have evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 5th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French. Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of the Salian Franks who occupied what is now the southern Netherlands, northern Belgium, part of northern France, and parts of the Lower Rhine regions of Germany.


title: Dutch language

text: The High German consonant shift, moving over Western Europe from south to west, caused a differentiation with the Central and High Franconian in Germany. The latter would as a consequence evolve (along with Alemannic, Bavarian and Lombardic) into Old High German. At more or less the same time the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, moving over Western Europe from west to east, led to the development of Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Hardly influenced by either development, Old Dutch probably remained relatively close to the original language of the Franks. However, the language did experience developments of its own, such as very early final-obstruent devoicing. In fact, the find at Bergakker indicates that the language may already have experienced this shift during the Old Frankish period.


title: Dutch language

text: Attestations of Old Dutch sentences are extremely rare. The language is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and loan words from Old Dutch in other languages. The oldest recorded is found in the Salic law. In this Frankish document written around 510 the oldest Dutch sentence has been identified: "Maltho thi afrio lito" ("I say to you, I free you, serf") used to free a serf. Another old fragment of Dutch is "Visc flot aftar themo uuatare" ("A fish was swimming in the water"). The oldest conserved larger Dutch text is the Utrecht baptismal vow (776–800) starting with "Forsachistu diobolae ... ec forsacho diabolae" (litt.: "Forsake you the devil? ... I forsake the devil"). If only for its poetic content, the most famous Old Dutch sentence is probably "Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan, hinase hic enda tu, wat unbidan we nu" ("All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for"), is dated to around the year 1100, written by a Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester, England. Since the sentence speaks to the imagination, it is often erroneously stated as the oldest Dutch sentence.


title: Dutch language

text: Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch. The year 1150 is often cited as the time of the discontinuity, but it actually marks a time of profuse Dutch writing; during this period a rich Medieval Dutch literature developed. There was at that time no overarching standard language; Middle Dutch is rather a collective name for a number of closely related, mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the former Old Dutch area. Where Old Dutch fragments are very hard to read for untrained Modern Dutch speakers, the various literary works of Middle Dutch are somewhat more accessible. The most notable difference between Old and Middle Dutch is in a feature of speech known as vowel reduction. Round vowels in word-final syllables are rather frequent in Old Dutch; in Middle Dutch, such vowels are leveled to a schwa.


title: Dutch language

text: The Middle Dutch dialect areas were affected by political boundaries. The sphere of political influence of a certain ruler often also created a sphere of linguistic influence, with the language within the area becoming more homogenous. Following the contemporary political divisions they are in order of importance:


title: Dutch language

text: A process of standardisation started in the Middle Ages, especially under the influence of the Burgundian Ducal Court in Dijon (Brussels after 1477). The dialects of Flanders and Brabant were the most influential around this time. The process of standardisation became much stronger at the start of the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp. The 1585 fall of Antwerp to the Spanish army led to a flight to the northern Netherlands, where the Dutch Republic declared its independence from Spain. This influenced the urban dialects of the province of Holland. In 1637, a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the Statenvertaling, the first major Bible translation into Dutch, was created that people from all over the new republic could understand. It used elements from various, even Dutch Low Saxon, dialects but was predominantly based on the urban dialects of Holland of post 16th century.


