The Dutch / Flemish Community in SL

As a sales person, you meet people at the lot of ABC of all different countries and all have a different mothertongue.

English is of course 'THE' language of SL, SL was founded by americans in Californea. I want to give some more info about the dutch language.

Where do people speak dutch as their mothertongue ?

Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken, mainly in the Netherlands, Flanders (northern part of Belgium) and Suriname , but also by smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other West Germanic languages (e.g., English, West Frisian and German) and somewhat more remotely to the North Germanic languages (Scandinavian languages). Dutch is a descendant of Old Frankish and (its 17th century version) is the parent language of Afrikaans , one of the official languages of South Africa and the most widely understood in Namibia. Dutch and Afrikaans are to a very large extent mutually intelligible, although they have separate spelling standards and dictionaries and have separate language regulators. There are also several Dutch Creole languages or languages which are influenced by Dutch. Standard Dutch is the standard language of the major Dutch-speaking areas and is regulated by the Dutch Language Union. Dutch is also an official language of the European Union and the Union of South American Nations.

Dutch grammar also shares many traits with German, especially in syntax, but has a less complicated morphology caused by deflexion, which puts it closer to English. Dutch has officially three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, however, according to some interpretations these are reduced to only two, common and neuter, which is similar to the gender systems of most Continental Scandinavian languages.

The consonant system of Dutch did not undergo the High German consonant shift and has more in common with English and the Scandinavian languages. Like most Germanic languages it has a syllable structure that allows fairly complex consonant clusters. Dutch is often noted for the prominent use of velar fricatives.

Dutch vocabulary is predominantly Germanic in origin, considerably more so than English. This is to a large part due to the heavy influence of Norman French on English, and to Dutch patterns of word formation, such as the tendency to form long and sometimes very complicated compound nouns, being more similar to those of German and the Scandinavian languages.

Native: 31 million: 23 million speakers of Dutch as first language, plus 4 million with Dutch as second language, and 7 million speakers of Afrikaans as first language, plus 10 million with Afrikaans as second language.
Total: ca. 30/44 million (Dutch: 23/27 mill., Afrikaans: 7/17 mill.)

A Dutch American is an inhabitant of the United States with full or partial Dutch ancestry.

Some notable dutch Americans :

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was the thirty-second President of the United States. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945, and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms of office. He was a central figure of the 20th century during a time of worldwide economic crisis and war.

Martin Van Buren (December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862), nicknamed Old Kinderhook, was the eighth President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. Before his presidency, he served as the eighth Vice President (1833-1837) and the 10th Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson. He was a key organizer of the Democratic Party, a dominant figure in the Second Party System, and the first president who was not of English, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish descent. He was the first president to be born an American citizen (his predecessors were born before the revolution); he is also the only president not to have spoken English as a first language, having grown up speaking Dutch.

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The Dutch people were one of the earliest Europeans who made their way to the New World. In 1614 the first Dutch settlers arrived and founded a number of villages and a town called New Amsterdam on the East Coast, which would become the future world metropolis of New York. According to the 2000 United States Census, more than 5 million Americans claim total or partial Dutch heritage. Today the majority of the Dutch Americans live in California, New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Mickey Geest
04 10 2008