For the earliest stages of the Dutch language (and so its literature), the boundaries with what is now considered German are vague, and some fragments and authors are claimed for both realms. Examples include the ninth-century Wachtendonk Psalms, a West Low Franconian translation of some of the Psalms on the threshold of what is considered Dutch, and the twelfth-century poet Henric van Veldeke, who is claimed by both Dutch and German literature. The earliest literature to be indisputably ...

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Dutch literature, Dutch literature - Earliest stages 800–1550, Dutch literature - Renaissance and the Golden Age 1550–1670, Dutch literature - Decline 1670–1795, Dutch literature - The Nineteenth Century, Dutch literature - The Twentieth Century, Dutch literature - Interbellum and the Second World War 1920–1945, Dutch literature - Modern Times 1945–present

Read more here: » Dutch literature: Encyclopedia II - Dutch literature - Earliest stages 800–1550

A discussion of Belgian culture requires discussing both those aspects of cultural life shared by 'all' or most of the Belgians, regardless of what language they speak, and also, the differences between the main cultural communities, the Flemings and the French-speakers from Brussels and Wallonia. Most Belgians tend to view their culture as an integral part of European culture; nevertheless, both main communities tend to make their thousands of individual and collective cultural choices mainly from within their own community, a ...

Including:

• Culture of Belgium - Art
• Culture of Belgium - Museums
• Culture of Belgium - Literature
• Culture of Belgium - Comics
• Culture of Belgium - Music
• Culture of Belgium - Architecture
• Culture of Belgium - Cinematography
• Culture of Belgium - Gastronomy
• Culture of Belgium - Sport
• Culture of Belgium - Folklore

Read more here: » Culture of Belgium: Encyclopedia - Culture of Belgium

Culture of Belgium - Museums. Belgium has a large variety of museums and temporary expositions. Some of the most impressive museums in Belgium are The Royal Museum for Fine Arts, in Antwerpen, which has an admirable collection of works by Peter Paul Rubens, the Groeninge museum in Bruges, with the Flemish Primitives, and The Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, which has a cinema, a concert hall, and artworks of many periods, including a large René Magritte collection. Furthermore, the Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp, a world heritage site, is the complete factory of the largest p ...

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Culture of Belgium, Culture of Belgium - Art, Culture of Belgium - Museums, Culture of Belgium - Literature, Culture of Belgium - Comics, Culture of Belgium - Music, Culture of Belgium - Architecture, Culture of Belgium - Cinematography, Culture of Belgium - Gastronomy, Culture of Belgium - Sport, Culture of Belgium - Folklore

Read more here: » Culture of Belgium: Encyclopedia II - Culture of Belgium - Art

Dutch is spoken by most inhabitants of the Netherlands. It is also spoken by most in the Flemish northern half of Belgium, with the exception of Brussels, where it is spoken by a minority of the population, French being the dominant language. (This minority is typically estimated between 7,5% and 15%.) In the northernmost part of France, Dutch is spoken by a minority and the language is usually referred to as Vlemsch. On the Caribbean islands of Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, Dutch is used but less so than Papiamento. Dutch is sp ...

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Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Geographic distribution

Dutch is spoken by most inhabitants of the Netherlands. It is also spoken by most in the Flemish northern half of Belgium, with the exception of Brussels, where it is spoken by a minority of the population, French being the dominant language. (This minority is typically estimated between 7,5% and 15%.) In the northernmost part of France, Dutch is spoken by a minority and the language is usually referred to as Vlomsch. On the Caribbean islands of Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, Dutch is used but less so than Papiamento. Dutch is sp ...

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Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Geographic distribution

Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for some Anglophones learning Dutch. The Dutch written grammar has simplified over the past 100 years: cases are now mainly used for the pronouns, such as ik (I), mij, me (me), mijn (my), wie (who), wiens, wier (whose), although the latter is quite formal and rarely used in speech, comparable to English ‘whom’. Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (ex ...

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Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Grammar

Dutch is a Germanic language, and within this family it is a West Germanic language. Since it did not experience the High German consonant shift (apart from þ→d), it is sometimes classed as a Low Germanic language, and indeed it is most closely related to the Low German dialects of Northern Germany. There is in fact a dialect continuum which blurs any clear boundary between Dutch and Low German, and the Low Franconian rural dialects of the Lower Rhine are much closer to Hollandic than to standard German. Dividing the West Germanic languag ...

