typically.nl

For the tiny speck of land that is neder, a surprising number of dialects are spoken. Excuse me, there are several official languages even! Well maybe just two, and maybe the minor one is really really minor. Still, a slang-speaking person from the north will have a hard time understanding someone from the south.

You, being a well-informed reader of this blog, probably already know the basics of the Dutch language aka Nederlandse Taal. It is very much like German, and the Suid-Afrikaanse language evolved from it. It is the official language in our country and it will get you anywhere inside our boundaries, and even outside a little since it is also the official language of Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). Only on the tropical islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacau will Dutch get you anywhere else, since these were colonies of Holland in olden times.

To non-native ears, Nederlands has many spit and gargle sounds. We sure love that phlegm-scraping hard G. According to folklore, if you were able to pronounce “Scheveningen” during WWII you were OK; if you couldn’t you were with the enemy. In real life, the hard G is only spoken in the West of Nederland, aka Holland. People in the East and North often swallow it; people in the South say it softer and longer.

The West aka Holland

Being the dominant economical region, the language spoken in the West is the “official” standard language for Nederland. Also known as Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (common civilized dutch), it is the amalgamation of the dialects from Haarlem, Amsterdam, Hilversum, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Den Haag and everything in between. It is the language taught in schools.

It is also a language that does not exist in real life. Although the people in Haarlem are said to speak ABN, this is not exactly true. For many people it will sound too posh and for southerners it’s all too “Hollands”. People in Amsterdam have their very distinct dialect, as do all the other cities that make up this region. For such as tiny country, it is remarkable, though a common pattern in Europe. A Londoner sounds very different from a Manchester bloke, after all. Still, there has to be a standard, and this is it. Your Dutch language course will teach you this language and everyone in .nl will be able to understand you.

Fryslân

Flag of Fryslân

The Northernmost province of .nl is called Friesland in Dutch and Fryslân in Frysk; the only official minority language. The street signs here are bilingual and Frysk (as well as Dutch) is taught in schools. Still, no bloody wars are fought over this language. Inhabitants simply speak Frysk inside Fryslân and Dutch outside it; although with a very thick accent. The other northern provice, Groningen, does not have its own language, and even for inexperienced listeners the two sound distinctly different. But either Groningers are not (as) proud of their dialect or they’re more down-to-earth about it; fact is that only Dutch is taught in Groningse schools.

The South

Travelling by train from Amsterdam to Maastricht illustrates perfectly how the language gets softer the further south you go. Starting from Eindhoven the dialect is very clearly different from ABN or other “Hollandse” slang: the brutal G is replaced by a softer CH sound, staccato is replaced by melody and more vowels are thrown into words.

People living here see themselves as clearly different from the people “above”; inhabitants of Limburg (the most southern province) will even declare the rest of .nl as foreign soil, and they are only half-joking. Still fighting for linguistic recognition, Limburgs is still just a dialect–children are taught ABN in school. Many parents will raise their offspring in pure Limburgs dialect at home though, yielding a group of people that will never entirely fit in with the rest of the country. Limburgers see Hollanders as inferior and vice versa, and I should know having lived in Limburg for ten (formative) years.

Flanders

For those outside the know: the country bordering Nederland to the south is called Belgium. Known for beer and bonbons, this really is a completely separate nation. The Northern half of it–Flanders–speaks Nederlands though (more or less); the Southern part–Wallonië–speaks French (more or less).

Linguistically, southern .nl dialects resemble their Flemish counterparts and people from these parts of the country have no trouble hopping over the border just to purchase a loaf of bread. Flanders too has a province named Limburg and it is adjacent to the one in .nl. When you speak Limburgs, you will feel right at home in either provice, in fact the dialects are so similar that it is often suggested to just merge the two. Closer to Brussels, the dialect changes again, more or less resembling our provice of Brabant. And you know what? This province has its identically named brother in Belgium as well. Further to the east and past Antwerp, the dialect changes again where the G sounds more like an H; this is the dialect spoken in Gent. In .nl, this same dialect is spoken in the aptly named Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, a part of the province of Zeeland.