Dutch through the ages & Afrikaans

A short history — and the vocabulary to describe it

• Oudnederlands (c. 500–1150) survives in scraps such as the 10th-century Wachtendonckse psalmen. The line Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan… (c. 1100) is famous as “the oldest Dutch sentence”, although older fragments exist and its exact dialect is debated.
• Middelnederlands (c. 1150–1500) is the language of Van den vos Reynaerde, Hadewijch and Jacob van Maerlant. After the fall of Antwerp (1585) many southerners moved north and influenced the language of Holland; the Statenbijbel (1637) became a model for the written standard.
• Spelling was standardised step by step: Siegenbeek (1804), De Vries & Te Winkel (1860s), the Groene Boekje (1954) and reforms in 1995 and 2005. Since 1980 the Nederlandse Taalunie governs the language jointly for the Netherlands and Flanders, with Suriname as an associate member since 2004.
• Afrikaans developed from the 17th-century Dutch of settlers at the Cape (from 1652), influenced by Malay, Portuguese creole and Khoekhoe, among others. It became an official language in South Africa in 1925. It has no verb conjugation (ek is, jy is, hy is), one definite article (die) and a double negative: Ek kan nie kom nie.
• Describing language history needs prepositional verbs: afstammen van, verwant zijn aan (also met), woorden ontlenen aan, zich ontwikkelen tot, voortkomen uit.