History of Dutch

Dutch is a West Germanic language, that originated from the Old Frankish dialects.

Among the words with which Dutch has enriched the English vocabulary are: brandy, coleslaw, cookie, cruiser, dock, easel, freight, landscape, spook, stoop, and yacht. Dutch is noteworthy as the language of an outstanding literature, but it also became important as the tongue of an enterprising people, who, though comparatively few in number, made their mark on the world community through trade and empire. Dutch is also among some of the earliest recorded languages of Europe. Countries that have Dutch as an official language are Belgium, the Netherlands, Suriname, Aruba and Curacao.

Within the Indo-European language tree, Dutch is grouped within the Germanic languages, which means it shares a common ancestor with languages such as English, German, and Scandinavian languages.

This common, but not direct, ancestor (proto-language) of all contemporary Germanic languages is called Proto-Germanic, commonly assumed to have originated in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. All Germanic languages are united by subjection to the sound shifts of Grimm's law and Verner's law which originated Proto-Germanic. These two laws define the basic differentiating features of Germanic languages that separate them from other Indo-European languages.

There are no known documents in Proto-Germanic, which was unwritten, and virtually all our knowledge of this early language has been obtained by application of the comparative method. All modern Germanic languages (such as English, German, Dutch, etc.) gradually split off from Proto-Germanic, beginning around the Early Middle Ages. As the earliest surviving Germanic writing, there are a few inscriptions in a runic script from Scandinavia dated to c. 200. It obviously represents Proto-Norse spoken in Scandinavia after it had split as a local dialect from common Proto-Germanic.

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