Dutch Language course

Reckoned by the number of people who speak it, Dutch is the third Germanic language. It comes after English and German, but is spoken by far more people than Swedish, Danish, Norwegian or Frisian. In fact, with its approximately twenty-two million speakers Dutch is about the same size as Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Frisian taken all together. Compared with most of the world's languages the history of Dutch is very well documented, and for this reason it gained attention very early on in international linguistics. Outside linguistic circles, however, not much is known about Dutch, certainly far less than is known about the Netherlands and Belgium, the countries where Dutch is the standard language. Many a tourist in the Low Countries is surprised to find that there is a Dutch language which is quite distinct from German or English.