The history of the Dutch language begins around 450/500 AD, after Old Frankish, one of the many West Germanic tribal languages, was split by the Second Germanic consonant shift while at more or less the same time the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law led to the development of the direct ancestors of modern Low Saxon, ...
Together with English, Frisian, German, and Luxembourgish, Dutch is a West Germanic language. It derives from Low Franconian, the speech of the Western Franks, which was restructured through contact with speakers of North Sea Germanic along the coast (Flanders, Holland) about 700 ce.
Dutch, German and English are in the same family tree
So Dutch is about 1500 years old. To simplify a little bit, you can see it like this. German is the oldest form. Dutch emerged from it, and from Dutch came English.
In linguistics, Old Dutch (Dutch: Oudnederlands) or Old Low Franconian (Dutch: Oudnederfrankisch) is the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. dialects that evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 6th or 8th to the 12th century.
Its closest relative is the mutually intelligible daughter language Afrikaans. Other West Germanic languages related to Dutch are German, English and the un-standardised languages Low German and Yiddish.
The Dutch didn't regard themselves as Germans any more since the 15th century, but they officially remained a part of Germany until 1648. National identity was mainly formed by the province people came from. Holland was the most important province by far.
Afrikaans and English are the only Indo-European languages among the many official languages of South Africa. Although Afrikaans is very similar to Dutch, it is clearly a separate language, differing from Standard Dutch in its sound system and its loss of case and gender distinctions.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
Seeing as the Dutch refer to themselves as "nederlanders", there's no reason why the English can't use the equivalent 'netherlanders', in the same vein as 'greenlanders' or indeed 'new zealanders', but that's a different question.
The Dutch (Dutch: Nederlanders) are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common ancestry and culture and speak the Dutch language.
In 1624, the first colonists, mostly Walloons and their slaves-bound servants, arrived to New Netherland by the shipload, landing at Governors Island and initially dispensed to Fort Orange, Fort Wilhelmus and Kievets Hoek.
The word Dutch comes from a Proto-Germanic word meaning “of the people.” It shares a root with the German word Deutsch, which has led to some confusing names. The name Germans call Germany, for example, is Deutschland and the people there Deutsch. Dutch and German are related, after all, both being Germanic languages.
Hollandic. As we said before, there are a number of Dutch-speaking countries. But the most prominent Dutch dialects are naturally found in the Netherlands. Hollandic or Hollandish was originally influenced by a West Frisian sub-dialect as well as some Brabantian languages.
Historically, Nederlanders were often intermixed with many ethnic groups. According to DNA testing companies, Dutch DNA is considered mainly Germanic French, which seems a broader stroke of DNA than some common and visible Dutch characteristics that I see.
Well, not to intentionally complicate things but they are not actually wrong. After all, Flemish is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as the “Dutch language spoken in Northern Belgium”. So, the terms 'Flemish' and 'Belgian Dutch' actually refer to the same language.
For example, English and Dutch are closely related languages and would be right next to each other on the Indo-European family tree, because they are both directly descended from a common ancestor language (Proto-Low Germanic) that itself came from Proto-Germanic.
The official name of the country is the Kingdom of the Netherlands. King Willem-Alexander is the king of the nation. Holland actually only means the two provinces of Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland. However, the name Holland is often used when all of the Netherlands is meant.
The government has started to rebrand the country as the Netherlands to enhance its image in the face of global competition. For decades, the Dutch government used “Holland” and “the Netherlands” interchangeably to describe the country known for its iconic canals, tulip fields and windmills.
God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. A land of giants, the Netherlands is the loftiest nation on Earth: the average height of a Dutch man is 182.5cm; a Dutch woman 168.7cm. By comparison their American counterparts measure 177.1cm and 163.5cm respectively.
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
Although Dutch and German are related, it is very difficult for speakers of the two languages to understand each other.
The world's youngest language, coming in at only 100 years old (officially), is the South African language of Afrikaans. Surprised? Afrikaans, the natively spoken language of 7 million South Africans, was born from the white Dutch, French, and German colonizers in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Afrikaans can trace its roots back to 17th and 18th century Dutch. The language, which is spoken in South Africa and Namibia, as well as some areas of Botswana, began to evolve independently from Dutch in the 18th century.