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Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Classification and related languages

The most popular sport in Belgium is football (soccer). The Belgian First Division is one of the older leagues in the world. Belgium used to be on top of world football in the 1970s and 1980s when the Belgium national football team (also known as the Red Devils) finished 4th at the 1986 FIFA World Cup, 2nd at the 1980 European Football Championship and 3rd at the 1972 European Football Championship, while Be ...

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Culture of Belgium, Culture of Belgium - Art, Culture of Belgium - Museums, Culture of Belgium - Literature, Culture of Belgium - Comics, Culture of Belgium - Music, Culture of Belgium - Architecture, Culture of Belgium - Cinematography, Culture of Belgium - Gastronomy, Culture of Belgium - Sport, Culture of Belgium - Folklore

Read more here: » Culture of Belgium: Encyclopedia II - Culture of Belgium - Sport

Curaçao (pronounced [kura'são]) is an island in the southern part of the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela. The isle is the largest and most populous of the three so-called ABC islands (for Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao) and belongs to the Netherlands Antilles, a self-governing part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Curaçao's capital is Willemstad. Curaçao has a land area of 444 square kilometres (171 mi²). At the 2001 Netherlands Antilles census, the population was 130,627 inhabitants, which means a population dens ...

Including:

• Curaçao - Geography
• Curaçao - History
• Curaçao - People
• Curaçao - Politics
• Curaçao - Economy
• Curaçao - Language
• Curaçao - Religion
• Curaçao - Literature
• Curaçao - Food
• Curaçao - Celebrities from Curaçao
• Curaçao - Flag

Read more here: » Curaçao: Encyclopedia - Curaçao

Good cooking and fine beers are seen by many as part of Belgian culture. The beer with the most prestige is that of the Trappist monks. Technically, it is an ale and traditionally each abbey's beer is served in its own glass (the forms, heights and widths are different). There are only seven breweries (six of them are Belgian) that are allowed to brew Trappist beer. Although Belgian gastronomy does not really exist (it is connected to French cuisine), some recipes were invented there as e.g. french fries (which were named so by Americ ...

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Culture of Belgium, Culture of Belgium - Art, Culture of Belgium - Museums, Culture of Belgium - Literature, Culture of Belgium - Comics, Culture of Belgium - Music, Culture of Belgium - Architecture, Culture of Belgium - Cinematography, Culture of Belgium - Gastronomy, Culture of Belgium - Sport, Culture of Belgium - Folklore

Read more here: » Culture of Belgium: Encyclopedia II - Culture of Belgium - Gastronomy

Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet, see Dutch alphabet. The diaeresis is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately, and called trema. In the most recent spelling reform, a hyphen has replaced the trema in a few words where it had been previously used: zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend. The acute accent (accent aigu) occurs mainly on loanwords like café, but can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite a ...

See also:

Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Writing system

Dutch language - Vowels. The vowel inventory of Dutch is large, with 14 simple vowels and four diphthongs. The vowels /eː/, /øː/, /oː/ are included on the diphthong chart because they are actually produced as narrow closing diphthongs in many dialects, but behave phonologically like the other simple vowels. When unstressed, /a/ and See also:

Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Sounds

Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for some Anglophones learning Dutch. The Dutch written grammar has simplified over the past 100 years: cases are now mainly used for the pronouns, such as ik (I), mij, me (me), mijn (my), wie (who), wiens, wier (whose), allthough the latter is quite formal and rarely used in speech, comparable to English ‘whom’. Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (e ...

See also:

Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Grammar

The West Germanic dialects can be divided according to tribe (Frisian, Saxon, Franconian, Bavarian and Swabian), and according to the extent of their participation in the High German consonant shift (Low Germanic against High Germanic). The present Dutch standard language is largely derived from Low Franconian dialects spoken in the Low Countries that must have reached a separate identity no later than about AD 600. An early Dutch recorded writing is: "Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan, hinase hic enda tu, wat unbidan we nu" ( ...

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Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - History

Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet, see Dutch alphabet. The diaeresis is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately, and called trema. In the most recent spelling reform, a hyphen has replaced the trema in a few words where it had been previously used: zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend. The acute accent (accent aigu) occurs mainly on loanwords like café, but can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite article ...

