Dutch Language - Classification

Classification

• Indo-European languages
  • Germanic
    • West Germanic
      • Low Franconian
        • Dutch
          • Afrikaans, Dutch-based creoles

Dutch belongs to its own West Germanic sub-group, West Low Franconian, paired with its sister language Limburgian, or East Low Franconian, both of which stand out by mixing characteristics of Low German and German. Dutch is at one end of a dialect continuum known as the Rhenish fan where German gradually turns into Dutch. There was also at one time a dialect continuum that blurred the boundary between Dutch and Low German. In some small areas, there are still dialect continua, but they are gradually becoming extinct.

All three languages have shifted earlier /θ/ → /d/, show final-obstruent devoicing (Du brood "bread" ), and experienced lengthening of short vowels in stressed open syllables which has led to contrastive vowel length that is used as a morphological marker. Dutch stands out from Low German and German in its retention of the clusters sp/st, shifting of sk to and initial g- to, highly simplified morphology, and the fact it did not develop i-mutation as a morphological marker. In earlier periods, Low Franconian of either sort differed from Low German by maintaining a three-way plural verb conjugation (Old Dutch -un, -it, -unt → Middle Dutch -en, -t, -en). In modern Dutch, however, the former 2nd-person plural (-t) took the place of the 2nd-person singular, and the plural endings were reduced into a single form -en (cf. Du jij maakt "you(sg) make" vs. wij/jullie/zij maken "we/you(pl)/they make"). However, it is still possible to distinguish it from German (which has retained the three-way split) and Low German (which has -t in the present tense: wi/ji/se niemmet "we/you(pl)/they take"). Dutch and Low German show the collapsing of older ol/ul/al + dental into ol + dental, but in Dutch wherever /l/ was pre-consonantal and after a short vowel, it vocalized, e.g., Du goud "gold", zout "salt", woud "woods" : LG Gold, Solt, Woold : Germ Gold, Salz, Wald.

With Low German, Dutch shares the development of /xs/ → /ss/ (Du vossen "foxes", ossen "oxen", LG Vösse, Ossen vs. Germ Füchse, Ochsen), /ft/ → /cht/ though it is far more common in Dutch (Du zacht "soft", LG sacht vs. Germ sanft, but Du lucht "air" vs. LG/Germ Luft), generalizing the dative over the accusative case for certain pronouns (Du mij "me" (MDu di "you (sg.)"), LG mi/di vs. Germ mich/dich), and neither has undergone German's distinctive second consonant shift. Dutch and Low German have also monophthongized Germanic *ai → ē and *au → ō in all positions, e.g., Du steen "stone", oog "eye", LG Steen, Oog vs. G Stein, Auge, though this is not true of Limburgian (cf. sjtein, oug).

Dutch shares with German the reflexive pronoun zich (Germ sich), though this was originally borrowed from Limburgian, which is why in most dialects (Flemish, Brabantine) the usual reflexive is hem/haar, just like in the rest of West Germanic. Also, both languages have diphthongized Germanic ē² and long ō (Du hier "here", voet "foot", Germ hier, Fuß (from earlier fuoz) vs. LG hier, Foot "foot" ) and voiced pre-vocalic initial voiceless alveolar fricatives, e.g., Du zeven "seven", Germ sieben vs. LG söven, seven . The German pronoun wir "we" is absent from Dutch, but Limburgian has veer "we" instead of Dutch we (wij).