title: Dutch language

text: In the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium and Luxembourg), developments were different. Under subsequent Spanish, Austrian and French rule, the standardisation of Dutch language came to a standstill. The state, law, and increasingly education used French, yet more than half the Belgian population were speaking a variety of Dutch. In the course of the 19th century, the Flemish Movement stood up for the rights of Dutch speakers, mostly referred to as "Flemish". However, the dialect variation was a serious disadvantage in the face of the standardised francophony. Since standardisation is a lengthy process, Dutch-speaking Belgium associated itself with the standard language that had already developed in the Netherlands over the centuries. Therefore, the situation in Belgium is essentially no different from that in the Netherlands, although there are recognisable differences in pronunciation, comparable to the pronunciation differences between standard British and standard American English. In 1980 the Netherlands and Belgium concluded the Language Union Treaty. This treaty lays down the principle that the two countries must gear their language policy to each other, among other things, for a common system of spelling.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch belongs to its own West Germanic sub-group, the Low Franconian languages, paired with its sister language Limburgish or East Low Franconian. Its closest relative is the mutually intelligible daughter language Afrikaans. Other West Germanic languages related to Dutch are German, English and the Frisian languages and the un-standardised languages Low German and Yiddish.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch stands out in combining some Ingvaeonic characteristics (occurring consistently in English and Frisian and reduced in intensity from west to east over the continental West Germanic plane) with dominant Istvaeonic characteristics, some of which are also incorporated in German. Unlike German, Dutch (apart from Limburgish) has not been influenced at all by the south to north movement of the High German consonant shift and had some changes of its own. The cumulation of these changes resulted over time in separate, but related standard languages with various degrees of similarities and differences between them. For a comparison between the West Germanic languages, see the sections Morphology, Grammar and Vocabulary.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch dialects are primarily the dialects that are both related with the Dutch language and are spoken in the same language area as the Dutch standard language. Although heavily under the influence of the standard language, some of them remain remarkably diverse and are found in the Netherlands and in the Brussels and Flemish regions of Belgium. The areas in which they are spoken often correspond with former mediaeval counties and duchies. The Netherlands (but not Belgium) distinguishes between a dialect and a "streektaal" ("regional language"). Those words are actually more political than linguistic because a regional language unites a large group of very different varieties. Such is the case with the Gronings dialect, which is considered a variety of the Dutch Low Saxon regional language, but it is relatively distinct from other Dutch Low Saxon varieties. Also, some Dutch dialects are more remote from the Dutch standard language than some varieties of a regional language are. Within the Netherlands, a further distinction is made between a regional language and a separate language, which is the case with the (standardised) West Frisian language. It is spoken alongside Dutch in the province of Friesland.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch dialects and regional languages are not spoken as often as they used to be, especially in the Netherlands. Recent research by Geert Driessen shows that the use of dialects and regional languages among both Dutch adults and youth is in heavy decline. In 1995, 27 percent of the Dutch adult population spoke a dialect or regional language on a regular basis, but in 2011, that was no more than 11 percent. In 1995, 12 percent of children of primary school age spoke a dialect or regional language, but in 2011, that had declined to 4 percent. Of the officially recognized regional languages Limburgish is spoken the most (in 2011 among adults 54%, among children 31%) and Dutch Low Saxon the least (adults 15%, children 1%). The decline of the West Frisian language in Friesland occupies a middle position (adults 44%, children 22%). Dialects are most often spoken in rural areas, but many cities have a distinct city dialect. For example, the city of Ghent has very distinct "g", "e" and "r" sounds that greatly differ from its surrounding villages. The Brussels dialect combines Brabantian with words adopted from Walloon and French.


title: Dutch language

text: Some dialects had, until recently, extensions across the borders of other standard language areas. In most cases, the heavy influence of the standard language has broken the dialect continuum. Examples are the Gronings dialect spoken in Groningen as well as the closely related varieties in adjacent East Frisia (Germany). South Guelderish ("Zuid-Gelders") is a dialect spoken in southern Gelderland, the northern tip of Limburg, and northeast of North Brabant (Netherlands), but also in adjacent parts of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Limburgish ("Limburgs") is spoken in Limburg (Belgium) as well as in the remaining part of Limburg (Netherlands) and extends across the German border. West Flemish ("Westvlaams") is spoken in West Flanders, the western part of Zeelandic Flanders and also in French Flanders, where it virtually became extinct to make way for French.


title: Dutch language

text: The "West Flemish" group of dialects, spoken in West Flanders and Zeeland, is so distinct that it might be considered as a separate language variant, although the strong significance of language in Belgian politics would prevent the government from classifying them as such. An oddity of the dialect is that, the voiced velar fricative (written as "g" in Dutch) shifts to a voiced glottal fricative (written as "h" in Dutch), while the letter "h" becomes mute (like in French). As a result, when West Flemings try to talk Standard Dutch, they are often unable to pronounce the g-sound, and pronounce it similar to the h-sound. This leaves, for example, no difference between "held" (hero) and "geld" (money). Or in some cases, they are aware of the problem, and hyper-correct the "h" into a voiced velar fricative or g-sound, again leaving no difference. The West Flemish variety historically spoken in adjacent parts in France is sometimes called French Flemish and is listed as a French minority language. However, only a very small and aging minority of the French-Flemish population still speaks and understands West Flemish.


