Belgium–Ukraine relations are foreign relations between Belgium and Ukraine. Diplomatic relations were established in 1992. Belgium has an embassy in Kyiv; Ukraine has an embassy in Brussels and two honorary consulates (in Antwerp and Mons). Although politically the two nations are not closely connected, they have a long history of economic integration and trade, with Belgian investment playing a role in the contemporary Ukrainian economy.
Belgium is a member of the European Union, which Ukraine applied for in 2022. Both countries are full members of Council of Europe.

History
Trade links between Kievan Rus' and Flanders and what is now Belgium were established as early as the 11th century. By 1600, trade between the two regions had developed fully, particularly that of textiles and jewellery. Merchants from Kyiv arrived in Flanders with furs and purchased textiles. In return merchants transported wool and amber jewellery to Lviv in exchange of furs, silk and oriental seasoning.

Economic relations
In October 2008, the two nations became further integrated in the agricultural sector too when Belgian firm Rattlerow Seghers and Ukrainian Elita Farms signed an agreement to develop pig production in Ukraine.
Rattlerow Seghers delivered the first shipment breeding stock consisting of 192 pigs from Belgium to Elita Farms in Ukraine in January 2009. Rattlerow Seghers had exported the first breeding animals to Ukraine in 2004 and pigs have been successfully marketed using Belgian stock since the beginning of 2005, witnessing a growing demand and pressure to run larger pig farms in the country. The agreement in 2009 was made after close negotiations between the government institutes of both countries and important figures in the agricultural sector, both politically through representation and within the industry itself. Notable figures in the agreement included the Minister of Agriculture of Ukraine, Melnik Yuriy Fedorovych.  The agreement not only supplies breeding stock but also expert knowledge from Belgium and training programs to enhance the efficiency of the Ukrainian pig industry and facilitate growth and production after a period of economic decline.

Political relations

On 23 March 2009 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
travelled to Brussels for an international investment conference to discuss the modernisation of Ukraine's gas transit system and supplies.

Cultural relations
In addition the Academic Symphonic Orchestra of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine was conducted by the Belgian conductor Ronald Zollman.

See also
 Foreign relations of Belgium
 Foreign relations of Ukraine
 Ukrainians in Belgium
 Belgians in Ukraine
 Ukraine–European Union relations
 Accession of Ukraine to the European Union

References

External links
  Belgian embassy in Kyiv
  Ukrainian embassy in Brussels

Ukraine
Bilateral relations of Ukraine


Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives English and German. Afrikaans is a separate but somewhat mutually intelligible sister language of modern Dutch, and a daughter language of an earlier form of Dutch. It is spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, evolving from the Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa. The dialects used in Belgium (including Flemish) and in Suriname, meanwhile, are all guided by the Dutch Language Union.

In Europe, most of the population of the Netherlands (as one of the official languages, however not legally enshrined in the constitution) and about 60% of the population of Belgium (as one of three official languages) speak Dutch. Outside the Low Countries, Dutch is the native language of the majority of the population of the South American country of Suriname, a former Dutch colony, where it also holds an official status, as it does in the Caribbean island countries of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  Up to half a million native speakers reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined, and historical linguistic minorities on the verge of extinction remain in parts of France, Germany and Indonesia.

Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is colloquially 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 most of its case system. Features shared with German include the survival of two to 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; it incorporates slightly more Romance loans than German but far fewer than English.

Name

In Belgium, the Netherlands and Suriname, the native official name for Dutch is  (historically  before the Dutch orthographic reforms). Sometimes  ("Flemish") is used as well to describe Standard Dutch in Flanders, whereas  ("Hollandic") is occasionally used as a colloquial term for the standard language in the central and northwestern parts of the Netherlands.

English uses the adjective Dutch as a noun for the language of the Netherlands and Flanders. The word is derived from Proto-Germanic . The stem of this word, , meant "people" in Proto-Germanic, and  was an adjective-forming suffix, of which  is the Modern English form.  was its Latinised form and used as an adjective referring to the Germanic vernaculars of the Early Middle Ages. In this sense, it meant  "the language of the common people". The term was used as opposed to Latin, the non-native language of writing and the Catholic Church. It was first recorded in 786, when the Bishop of Ostia writes to Pope Adrian I about a synod taking place in Corbridge, England, where the decisions are being written down "" meaning "in Latin as well as common vernacular".

