Welkom lezer; dit artikel zal u vertellen over de Nederlandse taal en vertalingen!

Oh sorry…. that was Dutch – it means:

Welcome valued reader; this article will tell you about the Dutch language and translations!

Dutch belongs to the family of West Germanic languages and is therefore closely associated to English and German, and a few other languages within this family.

Commonly, the English name “Dutch” refers to the native language of the people in the Netherlands and Flanders. However, very rarely but more accurately in linguistic terms, it is called Netherlandic. The language of the people living in Belgium is usually referred to as Flemish, but it is basically the same language, Dutch.

The origins of the Dutch language date back to around 450 to 500 AD, when it derived from Old Frankish. This was the language of the Franks, one of the many tribes that populated large parts of Western Europe.

As with many other Germanic languages, Dutch can be divided into 3 different stages of development:

Old Dutch – between 450 and 1150

Middle Dutch – between 1150 and 1500 and

Modern Dutch – from 1500 until now

Dutch is written in the familiar Latin alphabet with 26 letters, but is also uses the digraph “ij” or “IJ”. A digraph is a pair of letters / characters, which are written together to express one distinct sound. Sometimes this digraph in Dutch is considered as an extra letter of the alphabet.

Although the written alphabet looks very familiar to most non-native Dutch speakers, the pronunciation can be quite challenging. Many diphthongs (two adjacent vowels within the same syllable) like “ui”, “eu” and “ij” look similar to their English counterparts, but their sound is quite different.

Nowadays, Dutch is spoken worldwide by around 22 million people as their native language and by over 5 million as their second language (taught mostly in areas bordering the Netherlands and Flanders). Most native speakers live in the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname (in northern South America) and in many parts of former Dutch colonies. Dutch is also taught in over 225 universities around the world at an academic level.

For many centuries, the Netherlands has been playing an important role in the European economy. It has currently the 16th largest economy in the world and is among the world’s 10 leading exporting countries.

Read Also: Dutch Language Translation

As you can see from this, doing business with the Netherlands, or with the many countries that use Dutch as their language, could have immense benefits for your company. But only if can reach the target audience in their own language, and without any embarrassing translation mistakes. Only a professional translation agency like CCJK can guarantee that your translations into or from Dutch are accurate and precise. We only employ native Dutch translators, with many years of experience in a variety of different fields.

So, if you let CCJK take care of your Dutch translations, you can rest assured that

Uw vertaling is perfect – your translation is perfect!