title: Dutch language

text: "Hollandic" is spoken in Holland and Utrecht, though the original forms of this dialect (which were heavily influenced by a West Frisian substratum and, from the 16th century on, by Brabantian dialects) are now relatively rare. The urban dialects of the Randstad, which are Hollandic dialects, do not diverge from standard Dutch very much, but there is a clear difference between the city dialects of Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam and Utrecht. In some rural Hollandic areas more authentic Hollandic dialects are still being used, especially north of Amsterdam. Another group of dialects based on Hollandic is that spoken in the cities and larger towns of Friesland, where it partially displaced West Frisian in the 16th century and is known as Stadsfries ("Urban Frisian"). Hollandic together with inter alia South Guelderish and North Brabantian, but without Stadsfries, are the Central Dutch dialects.


title: Dutch language

text: "Brabantian" is named after the historical Duchy of Brabant, which corresponded mainly to the provinces of North Brabant and southern Gelderland, the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Flemish Brabant, as well as Brussels (where its native speakers have become a minority) and the province of Walloon Brabant. Brabantian expands into small parts in the west of Limburg while its strong influence on the East Flemish of East Flanders and eastern Zeelandic Flanders weakens towards the west. In a small area in the northwest of North Brabant (Willemstad), Hollandic is spoken. Conventionally, the South Guelderish dialects are distinguished from Brabantian, but there are no objective criteria apart from geography to do so. Over 5 million people live in an area with some form of Brabantian being the predominant colloquial language out of the area's 22 million Dutch-speakers.


title: Dutch language

text: "Limburgish", spoken in both Belgian Limburg and Netherlands Limburg and in adjacent parts in Germany, is considered a dialect in Belgium, while having obtained the official status of regional language in the Netherlands. Limburgish has been influenced by the Ripuarian varieties like the Colognian dialect, and has had a somewhat different development since the late Middle Ages.


title: Dutch language

text: Two dialect groups have been given the official status of regional language (or "streektaal") in the Netherlands. Like several other dialect groups, both are part of a dialect continuum that continues across the national border.


title: Dutch language

text: The Dutch Low Saxon dialect area comprises the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe and Overijssel, as well as parts of the provinces of Gelderland, Flevoland, Friesland and Utrecht. This group, which is not Low Franconian but instead Low Saxon and close to neighbouring Low German, has been elevated by the Netherlands (and by Germany) to the legal status of "streektaal" (regional language) according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It is regarded as Dutch for a number of reasons. From the 14th to 15th century onward, its urban centers (Deventer, Zwolle, Kampen, Zutphen and Doesburg) have been increasingly influenced by the western written Dutch and became a linguistically mixed area. From the 17th century onward, it was gradually integrated into the Dutch language area. Dutch Low Saxon used to be at one end of the Low German dialect continuum. However, the national border has given way to dialect boundaries coinciding with a political border, because the traditional dialects are strongly influenced by the national standard varieties. Cross-the-border dialects now separated by a plain gap also include South Guelderish and Limburgish on the Dutch side of the border and Meuse-Rhenish on the German side of the border.


title: Dutch language

text: While a somewhat heterogeneous group of Low Franconian dialects, Limburgish has received official status as a regional language in the Netherlands and Germany, but not in Belgium. Due to this official recognition, it receives protection by chapter 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.


title: Dutch language

text: Afrikaans, although to a significant degree mutually intelligible with Dutch, is not a dialect but a separate standardised language. It is spoken in South Africa and Namibia. As a daughter language of Dutch, Afrikaans evolved mainly from 17th-century Dutch dialects, but was influenced by various other languages in South Africa.


title: Dutch language

text: "West Frisian" ("Westerlauwers Fries"), along with Saterland Frisian and North Frisian, evolved from the same branch of the West Germanic languages as Old English (i.e. Anglo-Frisian) and are therefore genetically more closely related to English and Scots than to Dutch. The different influences on the respective languages, however, particularly that of Norman French on English and Dutch on West Frisian, have rendered English quite distinct from West Frisian, and West Frisian less distinct from Dutch than from English. Although under heavy influence of the Dutch standard language, it is not mutually intelligible with Dutch and considered a sister language of Dutch, like English and German.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch is an official language of the Netherlands proper, Belgium, Suriname, the Dutch Caribbean municipalities (St. Eustatius, Saba and Bonaire), Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Dutch is also an official language of several international organisations, such as the European Union, Union of South American Nations and the Caribbean Community. At an academic level, Dutch is taught in about 175 universities in 40 countries. About 15,000 students worldwide study Dutch at university.