In northwestern West Francia (i.e. modern-day Belgium) the term would take on a new meaning during the Early Middle Ages, when, within the context of a highly dichromatic linguistic landscape, it came to be the antonym of *walhisk (Romance-speakers, specifically Old French). The word, now rendered as  (Southwestern variant) or  (Central and Northern Variant), could refer to the Dutch language itself, as well as a broader Germanic category depending on context. During the High Middle Ages "/" was increasingly used as an umbrella term for the specific Germanic dialects spoken in the Low Countries, its meaning being largely implicitly provided by the regional orientation of medieval Dutch society: apart from the higher echelons of the clergy and nobility, mobility was largely static and hence while "Dutch" could by extension also be used in its earlier sense, referring to what to today would be called Germanic dialects as opposed to Romance dialects, in many cases it was understood or meant to refer to the language now known as Dutch.

In the Low Countries  or its Early Modern Dutch form Duytsch as an endonym for Dutch gradually went out of common use and was gradually replaced by the Dutch endonym . This designation (first attested in 1482) started at the Burgundian court in the 15th century, although the use of , , , and  ("nether" or "low") to refer to the area known as the Low Countries goes back further in time, with the Romans referring to the region as Germania Inferior ("Lower" Germania). It is a reference to the Low Countries' downriver location at the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta near the North Sea.

From 1551, the designation  received strong competition from the name  (literally "Low Dutch",  Dutch being used in its archaic sense covering all continental West Germanic languages). It is a calque of the aforementioned Roman province Germania Inferior and an attempt by early Dutch grammarians to give their language more prestige by linking it to Roman times. Likewise,  ("High German") and  ("Upper-landish") came into use as a Dutch exonym for the various German dialects used in neighboring German states. Use of  was popular in the 16th century but ultimately lost out over  during the close of the 18th century, with  establishing itself as the Dutch exonym for German during this same period.

In the 19th century Germany saw the rise of the categorisation of dialects, with German dialectologists terming the German dialects spoken in the mountainous south of Germany as  ("High German"). Subsequently, German dialects spoken in the north were designated as  ("Low German"). The names for these dialects were calqued by Dutch linguists as  and . As a result,  no longer serves as a synonym for the Dutch language. In the 19th century, the term "" was revived by Dutch linguists and historians as well, as a poetic name for Middle Dutch and its literature.

History

Old Dutch can be discerned more or less around the same time as Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Old High German, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon. These names are derived from the modern standard languages. In this age no standard languages had yet developed, while a perfect West Germanic dialect continuum remained present; the division reflects the contingent future contribution dialect groups would have to the later languages. The early form of Dutch was a set of Franconian dialects spoken by the Salian Franks in the 5th century. These happened to develop through Middle Dutch to Modern Dutch over the course of fifteen centuries. During that period, they forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, and influenced or even replaced Old Saxon spoken in the east (contiguous with the Low German area). On the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in present-day France and Germany. The division into Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, since the transition between them was very gradual. One of the few moments when linguists can detect something of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. The development of the Dutch language is illustrated by the following sentence in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch:
  (Old Dutch)
  (Middle Dutch)
  (Modern Dutch, same word order)
  (Modern Dutch, default word order)
 He will deliver my soul in peace from those who approach me, because, amongst many, he was with me (English)

Origins

Among the Indo-European languages, Dutch is grouped within the Germanic languages, meaning it shares a common ancestor with languages such as English, German, and the Scandinavian languages. All Germanic languages are subject to the Grimm's law and Verner's law sound shifts, which originated in the Proto-Germanic language and define the basic features differentiating them from other Indo-European languages. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in the pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age.

The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: East (now extinct), West, and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period. Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German (Old Saxon) and High German. It is characterised by a number of phonological and morphological innovations not found in North or East Germanic. The West Germanic varieties of the time are generally split into three dialect groups: Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic), Istvaeonic (Weser-Rhine Germanic) and Irminonic (Elbe Germanic). It appears that the Frankish tribes fit primarily into the Istvaeonic dialect group with certain Ingvaeonic influences towards the northwest, which are still seen in modern Dutch.