See also:

Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Writing system

Dutch language - Vowels. The vowel inventory of Dutch is large, with 14 simple vowels and four diphthongs. The vowels /eː/, /øː/, /oː/ are included on the diphthong chart because they are actually produced as narrow closing diphthongs in many dialects, but behave phonologically like the other simple vowels. See also:

Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Sounds

Festivals play a major role in Belgium's cultural life. Nearly every city and town has its own festival, some that date back several centuries. And these aren't just tricks for tourism, but real, authentic celebrations that take months to prepare. Two of the biggest festivals are the three-day carnival at Binche, near Mons, held just before Lent (the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter), and the Procession of the Holy Blood, held in Bruges in May. During the carnival in Binche, "Gilles" lead the procession, which are men dressed in high ...

See also:

Culture of Belgium, Culture of Belgium - Art, Culture of Belgium - Museums, Culture of Belgium - Literature, Culture of Belgium - Comics, Culture of Belgium - Music, Culture of Belgium - Architecture, Culture of Belgium - Cinematography, Culture of Belgium - Gastronomy, Culture of Belgium - Sport, Culture of Belgium - Folklore

Read more here: » Culture of Belgium: Encyclopedia II - Culture of Belgium - Folklore

The number of non native speakers of Dutch who voluntarily learn the language is small. This is partly because Dutch is not geographically widespread and because in its home countries The Netherlands and Belgium most of the population is proficient in other European languages. In The Netherlands German is spoken with a high level of proficiency (especially in the regions bordering Germany) and the language is part of the core curriculum in schools for 2-5 years. In Belgium, German is less widely spoken, and not always required, but it ...

See also:

Dutch language, Dutch language - History, Dutch language - Etymology of the word Dutch, Dutch language - Classification and related languages, Dutch language - Geographic distribution, Dutch language - Official status, Dutch language - Dialects, Dutch language - Accents, Dutch language - Derived languages, Dutch language - Sounds, Dutch language - Vowels, Dutch language - Consonants, Dutch language - Phonology, Dutch language - Historical sound changes, Dutch language - Grammar, Dutch language - Vocabulary, Dutch language - Writing system, Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

Read more here: » Dutch language: Encyclopedia II - Dutch language - Dutch as a foreign language

The original inhabitants of Curaçao were Arawak Amerindians. The first Europeans to sight the island were the members of a Spanish expedition under the leadership of Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. The Spaniards decimated the Arawak. The island was occupied by the Dutch in 1634. The Dutch West India Company founded the capital of Willemstad on the banks of an inlet called the 'Schottegat'. Curaçao had been previous ignored by colonists because it lacked many things that colonists were interested in, such as gold deposits. However, the natural har ...

See also:

Curaçao, Curaçao - Geography, Curaçao - History, Curaçao - People, Curaçao - Politics, Curaçao - Economy, Curaçao - Language, Curaçao - Religion, Curaçao - Literature, Curaçao - Food, Curaçao - Celebrities from Curaçao, Curaçao - Flag

Read more here: » Curaçao: Encyclopedia II - Curaçao - History

History of the Netherlands - Eighty Years' War. For details, see the main Eighty Years' War article. Through inheritance and conquest, all of the Low Countries became possessions of the Habsburg dynasty under Charles V in the 16th century, who united them into one state. The east of the Netherlands was occupied only a few decades before the Dutch struggle for independence. However, in 1548, eight years before his abdication from the throne, Emperor Charles V granted the Seventeen Provin ...

See also:

History of the Netherlands, History of the Netherlands - Pre-history era, History of the Netherlands - Roman era, History of the Netherlands - Holy Roman Empire, History of the Netherlands - Burgundian period, History of the Netherlands - Struggle for independence and the Golden Age, History of the Netherlands - Eighty Years' War, History of the Netherlands - Golden Age, History of the Netherlands - Batavian revolution, History of the Netherlands - Batavian Republic and French rule, History of the Netherlands - Monarchy, History of the Netherlands - 20th century, History of the Netherlands - World War II, History of the Netherlands - Post-war years

Read more here: » History of the Netherlands: Encyclopedia II - History of the Netherlands - Struggle for independence and the Golden Age