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Dutch () is a West Germanic language that is spoken in the European Union by about 23 million people as a first language—including most of the population of the Netherlands and about sixty percent of that of Belgium—and by another 5 million as a second language.〔 "1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." (page 153)〕〔〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Netherlandic language - Encyclopedia Britannica )〕 Outside of the Low Countries, it is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname, and also holds official status in the Caribbean island nations of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Historical minorities remain in parts of France and Germany, and to a lesser extent, in Indonesia,〔In France, a historical dialect called French Flemish is spoken. There are about 80,000 Dutch speakers in France; see . In French Flanders, only a remnant of between 50,000 to 100,000 Flemish-speakers remain; see . Flemish is spoken in the north-west of France by an estimated population of 20,000 daily speakers and 40,000 occasional speakers; see . A dialect continuum exists between Dutch and German through the South Guelderish and Limburgish dialects. In 1941, 400,000 Indonesians spoke Dutch, and Dutch exerted a major influence on Indonesian; see . In 1941, about 0.5% of the inland population had a reasonable knowledge of Dutch; see . At the beginning of World War II, about one million Asians had an active command of Dutch, while an additional half million had a passive knowledge; see . Many older Indonesians speak Dutch as a second language; see . Some of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia speak Dutch amongst each other; see , . Dutch is spoken by "smaller groups of speakers" in Indonesia; see . Some younger Indonesians learn Dutch as a foreign language because their parents and grandparents may speak it and because in some circles, Dutch is regarded as the language of the elite; see . At present, only educated people of the oldest generation, in addition to specialists who require knowledge of the language, can speak Dutch fluently; see . Around 25% of present-day Indonesian vocabulary can be traced back to Dutch words, see .〕 while up to half a million native speakers may reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined. The Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa have evolved into Afrikaans, a mutually intelligible daughter language〔Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , . Afrikaans was historically called Cape Dutch; see , , , , , . Afrikaans is rooted in 17th century dialects of Dutch; see , , , . Afrikaans is variously described as a creole, a partially creolised language, or a deviant variety of Dutch; see .〕 which is spoken to some degree by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is 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 the case system. Features shared with German include the survival of three grammatical genders—albeit with few grammatical consequences—and the use of modal particles,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=A Guide to Dutch - 10 facts about the Dutch language )〕 final-obstruent devoicing, and V2 with subject–object–verb word order. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but fewer than English. ==Names== (詳細はFlemish". In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the native official name for Dutch is ''Nederlands'', and its dialects have their own names, e.g. ''Hollands'' "Hollandish", ''West-Vlaams'' "Western Flemish", ''Brabants'' "Brabantian".〔(Britannica on Netherlandic Language ); see also C.B. van Haeringen, ''Netherlandic language research. Men and works in the study of Dutch'', 2nd edition, Leiden: Brill 1960.〕 The language has been known under a variety of names. In Middle Dutch, ''dietsc'' (in the South) and ''diutsc'', ''duutsc'' (in the North) were used to refer variably to Dutch, Low German, and German. This word is derived from ''diet'' "people" and was used to translate Latin ''(lingua) vulgaris'' "popular language" to set apart the Germanic vernacular from Latin (the language of writing and the Church) and Romance.〔''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary'', 2nd revised edn., s.v. "Dutch" (Random House Reference, 2005).〕 An early form of this word appears Latinized in the Strasbourg Oaths (AD 842) as ''teudisca (lingua)'' to refer to the Rhenish Franconian portion of the oath, underlies dialectal French ''thiois'' "Luxembourgish", "Lorraine Franconian", and has survived in Italian as ''tedesco'', "German". During the Renaissance in the 16th century, ''duytsch'' (modern ''Duits'') "German" and ''nederduytsch'' "Low German" began to be differentiated from ''dietsch'' or ''nederlandsch'' "Dutch",〔"Dutch", in ''Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe'', ed. Glanville Price (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 129.〕 a distinction that is echoed in English later the same century with the terms ''High Dutch'' "German" and ''Low Dutch'' "Dutch". However, owing to Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry in the 16th and 17th centuries, the English term came to refer exclusively to the Dutch. In modern Dutch, ''Duits'' has narrowed in meaning to refer to "German". ''Diets'' went out of common use because of its Nazi associations〔Until World War II, ''Nederlands'' rivaled ''Diets'' as the language's designation. However the similarity to ''Deutsch'' resulted in its disuse when the German occupiers and Dutch fascists appropriated and made extensive use of ''Diets'' to stress the Dutch as an ancient Germanic people.〕 and now somewhat romantically refers to older forms of Dutch,〔Price, ''Encyc. Langs. of Europe'', 129.〕 whereas ''Vlaams'' is sometimes used for the language as a whole when referring to the varieties spoken in Belgium.〔Georges De Schutter, "Dutch", ''The Germanic Languages'', eds. Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera (London: Routledge, 1994), 439.〕 ''Nederlands'', the official Dutch word for "Dutch", did not become firmly established until the 19th century. The repeated use of ''neder''- or "low" to refer to the language is a reference to the Netherlands' downriver location at the mouth of the Rhine (harking back to Latin nomenclature, e.g. ''Germania inferior'' vs. ''Germania superior'') and its position at the lowest dip of the Northern European plain.〔 See J. Verdam, ''Middelnederlandsch handwoordenboek'' (The Hague 1932 (reprinted 1994)): "Nederlant, znw. o. I) Laag of aan zee gelegen land. 2) land aan den Nederrijn; Nedersaksen, -duitschland."〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Hermes in uitbreiding )〕〔 ''neder-'' corresponds with the English ''nether-'', which means "low" or "down". See (Online etymological dictionary. Entry: Nether. )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dutch language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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