Frankish (3rd–5th centuries)

The Frankish language itself is not directly attested, the only possible exception being the Bergakker inscription, found near the Dutch city of Tiel, which may represent a primary record of 5th-century Frankish. Although some place names recorded in Roman texts such as  (modern Dutch: , English: "mudflat"), could arguably be considered as the oldest single "Dutch" words, the Bergakker inscription yields the oldest evidence of Dutch morphology. However, interpretations of the rest of the text lack any consensus.

The Franks emerged in the southern Netherlands (Salian Franks) and central Germany (Ripuarian Franks), and later descended into Gaul. The name of their kingdom survives in that of France. Although they ruled the Gallo-Romans for nearly 300 years, their language, Frankish, became extinct in most of France and was replaced by later forms of the language throughout Luxembourg and Germany in around the 7th century. It was replaced in France by Old French (a Romance language with a considerable Old Frankish influence).

However, the Old Franconian language did not die out at large, as it continued to be spoken in the Low Countries, and subsequently evolved into what is now called Old Low Franconian or Old Dutch in the Low Countries. In fact, Old Frankish could be reconstructed from Old Dutch and Frankish loanwords in Old French.

Old Dutch (5th–12th centuries)

The term Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian refers to the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. West Germanic varieties that are assumed to have evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 5th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French. Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of the Salian Franks who occupied what is now the southern Netherlands, northern Belgium, part of northern France, and parts of the Lower Rhine regions of Germany.

The High German consonant shift, moving over Western Europe from south to west, caused a differentiation with the Central and High Franconian in Germany. The latter would as a consequence evolve (along with Alemannic, Bavarian and Lombardic) into Old High German. At more or less the same time the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, moving over Western Europe from west to east, led to the development of Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Hardly influenced by either development, Old Dutch probably remained relatively close to the original language of the Franks. However, the language did experience developments of its own, such as very early final-obstruent devoicing. In fact, the find at Bergakker indicates that the language may already have experienced this shift during the Old Frankish period.

Attestations of Old Dutch sentences are extremely rare. The language is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and loan words from Old Dutch in other languages. The oldest recorded is found in the Salic law. In this Frankish document written around 510 the oldest Dutch sentence has been identified:  ("I say to you, I free you, serf") used to free a serf. Another old fragment of Dutch is  ("A fish was swimming in the water"). The oldest conserved larger Dutch text is the Utrecht baptismal vow (776–800) starting with  (litt.: "Forsake you the devil? ... I forsake the devil"). If only for its poetic content, the most famous Old Dutch sentence is probably  ("All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for"), is dated to around the year 1100, written by a Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester, England. Since the sentence speaks to the imagination, it is often erroneously stated as the oldest Dutch sentence.

Middle Dutch (12th–15th centuries)

Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch. The year 1150 is often cited as the time of the discontinuity, but it actually marks a time of profuse Dutch writing; during this period a rich Medieval Dutch literature developed. There was at that time no overarching standard language; Middle Dutch is rather a collective name for a number of closely related, mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the former Old Dutch area. Where Old Dutch fragments are very hard to read for untrained Modern Dutch speakers, the various literary works of Middle Dutch are somewhat more accessible. The most notable difference between Old and Middle Dutch is in a feature of speech known as vowel reduction, whereby vowels in unstressed syllables are leveled to a schwa.

The Middle Dutch dialect areas were affected by political boundaries. The sphere of political influence of a certain ruler often also created a sphere of linguistic influence, with the language within the area becoming more homogenous. Following the contemporary political divisions they are in order of importance:
 West Flemish with the County of Flanders at its centre. It had been influential during the earlier Middle Ages (the "Flemish expansion") but lost prestige to the neighbouring Brabantian in the 13th century.
 Brabantian (and related East Flemish), spoken primarily in the Duchy of Brabant and adjacent parts. It was an influential dialect during most of the Middle Ages, during the so-called "Brabantian expansion" in which the influence of Brabant was extended outwards into other areas.
 Hollandic, which had the County of Holland as its heartland, where originally Old Frisian was spoken. The people adopted Low Franconian and a new Frankish dialect with a Frisian substrate developed. It was less influential during most of the Middle Ages but became more so in the 16th century during the "Hollandic expansion"; the Eighty Years' War took place in the Southern Netherlands during this period.
 Limburgish, spoken by the people in the modern-day provinces of Dutch and Belgian Limburg, and adjacent lands in Germany. It was over time tied to different political areas and is therefore the most divergent of the dialects. It was even partly influenced by the High German consonant shift and is the most distant to the later developed standard language to which it contributed little. It was, however, the earliest Middle Dutch dialect that developed a literary tradition.
 Since it is part of the Old Saxon and not Low Franconian (Old Dutch) area, Dutch Low Saxon is not strictly a Dutch dialect. However, it was influenced by Middle Dutch since the 14th century and it did play a part in the formation of the standard Dutch language in later periods. It was spoken in the Oversticht territories of the episcopal principality of Utrecht and adjacent parts of Guelders. A dialect continuum remained present with Low Franconian areas to the west and Low Saxon areas to the east.