title: Dutch language

text: In Europe, Dutch is the majority language in the Netherlands (96%) and Belgium (59%) as well as a minority language in Germany and northern France's French Flanders. Though Belgium as a whole is multilingual, three of the four language areas into which the country is divided (Flanders, francophone Wallonia, and the German-speaking Community) are largely monolingual, with Brussels being bilingual. The Netherlands and Belgium produce the vast majority of music, films, books and other media written or spoken in Dutch. Dutch is a monocentric language, at least what concerns its written form, with all speakers using the same standard form (authorized by the Dutch Language Union) based on a Dutch orthography defined in the so-called "Green Booklet" authoritative dictionary and employing the Latin alphabet when writing; however, pronunciation varies between dialects. Indeed, in stark contrast to its written uniformity, Dutch lacks a unique prestige dialect and has a large dialectal continuum consisting of 28 main dialects, which can themselves be further divided into at least 600 distinguishable varieties. In the Netherlands, the Hollandic dialect dominates in national broadcast media while in Flanders Brabantian dialect dominates in that capacity, making them in turn unofficial prestige dialects in their respective countries.


title: Dutch language

text: Outside the Netherlands and Belgium, the dialect spoken in and around the German town of Kleve (South Guelderish) is historically and genetically a Low Franconian variety. In North-Western France, the area around Calais was historically Dutch-speaking (West Flemish), of which an estimated 20,000 are daily speakers. The cities of Dunkirk, Gravelines and Bourbourg only became predominantly French-speaking by the end of the 19th century. In the countryside, until World War I, many elementary schools continued to teach in Dutch, and the Catholic Church continued to preach and teach the catechism in Dutch in many parishes.


title: Dutch language

text: During the second half of the 19th century, Dutch was banned from all levels of education by both Prussia and France and lost most of its functions as a cultural language. In both Germany and France, the Dutch standard language is largely absent, and speakers of these Dutch dialects will use German or French in everyday speech. Dutch is not afforded legal status in France or Germany, either by the central or regional public authorities, and knowledge of the language is declining among younger generations.


title: Dutch language

text: As a foreign language, Dutch is mainly taught in primary and secondary schools in areas adjacent to the Netherlands and Flanders. In French-speaking Belgium, over 300,000 pupils are enrolled in Dutch courses, followed by over 23,000 in the German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, and about 7,000 in the French region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (of which 4,550 are in primary school). At an academic level, the largest number of faculties of "neerlandistiek" can be found in Germany (30 universities), followed by France (20 universities) and the United Kingdom (5 universities).


title: Dutch language

text: Despite the Dutch presence in Indonesia for almost 350 years, as the Asian bulk of the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch language has no official status there and the small minority that can speak the language fluently are either educated members of the oldest generation, or employed in the legal profession such as historians, diplomats, lawyers, jurists and linguists/polyglots, as certain law codes are still only available in Dutch. Dutch is taught in various educational centres in Indonesia, the most important of which is the Erasmus Language Centre (ETC) in Jakarta. Each year, some 1,500 to 2,000 students take Dutch courses there. In total, several thousand Indonesians study Dutch as a foreign language. Owing to centuries of Dutch rule in Indonesia, many old documents are written in Dutch. Many universities therefore include Dutch as a source language, mainly for law and history students. In Indonesia this involves about 35,000 students.


title: Dutch language

text: Unlike other European nations, the Dutch chose not to follow a policy of language expansion amongst the indigenous peoples of their colonies. In the last quarter of the 19th century, however, a local elite gained proficiency in Dutch so as to meet the needs of expanding bureaucracy and business. Nevertheless, the Dutch government remained reluctant to teach Dutch on a large scale for fear of destabilising the colony. Dutch, the language of power, was supposed to remain in the hands of the leading elite.


