Table of Contents

Chapter One: Who speaks Dutch and where? ; Chapter Two: Old Dutch. Its Ancestors and Its Contemporaries ; Chapter Three: Middle Dutch: Language and Literature ; Chapter Four: Early New Dutch 1500-1800 ; Chapter Five: Reunion and Secession: The Nineteenth Century ; Chapter Six: Twentieth Century: The Age of the Standard Language ; Chapter Seven: Colonial Dutch ; Chapter Eight: Afrikaans ; Chapter Nine: Progress or Decay? The future development of Dutch ; Chapter Ten: Chapter Main Sources and Further Reading

About the Author

Roland Willemyns is Emeritus Professor of Dutch Linguistics at Vrije Universiteit Brussels

Reviews

All in all, Willemyns' biography of Dutch is a very dense book, clearly striving to provide as much information as possible on the history of Dutch. It remains, however, a very readable book, suitable for different groups of readers ranging from interested non-native speakers and foreigners to specialists in the Dutch language.
*Ulrike Vogel, Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics*

a survey that brings a broad public up to date with the evolution of a language through centuries of contacts and conflicts with other tongues. Finally, you can trace the entire history of Dutch in an English-language book.
*Andy Furniere, Flanders Today*

Willemyns has splendidly packed a great deal of fascinating material into 260 pages of this highly readable and comprehensive survey
*Joe Sinclair, Nurturing Potential*

This book drives home the sociohistorical complexity of the language [with] fascinating illustrations of questions of linguistic form
*Kathryn Woolard, Language in Society*

vivid and clear ... a wonderful book
*Neder-L*