Modern Dutch (15th century–present)

A process of standardisation started in the Middle Ages, especially under the influence of the Burgundian Ducal Court in Dijon (Brussels after 1477). The dialects of Flanders and Brabant were the most influential around this time. The process of standardisation became much stronger at the start of the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp. The 1585 fall of Antwerp to the Spanish army led to a flight to the northern Netherlands, where the Dutch Republic declared its independence from Spain. This influenced the urban dialects of the province of Holland. In 1637, a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the Statenvertaling, the first major Bible translation into Dutch, was created that people from all over the new republic could understand. It used elements from various, even Dutch Low Saxon, dialects but was predominantly based on the urban dialects of Holland of post 16th century.

In the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium and Luxembourg), developments were different. Under subsequent Spanish, Austrian and French rule, the standardisation of Dutch language came to a standstill. The state, law, and increasingly education used French, yet more than half the Belgian population were speaking a variety of Dutch. In the course of the 19th century, the Flemish Movement stood up for the rights of Dutch speakers, mostly referred to as "Flemish". However, the dialect variation was a serious disadvantage in the face of the standardised francophony. Since standardisation is a lengthy process, Dutch-speaking Belgium associated itself with the standard language that had already developed in the Netherlands over the centuries. Therefore, the situation in Belgium is essentially no different from that in the Netherlands, although there are recognisable differences in pronunciation, comparable to the pronunciation differences between standard British and standard American English. In 1980 the Netherlands and Belgium concluded the Language Union Treaty. This treaty lays down the principle that the two countries must gear their language policy to each other, among other things, for a common system of spelling.

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

Dutch belongs to its own West Germanic sub-group, the Low Franconian languages, paired with its sister language Limburgish or East Low Franconian. Its closest relative is the mutually intelligible daughter language Afrikaans. Other West Germanic languages related to Dutch are German, English and the un-standardised languages Low German and Yiddish.

Dutch stands out in combining some Ingvaeonic characteristics (occurring consistently in English and Frisian and reduced in intensity from west to east over the continental West Germanic plane) with dominant Istvaeonic characteristics, some of which are also incorporated in German. Unlike German, Dutch (apart from Limburgish) has not been influenced at all by the south to north movement of the High German consonant shift and had some changes of its own. The cumulation of these changes resulted over time in separate, but related standard languages with various degrees of similarities and differences between them. For a comparison between the West Germanic languages, see the sections Morphology, Grammar and Vocabulary.

Dialects

Dutch dialects are primarily the dialects that are both related with the Dutch language and are spoken in the same language area as the Dutch standard language. Although heavily under the influence of the standard language, some of them remain remarkably diverse and are found in the Netherlands and in the Brussels and Flemish regions of Belgium. The areas in which they are spoken often correspond with former mediaeval counties and duchies. The Netherlands (but not Belgium) distinguishes between a dialect and a  ("regional language"). Those words are actually more political than linguistic because a regional language unites a large group of very different varieties. Such is the case with the Gronings dialect, which is considered a variety of the Dutch Low Saxon regional language, but it is relatively distinct from other Dutch Low Saxon varieties. Also, some Dutch dialects are more remote from the Dutch standard language than some varieties of a regional language are. Within the Netherlands, a further distinction is made between a regional language and a separate language, which is the case with the (standardised) West Frisian language. It is spoken alongside Dutch in the province of Friesland.