title: Dutch language

text: After independence, Dutch was dropped as an official language and replaced by Malay. Yet the Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch: words for everyday life as well as scientific and technological terms. One scholar argues that 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words, many of which are transliterated to reflect phonetic pronunciation e.g. "" "office" in Indonesian is "kantor", "handdoek" "towel" in Indonesian is "handuk", or "bushalte" "bus stop" in Indonesian is "halte bus". In addition, many Indonesian words are calques of Dutch; for example, "rumah sakit" "hospital" is calqued on the Dutch "ziekenhuis" (literally "sickhouse"), "kebun binatang" "zoo" on "dierentuin" (literally "animal garden"), "undang-undang dasar" "constitution" from "grondwet" (literally "ground law"). These account for some of the differences in vocabulary between Indonesian and Malay. Some regional languages in Indonesia have some Dutch loanwords as well; for example, Sundanese word "Katel" or "frying pan" origin in Dutch is "ketel". The Javanese word for "bike/bicycle" "pit" can be traced back to its origin in Dutch "fiets".


title: Dutch language

text: After the declaration of independence of Indonesia, Western New Guinea, the "wild east" of the Dutch East Indies, remained a Dutch colony until 1962, known as Netherlands New Guinea. Despite prolonged Dutch presence, the Dutch language is not spoken by many Papuans, the colony having been ceded to Indonesia in 1963.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch-speaking immigrant communities can also be found in Australia and New Zealand. The 2011 Australian census showed 37,248 people speaking Dutch at home. At the 2006 New Zealand census, 26,982 people, or 0.70 percent of the total population, reported to speak Dutch to sufficient fluency that they could hold an everyday conversation.


title: Dutch language

text: In contrast to the colonies in the East Indies, from the second half of the 19th century onwards, the Netherlands envisaged the expansion of Dutch in its colonies in the West Indies. Until 1863, when slavery was abolished in the West Indies, slaves were forbidden to speak Dutch, with the effect that local creoles such as Papiamento and Sranan Tongo which were based not on Dutch but rather other European languages, became common in the Dutch West Indies. However, as most of the people in the Colony of Surinam (now Suriname) worked on Dutch plantations, this reinforced the use of Dutch as a means for direct communication.


title: Dutch language

text: In Suriname today, Dutch is the sole official language, and over 60 percent of the population speaks it as a mother tongue. Dutch is the obligatory medium of instruction in schools in Suriname, even for non-native speakers. A further twenty-four percent of the population speaks Dutch as a second language. Suriname gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1975 and has been an associate member of the Dutch Language Union since 2004. The lingua franca of Suriname, however, is Sranan Tongo, spoken natively by about a fifth of the population.


title: Dutch language

text: In Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, all parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dutch is the official language but spoken as a first language by only 7% to 8% of the population, although most native-born people on the islands can speak the language since the education system is in Dutch at some or all levels.


title: Dutch language

text: In the United States, a now extinct dialect of Dutch, Jersey Dutch, spoken by descendants of 17th-century Dutch settlers in Bergen and Passaic counties, was still spoken as late as 1921. Other Dutch-based creole languages once spoken in the Americas include Mohawk Dutch (in Albany, New York), Berbice (in Guyana), Skepi (in Essequibo, Guyana) and Negerhollands (in the United States Virgin Islands). Pennsylvania Dutch is not a member of the set of Dutch dialects and is less misleadingly called Pennsylvania German.


title: Dutch language

text: Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States, spoke Dutch natively and is the only U.S. president whose first language was not English. Dutch prevailed for many generations as the dominant language in parts of New York along the Hudson River. Another famous American born in this region who spoke Dutch as a first language was Sojourner Truth.


title: Dutch language

text: According to the 2000 United States census, 150,396 people spoke Dutch at home, while according to the 2006 Canadian census, this number reaches 160,000 Dutch speakers. At an academic level, 20 universities offer Dutch studies in the United States. In Canada, Dutch is the fourth most spoken language by farmers, after English, French and German, and the fifth most spoken non-official language overall (by 0.6% of Canadians).


title: Dutch language

text: The largest legacy of the Dutch language lies in South Africa, which attracted large numbers of Dutch, Flemish and other northwest European farmer (in Dutch, "boer") settlers, all of whom were quickly assimilated. The long isolation from the rest of the Dutch-speaking world made the Dutch as spoken in Southern Africa evolve into what is now Afrikaans. In 1876, the first Afrikaans newspaper called "Die Afrikaanse Patriot" was published in the Cape Colony.


