El idioma neerlandés (también llamado holandés, término aceptado por la RAE, aunque es el término que se utiliza para denominar uno de sus dialectos) pertenece a la familia germánica, que a su vez es miembro de la macrofamilia indoeuropea. Forma parte del grupo germánico occidental, relacionado con el bajo alemán. Es la lengua materna de más de 23 millones de personas en el mundo y la tercera lengua germánica con más hablantes nativos, después del inglés y el alemán. \n* Es lengua oficial en el Reino de los Países Bajos compuesto por los Países Bajos (En la región de Frisia el frisio también es oficial), las islas antes llamadas Antillas Neerlandesas de Curazao, San Martín, Aruba Bonaire, Saba y San Eustaquio, en Bélgica (concretamente en las regiones de Flandes y Bruselas) y en Surinam. Es también una de las lenguas oficiales de la Unión Europea y de la Unión de Naciones Suramericanas. \n* Sin ser oficial, es empleado también como lengua materna en partes de la región del bajo Rin de Alemania y en el norte de Francia (unos 60.000 hablantes). Debido a la colonización y la emigración se habla también en Canadá (unos 129.000), en Estados Unidos, en Nueva Zelanda (unos 29.000) y en algunas partes de Indonesia, donde era la lengua utilizada en la administración pública colonial neerlandesa.

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Dutch () is a West Germanic language that is spoken in the European Union by about 23 million people as a first language—including most of the population of the Netherlands and about sixty percent that of Belgium—and by another 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after German and English. Dutch has developed over the course of 15 centuries. Old Dutch developed from Frankish, as it was spoken by the Salian Franks in the fifth century. Middle Dutch began in the late 11th century with the proliferation of a Medieval Dutch literature. Modern Dutch began in the late 15th century when the first attempts for a Standard language were made. Despite the worldwide influence of the Dutch Empire, modern Dutch spread only moderately around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries. Outside of the Low Countries, it is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname, and also holds official status in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Historical minorities on the verge of extinction remain in parts of France and Germany, and in Indonesia, while up to half a million native speakers may reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined. The Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa have evolved into Afrikaans, a mutually intelligible daughter language which is spoken to some degree by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is said to be roughly in between them. Dutch, like English, has not undergone the High German consonant shift, does not use Germanic umlaut as a grammatical marker, has largely abandoned the use of the subjunctive, and has levelled much of its morphology, including the case system. Features shared with German include the survival of three grammatical genders—albeit with few grammatical consequences—as well as the use of modal particles, final-obstruent devoicing, and a similar word order. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but fewer than English.

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