Dutch dialects and regional languages are not spoken as often as they used to be, especially in the Netherlands. Recent research by Geert Driessen shows that the use of dialects and regional languages among both Dutch adults and youth is in heavy decline. In 1995, 27 percent of the Dutch adult population spoke a dialect or regional language on a regular basis, but in 2011, that was no more than 11 percent. In 1995, 12 percent of children of primary school age spoke a dialect or regional language, but in 2011, that had declined to four percent. Of the officially recognised regional languages Limburgish is spoken the most (in 2011 among adults 54%, among children 31%) and Dutch Low Saxon the least (adults 15%, children 1%). The decline of the West Frisian language in Friesland occupies a middle position (adults 44%, children 22%). Dialects are most often spoken in rural areas, but many cities have a distinct city dialect. For example, the city of Ghent has very distinct "g", "e" and "r" sounds that greatly differ from its surrounding villages. The Brussels dialect combines Brabantian with words adopted from Walloon and French.

Some dialects had, until recently, extensions across the borders of other standard language areas. In most cases, the heavy influence of the standard language has broken the dialect continuum. Examples are the Gronings dialect spoken in Groningen as well as the closely related varieties in adjacent East Frisia (Germany). South Guelderish () is a dialect spoken in southern Gelderland, the northern tip of Limburg, and northeast of North Brabant (Netherlands), but also in adjacent parts of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Limburgish () is spoken in Limburg (Belgium) as well as in the remaining part of Limburg (Netherlands) and extends across the German border. West Flemish () is spoken in West Flanders, the western part of Zeelandic Flanders and also in French Flanders, where it virtually became extinct to make way for French.

Dialect groups

The West Flemish group of dialects, spoken in West Flanders and Zeeland, is so distinct that it might be considered as a separate language variant, although the strong significance of language in Belgian politics would prevent the government from classifying them as such. An oddity of the dialect is that, the voiced velar fricative (written as "g" in Dutch) shifts to a voiced glottal fricative (written as "h" in Dutch), while the letter "h" becomes mute (like in French). As a result, when West Flemings try to talk Standard Dutch, they are often unable to pronounce the g-sound, and pronounce it similar to the h-sound. This leaves, for example, no difference between "" (hero) and "" (money). Or in some cases, they are aware of the problem, and hyper-correct the "h" into a voiced velar fricative or g-sound, again leaving no difference. The West Flemish variety historically spoken in adjacent parts in France is sometimes called French Flemish and is listed as a French minority language. However, only a very small and aging minority of the French-Flemish population still speaks and understands West Flemish.

Hollandic is spoken in Holland and Utrecht, though the original forms of this dialect (which were heavily influenced by a West Frisian substratum and, from the 16th century on, by Brabantian dialects) are now relatively rare. The urban dialects of the Randstad, which are Hollandic dialects, do not diverge from standard Dutch very much, but there is a clear difference between the city dialects of Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam and Utrecht. In some rural Hollandic areas more authentic Hollandic dialects are still being used, especially north of Amsterdam. Another group of dialects based on Hollandic is that spoken in the cities and larger towns of Friesland, where it partially displaced West Frisian in the 16th century and is known as  ("Urban Frisian"). Hollandic together with inter alia South Guelderish and North Brabantian, but without Stadsfries, are the Central Dutch dialects.

Brabantian is named after the historical Duchy of Brabant, which corresponded mainly to the provinces of North Brabant and southern Gelderland, the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Flemish Brabant, as well as Brussels (where its native speakers have become a minority) and the province of Walloon Brabant. Brabantian expands into small parts in the west of Limburg while its strong influence on the East Flemish of East Flanders and eastern Zeelandic Flanders weakens towards the west. In a small area in the northwest of North Brabant (Willemstad), Hollandic is spoken. Conventionally, the South Guelderish dialects are distinguished from Brabantian, but there are no objective criteria apart from geography to do so. Over 5 million people live in an area with some form of Brabantian being the predominant colloquial language out of the area's 22 million Dutch-speakers.

Limburgish, spoken in both Belgian Limburg and Netherlands Limburg and in adjacent parts in Germany, is considered a dialect in Belgium, while having obtained the official status of regional language in the Netherlands.  Limburgish has been influenced by the Ripuarian varieties like the Colognian dialect, and has had a somewhat different development since the late Middle Ages.

Regional languages
Two dialect groups have been given the official status of regional language (or ) in the Netherlands. Like several other dialect groups, both are part of a dialect continuum that continues across the national border.