title: Dutch language

text: European Dutch remained the literary language until the start of the 1920s, when under pressure of Afrikaner nationalism the local "African" Dutch was preferred over the written, European-based standard. In 1925, section 137 of the 1909 constitution of the Union of South Africa was amended by Act 8 of 1925, stating "the word "Dutch" in article 137 ... is hereby declared to include Afrikaans". The constitution of 1983 only listed English and Afrikaans as official languages. It is estimated that between 90% to 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin.


title: Dutch language

text: Both languages are still largely mutually intelligible, although this relation can in some fields (such as lexicon, spelling and grammar) be asymmetric, as it is easier for Dutch speakers to understand written Afrikaans than it is for Afrikaans speakers to understand written Dutch. Afrikaans is grammatically far less complex than Dutch, and vocabulary items are generally altered in a clearly patterned manner, e.g. "vogel" becomes "voël" ("bird") and "regen" becomes "reën" ("rain"). In South Africa, the number of students following Dutch at university is difficult to estimate, since the academic study of Afrikaans inevitably includes the study of Dutch. Elsewhere in the world, the number of people learning Dutch is relatively small.


title: Dutch language

text: Afrikaans is the third largest language of South Africa in terms of native speakers (~13.5%), of whom 53% are Coloureds and 42.4% Whites. In 1996, 40 percent of South Africans reported to know Afrikaans at least at a very basic level of communication. It is the lingua franca in Namibia, where it is spoken natively in 11 percent of households. In total, Afrikaans is the first language in South Africa alone of about 7.1 million people and is estimated to be a second language for at least 10 million people worldwide, compared to over 23 million and 5 million respectively, for Dutch.


title: Dutch language

text: The Dutch colonial presence elsewhere in Africa, notably Dutch Gold Coast, was too ephemeral not to be wiped out by prevailing colonizing European successors. Belgian colonial presence in Congo and Rwanda-Urundi (Burundi and Rwanda, held under League of Nations mandate and later a UN trust territory) left little Dutch (Flemish) legacy, as French was the main colonial language.


title: Dutch language

text: For further details on different realisations of phonemes, dialectal differences and example words, see the full article at Dutch phonology.


title: Dutch language

text: Unlike other Germanic languages, Dutch has no phonological aspiration of consonants. Like most other Germanic languages, the Dutch consonant system did not undergo the High German consonant shift and has a syllable structure that allows fairly-complex consonant clusters. Dutch also retains full use of the velar fricatives of Proto-Germanic that were lost or modified in many other Germanic languages. Dutch has final-obstruent devoicing. At the end of a word, voicing distinction is neutralised and all obstruents are pronounced voiceless. For example, Dutch ' (̇'good') is but the related form ' is . Dutch shares this final-obstruent devoicing with German (the Dutch noun "goud" is pronounced [ɣɑut], the adjective "gouden" is pronounced [ɣɑudə(n)], like the German noun "Gold", pronounced [ɡɔlt], adjective "golden", pronounced [ɡɔldn] vs English "gold" and "golden", both pronounced with [d].)


title: Dutch language

text: Voicing of pre-vocalic initial voiceless alveolar fricatives occurs although less in Dutch than in German (Dutch ', German ' with versus English "seven" and Low German ' with [s]), and also the shift → . Dutch shares only with Low German the development of → (Dutch ', ' and Low German ', ' versus German ', ' and English "foxes", "oxen"), and also the development of → though it is far more common in Dutch (Dutch ' and Low German ' versus German ' and English "soft", but Dutch ' versus German ' and English "craft").


title: Dutch language

text: Like English, Dutch did not develop i-mutation as a morphological marker and shares with most other Germanic languages the lengthening of short vowels in stressed open syllables, which has led to contrastive vowel length being used as a morphological marker. Dutch has an extensive vowel inventory. Vowels can be grouped as back rounded, front unrounded and front rounded. They are also traditionally distinguished by length or tenseness.


title: Dutch language

text: Vowel length is not always considered a distinctive feature in Dutch phonology because it normally occurs with changes in vowel quality. One feature or the other may be considered redundant, and some phonemic analyses prefer to treat it as an opposition of tenseness. However, even if it is not considered part of the phonemic opposition, the long/tense vowels are still realised as "phonetically" longer than their short counterparts. The changes in vowel quality are also not always the same in all dialects, some of which may be little difference at all, with length remaining the primary distinguishing feature. Although all older words pair vowel length with a change in vowel quality, new loanwords have reintroduced phonemic oppositions of length. Compare "zonne(n)" ("suns") versus "zone" ("zone") versus "zonen" ("sons"), or "kroes" ("mug") versus "cruise" ("cruise").


