Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. In the Netherlands, the English language can be spoken by the vast majority of the population, with estimates of English proficiency reaching anywhere from 90% to 93% of the Dutch population.
Although the official language is Dutch, almost 95% of the population speaks English. Therefore, not knowing Dutch isn't an issue! Learning Dutch is difficult because the Dutch people are eager to speak English. There isn't a language barrier, and this makes life more comfortable for those coming from another country.
Next to ranking among the tallest people in the world, the Dutch are also better at speaking English than any other non-native country. According to research, between 90% and 93% of Dutchies claim to be able to hold a conversation in English.
Dutch speaking countries
The Dutch language (native name: Nederlands, Vlaams) has its roots in the Indo-European language family. As a percentage of the total population, the largest share of around 96 percent is in the Netherlands. A total of about 23.3 million people worldwide speak Dutch as their mother tongue.
The Dutch people prefer you use “The Netherlands” as Holland is a Western region of the country and consists of two provinces: North Holland and South Holland [it used to be a single Province].
While there may at times be some amount of antipathy towards outsiders, most Dutch people are actually extremely humble, welcoming, and friendly towards outsiders.
Because they are of Germanic descent. Dutch = Deutsch.
If you want to say hi in Dutch, you would simply say “hoi”. The more formal hello is “hallo”. Regional varieties of “hi” include “heuj”, “alo” and “huijj” but sticking to “hoi” or “hallo” is generally all you need.
When meeting someone in a casual setting, it is common for people to say “Hoi” ('Hi') or “Hoe gaat het?” ('How are you? ') Meanwhile in formal settings, the most common greeting is “Hoe gaat het met u?” ('How are you? ').
At first, Dutch might seem like a very difficult language, but it's surprisingly easy for English- and German-speakers. Dutch has even been described as a combination of the English and German languages! This makes it one of the easiest languages to learn for speakers of either language.
Contributing factors for the high degree of English fluency are the similarity of the two languages, the country's small size, dependence on international trade, and the use of subtitles for foreign languages on television, rather than audio dubbing.
Like Frisian and English, Dutch is another West Germanic language that developed from Proto-Germanic. Because of this, Dutch possesses many words and phrases similar to English and has a similar grammatical structure.
There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. However, the closest major language to English, is Dutch.
Yes! English is very widely spoken in Amsterdam and in the Netherlands as a whole. It might surprise you to know that not only do they speak English in Amsterdam, but more than 90% of the population can actually speak it fluently (almost at the level of a native speaker). So, language barriers aren't too common!
English is widely spoken in Amsterdam and other major Dutch cities. Just about everyone in the cities speaks English fluently, often as well as native speakers.
Dutch, German, English, Swedish and Danish are all Germanic languages but the degree of mutual intelligibility between these languages differs. Danish and Swedish are the most mutually comprehensible, but German and Dutch are also mutually intelligible.
If you want to say “goodbye” in Dutch, you have plenty of options. The most common in probably “dag.” But “doeg,” “doei,” “doe-doei,” “joe,” “hoje,” “tjuus,” and “houdoe” are all either other general ways or regional ways to say “goodbye.”
To say “I'm sorry,” you would conjugate this as het spijt me. Here's how that sounds in a sentence: Sorry, het spijt me.
Mokum, without Aleph, is still commonly used as a nickname in the Netherlands for the city of Amsterdam. The nickname was first considered to be bargoens, a form of Dutch slang, but in the 20th century it lost its negative sound and is now used by Amsterdammers as a nickname for their city in a sentimental context.
In the Dutch language, the Dutch refer to themselves as Nederlanders.
In Dutch, the country is called Nederland, so this can sometimes get translated as just Netherlands in English. However, according to the Dutch government, the official name of the country is the Netherlands - taken from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, or Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in Dutch.
Because tourists primarily visit cities in the region of Holland, largely ignoring the other 10 provinces, the government has decided to work to attract focus on the country as a whole. The Dutch government is transitioning to using “The Netherlands” in all of its official branding.