Dutch Low Saxon

The Dutch Low Saxon dialect area comprises the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe and Overijssel, as well as parts of the provinces of Gelderland, Flevoland, Friesland and Utrecht. This group, which is not Low Franconian but instead Low Saxon and close to neighbouring Low German, has been elevated by the Netherlands (and by Germany) to the legal status of  (regional language) according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It is regarded as Dutch for a number of reasons. From the 14th to 15th century onward, its urban centers (Deventer, Zwolle, Kampen, Zutphen and Doesburg) have been increasingly influenced by the western written Dutch and became a linguistically mixed area. From the 17th century onward, it was gradually integrated into the Dutch language area. Dutch Low Saxon used to be at one end of the Low German dialect continuum. However, the national border has given way to dialect boundaries coinciding with a political border, because the traditional dialects are strongly influenced by the national standard varieties. Cross-the-border dialects now separated by a plain gap also include South Guelderish and Limburgish on the Dutch side of the border and Meuse-Rhenish on the German side of the border.

Limburgish

While a somewhat heterogeneous group of Low Franconian dialects, Limburgish has received official status as a regional language in the Netherlands and Germany, but not in Belgium. Due to this official recognition, it receives protection by chapter 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Daughter and sister languages
Afrikaans, although to a significant degree mutually intelligible with Dutch, is usually not considered a dialect but instead a separate standardised language. It is spoken in South Africa and Namibia. As a daughter language of Dutch, Afrikaans evolved mainly from 17th-century Dutch dialects, but was influenced by various other languages in South Africa.

West Frisian (), along with Saterland Frisian and North Frisian, evolved from the same branch of the West Germanic languages as Old English (i.e. Anglo-Frisian) and are therefore genetically more closely related to English and Scots than to Dutch. The different influences on the respective languages, however, particularly that of Norman French on English and Dutch on West Frisian, have rendered English quite distinct from West Frisian, and West Frisian less distinct from Dutch than from English. Although under heavy influence of the Dutch standard language, it is not mutually intelligible with Dutch and considered a sister language of Dutch, like English and German.

Geographic distribution

Dutch is an official language of the Netherlands proper (however not legally enshrined in the constitution), Belgium, Suriname, the Dutch Caribbean municipalities (St. Eustatius, Saba and Bonaire), Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Dutch is also an official language of several international organisations, such as the European Union, Union of South American Nations and the Caribbean Community. At an academic level, Dutch is taught in about 175 universities in 40 countries. About 15,000 students worldwide study Dutch at university.

Europe
In Europe, Dutch is the majority language in the Netherlands (96%) and Belgium (59%) as well as a minority language in Germany and northern France's French Flanders. Though Belgium as a whole is multilingual, three of the four language areas into which the country is divided (Flanders, francophone Wallonia, and the German-speaking Community) are largely monolingual, with Brussels being bilingual. The Netherlands and Belgium produce the vast majority of music, films, books and other media written or spoken in Dutch. Dutch is a monocentric language, at least what concerns its written form, with all speakers using the same standard form (authorised by the Dutch Language Union) based on a Dutch orthography defined in the so-called "Green Booklet" authoritative dictionary and employing the Latin alphabet when writing; however, pronunciation varies between dialects. Indeed, in stark contrast to its written uniformity, Dutch lacks a unique prestige dialect and has a large dialectal continuum consisting of 28 main dialects, which can themselves be further divided into at least 600 distinguishable varieties. In the Netherlands, the Hollandic dialect dominates in national broadcast media while in Flanders Brabantian dialect dominates in that capacity, making them in turn unofficial prestige dialects in their respective countries.

Outside the Netherlands and Belgium, the dialect spoken in and around the German town of Kleve (South Guelderish) is historically and genetically a Low Franconian variety. In North-Western France, the area around Calais was historically Dutch-speaking (West Flemish), of which an estimated 20,000 are daily speakers. The cities of Dunkirk, Gravelines and Bourbourg only became predominantly French-speaking by the end of the 19th century. In the countryside, until World War I, many elementary schools continued to teach in Dutch, and the Catholic Church continued to preach and teach the catechism in Dutch in many parishes.

During the second half of the 19th century, Dutch was banned from all levels of education by both Prussia and France and lost most of its functions as a cultural language. In both Germany and France, the Dutch standard language is largely absent, and speakers of these Dutch dialects will use German or French in everyday speech. Dutch is not afforded legal status in France or Germany, either by the central or regional public authorities, and knowledge of the language is declining among younger generations.