title: Dutch language

text: Unique to the development of Dutch is the collapse of older "ol"/"ul"/"al" + dental into "ol" + dental, followed by vocalisation of pre-consonantal /l/ and after a short vowel. That created the diphthong : Dutch "goud", "zout" and "bout" corresponds with Low German "Gold", "Solt", "Bolt"; German "Gold", "Salz", "Balt" and English "gold", "salt", "bolt". It is the most common diphthong, along with . All three are the only ones commonly considered unique phonemes in Dutch. The tendency for native English speakers is to pronounce Dutch names with (written as "ij" or "ei") as , (like the English "long i"), which does not normally lead to confusion for native listeners since in a number of dialects (such as in Amsterdam), the same pronunciation is heard.


title: Dutch language

text: In contrast, and are rare in Dutch. The "long/tense" diphthongs are indeed realised as proper diphthongs but are generally analysed phonemically as a long/tense vowel, followed by a glide or . All diphthongs end in a close vowel () and are grouped here by their first element.


title: Dutch language

text: The syllable structure of Dutch is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C). Many words, as in English, begin with three consonants: "straat" (street). There are words that end in four consonants: "herfst" (autumn), "ergst" (worst), "interessantst" (most interesting), "sterkst" (strongest), the last three of which are superlative adjectives.


title: Dutch language

text: The highest number of consonants in a single cluster is found in the word "slechtstschrijvend" (writing worst), with seven consonant phonemes. "angstschreeuw" (scream in fear) has six in a row.


title: Dutch language

text: A notable change in pronunciation has been occurring in younger generations in the Dutch provinces of Utrecht, North and South Holland, which has been dubbed "Polder Dutch" by Jan Stroop. Such speakers pronounce , and , which used to be pronounced respectively as , , and , as increasingly lowered to , , and respectively. In addition, the same speakers pronounce , , and as the diphthongs , , and respectively, making the change an example of a chain shift.


title: Dutch language

text: The change is interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view because it has apparently happened relatively recently, in the 1970s and was pioneered by older well-educated women from the upper middle classes. The lowering of the diphthongs has long been current in many Dutch dialects and is comparable to the English Great Vowel Shift and the diphthongisation of long high vowels in Modern High German, which had centuries earlier reached the state now found in Polder Dutch. Stroop theorizes that the lowering of open-mid to open diphthongs is a phonetically "natural" and inevitable development and that Dutch, after it had diphthongised the long high vowels like German and English, "should" have lowered the diphthongs like German and English as well.


title: Dutch language

text: Instead, he argues that the development has been artificially frozen in an "intermediate" state by the standardisation of Dutch pronunciation in the 16th century in which lowered diphthongs found in rural dialects were perceived as ugly by the educated classes and were accordingly declared substandard. Now, however, he thinks that the newly-affluent and independent women can afford to let that natural development take place in their speech. Stroop compares the role of Polder Dutch with the urban variety of British English pronunciation called Estuary English.


title: Dutch language

text: Among Belgian and Surinamese Dutch-speakers and speakers from other regions in the Netherlands, this vowel shift is not taking place.


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch is grammatically similar to German, such as in syntax and verb morphology (for verb morphology in English verbs, Dutch and German, see Germanic weak verb and Germanic strong verb). Grammatical cases have largely become limited to pronouns and many set phrases. Inflected forms of the articles are often grace surnames and toponyms.


title: Dutch language

text: Standard Dutch uses three genders across natural and grammatical genders but for most non-Belgian speakers, masculine and feminine have merged to form the common gender (with "de" for "the"). The neuter (which uses "het") remains distinct. This is similar to those of most Continental Scandinavian tongues. Less so than English, inflectional grammar (such as in adjectival and noun endings) has simplified.


title: Dutch language

text: When grouped according to their conjugational class, Dutch has four main verb types: weak verbs, strong verbs, irregular verbs and mixed verbs.