As a foreign language, Dutch is mainly taught in primary and secondary schools in areas adjacent to the Netherlands and Flanders. In French-speaking Belgium, over 300,000 pupils are enrolled in Dutch courses, followed by over 23,000 in the German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, and about 7,000 in the French region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (of which 4,550 are in primary school). At an academic level, the largest number of faculties of  can be found in Germany (30 universities), followed by France (20 universities) and the United Kingdom (5 universities).

Asia

Despite the Dutch presence in Indonesia for almost 350 years, as the Asian bulk of the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch language has no official status there and the small minority that can speak the language fluently are either educated members of the oldest generation, or employed in the legal profession such as historians, diplomats, lawyers, jurists and linguists/polyglots, as certain law codes are still only available in Dutch. Dutch is taught in various educational centres in Indonesia, the most important of which is the Erasmus Language Centre (ETC) in Jakarta. Each year, some 1,500 to 2,000 students take Dutch courses there. In total, several thousand Indonesians study Dutch as a foreign language. Owing to centuries of Dutch rule in Indonesia, many old documents are written in Dutch. Many universities therefore include Dutch as a source language, mainly for law and history students. In Indonesia this involves about 35,000 students.

Unlike other European nations, the Dutch chose not to follow a policy of language expansion amongst the indigenous peoples of their colonies. In the last quarter of the 19th century, however, a local elite gained proficiency in Dutch so as to meet the needs of expanding bureaucracy and business. Nevertheless, the Dutch government remained reluctant to teach Dutch on a large scale for fear of destabilising the colony. Dutch, the language of power, was supposed to remain in the hands of the leading elite.

After independence, Dutch was dropped as an official language and replaced by Malay. Yet the Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch: words for everyday life as well as scientific and technological terms. One scholar argues that 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words, many of which are transliterated to reflect phonetic pronunciation e.g.  "office" in Indonesian is ,  "towel" in Indonesian is , or  "bus stop" in Indonesian is . In addition, many Indonesian words are calques of Dutch; for example,  "hospital" is calqued on the Dutch  (literally "sickhouse"),  "zoo" on  (literally "animal garden"),  "constitution" from  (literally "ground law"). These account for some of the differences in vocabulary between Indonesian and Malay. Some regional languages in Indonesia have some Dutch loanwords as well; for example, Sundanese word  or "frying pan" origin in Dutch is "". The Javanese word for "bike/bicycle" "" can be traced back to its origin in Dutch "".

The Malacca state of Malaysia was also colonized by the Dutch in its longest period that Malacca was under foreign control. In the 19th Century, the East Indies trade started to dwindle, and with it the importance of Malacca as a trading post. The Dutch state officially ceded Malacca to the British in 1825. It took until 1957 for Malaya to gain its independence. Despite this, the Dutch language are rarely spoken in Malacca or Malaysia and only limited to foreign nationals able to speak the language.  A popular Dutch language course for children is available in Kuala Lumpur named LanguageOne where they teach students from 4 to 16 years of age.

Oceania
After the declaration of independence of Indonesia, Western New Guinea, the "wild east" of the Dutch East Indies, remained a Dutch colony until 1962, known as Netherlands New Guinea. Despite prolonged Dutch presence, the Dutch language is not spoken by many Papuans, the colony having been ceded to Indonesia in 1963.

Dutch-speaking immigrant communities can also be found in Australia and New Zealand. The 2011 Australian census showed 37,248 people speaking Dutch at home. At the 2006 New Zealand census, 26,982 people, or 0.70 percent of the total population, reported to speak Dutch to sufficient fluency that they could hold an everyday conversation.

Americas

In contrast to the colonies in the East Indies, from the second half of the 19th century onwards, the Netherlands envisaged the expansion of Dutch in its colonies in the West Indies. Until 1863, when slavery was abolished in the West Indies, slaves were forbidden to speak Dutch, with the effect that local creoles such as Papiamento and Sranan Tongo which were based not on Dutch but rather other European languages, became common in the Dutch West Indies. However, as most of the people in the Colony of Surinam (now Suriname) worked on Dutch plantations, this reinforced the use of Dutch as a means for direct communication.