title: Dutch language

text: Weak verbs are most numerous, constituting about 60% of all verbs. In these, the past tense and past participle are formed with a dental suffix:


title: Dutch language

text: Strong verbs are the second most numerous verb group. This group is characterised by a vowel alternation of the stem in the past tense and perfect participle. Dutch distinguishes between 7 classes, comprising almost all strong verbs, with some internal variants. Dutch has many 'half strong verbs': these have a weak past tense and a strong participle or a strong past tense and a weak participle. The following table shows the vowel alternations in more detail. It also shows the number of roots (bare verbs) that belong to each class, variants with a prefix are excluded.


title: Dutch language

text: There is an ongoing process of "weakening" of strong verbs. The verb "ervaren" (to experience) used to be strictly a class 6 strong verb, having the past tense "ervoer" and participle "ervaren", but the weak form "ervaarde" for both past tense and participle is currently also in use. Some other verbs that were originally strong such as "raden" (to guess) and "stoten" (to bump), have past tense forms "ried" and "stiet" that are at present far less common than their weakened forms; "raadde" and "stootte". In most examples of such weakened verbs that were originally strong, both their strong and weak formations are deemed correct.


title: Dutch language

text: As in English, the case system of Dutch and the subjunctive have largely fallen out of use, and the system has generalised the dative over the accusative case for certain pronouns (NL: "me", "je"; EN: "me", "you"; LI: "mi", "di" vs. DE: "mich/mir", "dich/dir"). While standard Dutch has three grammatical genders, this has few consequences and the masculine and feminine gender are usually merged into a common gender in the Netherlands but not in Belgium (EN: none; NL/LI: common and neuter; in Belgium masculine, feminine and neuter is in use).


title: Dutch language

text: Modern Dutch has mostly lost its case system. However, certain idioms and expressions continue to include now archaic case declensions. The article has just two forms, "de" and "het", more complex than English, which has only "the". The use of the older inflected form "den" in the dative and accusative, as well as use of "der" in the dative, is restricted to numerous set phrases, surnames and toponyms. But some dialects still use both, particularly "der" is often used instead of "haar" (her).


title: Dutch language

text: In modern Dutch, the genitive articles "des" and "der" in the bottom line are commonly used in idioms. Other usage is typically considered archaic, poetic or stylistic. One must know whether a noun is masculine or feminine to use them correctly. In most circumstances, the preposition "van", the middle line, is instead used, followed by the normal article "de" or "het", and in that case it makes no difference whether a word is masculine or feminine. For the idiomatic use of the articles in the genitive, see for example:


title: Dutch language

text: In contemporary usage, the genitive case still occurs a little more often with plurals than with singulars, as the plural article is "der" for all genders and no special noun inflection must be taken account of. "Der" is commonly used in order to avoid reduplication of "van", e.g. "het merendeel der gedichten van de auteur" instead of "het merendeel van de gedichten van de auteur" ("the bulk of the author's poems").


title: Dutch language

text: There is also a genitive form for the pronoun "die/dat" ("that [one], those [ones]"), namely "diens" for masculine and neuter singulars (occurrences of "dier" for feminine singular and all plurals are extremely rare). Although usually avoided in common speech, this form can be used instead of possessive pronouns to avoid confusion. Compare:


title: Dutch language

text: Analogically, the relative and interrogative pronoun "wie" ("who") has the genitive forms "wiens" and "wier" (corresponding to English "whose", but less frequent in use).


title: Dutch language

text: Dutch also has a range of fixed expressions that make use of the genitive articles, which can be abbreviated using apostrophes. Common examples include "'s ochtends" (with 's as abbreviation of "des"; "in the morning") and "desnoods" (lit: "of the need", translated: "if necessary").


title: Dutch language

text: The Dutch written grammar has simplified over the past 100 years: cases are now mainly used for the pronouns, such as "ik" (I), "mij, me" (me), "mijn" (my), "wie" (who), "wiens" (whose: masculine or neuter singular), "wier" (whose: feminine singular; masculine, feminine or neuter plural). Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (except for the genitive of proper nouns (names): -s, -'s or -'). In the spoken language cases and case inflections had already gradually disappeared from a much earlier date on (probably the 15th century) as in many continental West Germanic dialects.


title: Dutch language

text: Inflection of adjectives is more complicated. The adjective receives no ending with indefinite neuter nouns in singular (as with "een" 'a/an'), and "-e" in all other cases. (This was also the case in Middle English, as in "a goode man".) "Fiets" belongs to the masculine/feminine category, while "water" and "huis" are neuter.