In Suriname today, Dutch is the sole official language, and over 60 percent of the population speaks it as a mother tongue. Dutch is the obligatory medium of instruction in schools in Suriname, even for non-native speakers. A further twenty-four percent of the population speaks Dutch as a second language. Suriname gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1975 and has been an associate member of the Dutch Language Union since 2004. The lingua franca of Suriname, however, is Sranan Tongo, spoken natively by about a fifth of the population.

In Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, all parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dutch is the official language but spoken as a first language by only 7% to 8% of the population, although most native-born people on the islands can speak the language since the education system is in Dutch at some or all levels.

In the United States, a now extinct dialect of Dutch, Jersey Dutch, spoken by descendants of 17th-century Dutch settlers in Bergen and Passaic counties, was still spoken as late as 1921. Other Dutch-based creole languages once spoken in the Americas include Mohawk Dutch (in Albany, New York), Berbice (in Guyana), Skepi (in Essequibo, Guyana) and Negerhollands (in the United States Virgin Islands). Pennsylvania Dutch is not a member of the set of Dutch dialects and is less misleadingly called Pennsylvania German.

Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States, spoke Dutch natively and is the only U.S. president whose first language was not English. Dutch prevailed for many generations as the dominant language in parts of New York along the Hudson River. Another famous American born in this region who spoke Dutch as a first language was Sojourner Truth.

According to the 2000 United States census, 150,396 people spoke Dutch at home, while according to the 2006 Canadian census, this number reaches 160,000 Dutch speakers. At an academic level, 20 universities offer Dutch studies in the United States. In Canada, Dutch is the fourth most spoken language by farmers, after English, French and German, and the fifth most spoken non-official language overall (by 0.6% of Canadians).

Africa

The largest legacy of the Dutch language lies in South Africa, which attracted large numbers of Dutch, Flemish and other northwest European farmer (in Dutch, boer) settlers, all of whom were quickly assimilated. The long isolation from the rest of the Dutch-speaking world made the Dutch as spoken in Southern Africa evolve into what is now Afrikaans. In 1876, the first Afrikaans newspaper called Die Afrikaanse Patriot was published in the Cape Colony.

European Dutch remained the literary language until the start of the 1920s, when under pressure of Afrikaner nationalism the local "African" Dutch was preferred over the written, European-based standard. In 1925, section 137 of the 1909 constitution of the Union of South Africa was amended by Act 8 of 1925, stating "the word Dutch in article 137 ... is hereby declared to include Afrikaans". The constitution of 1983 only listed English and Afrikaans as official languages. It is estimated that between 90% and 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin.

Both languages are still largely mutually intelligible, although this relation can in some fields (such as lexicon, spelling and grammar) be asymmetric, as it is easier for Dutch speakers to understand written Afrikaans than it is for Afrikaans speakers to understand written Dutch. Afrikaans is grammatically far less complex than Dutch, and vocabulary items are generally altered in a clearly patterned manner, e.g.  becomes  ("bird") and  becomes  ("rain"). In South Africa, the number of students following Dutch at university is difficult to estimate, since the academic study of Afrikaans inevitably includes the study of Dutch. Elsewhere in the world, the number of people learning Dutch is relatively small.

Afrikaans is the third largest language of South Africa in terms of native speakers (~13.5%), of whom 53% are Coloureds and 42.4% Whites. In 1996, 40 percent of South Africans reported to know Afrikaans at least at a very basic level of communication. It is the lingua franca in Namibia, where it is spoken natively in 11 percent of households. In total, Afrikaans is the first language in South Africa alone of about 7.1 million people and is estimated to be a second language for at least 10 million people worldwide, compared to over 23 million and 5 million respectively, for Dutch.

The Dutch colonial presence elsewhere in Africa, notably Dutch Gold Coast, was too ephemeral not to be wiped out by prevailing colonising European successors. Belgian colonial presence in Congo and Rwanda-Urundi (Burundi and Rwanda, held under League of Nations mandate and later a UN trust territory) left little Dutch (Flemish) legacy, as French was the main colonial language.

Phonology

For further details on different realisations of phonemes, dialectal differences and example words, see the full article at Dutch phonology.

Consonants
Unlike other Germanic languages, Dutch has no phonological aspiration of consonants. Like most other Germanic languages, the Dutch consonant system did not undergo the High German consonant shift and has a syllable structure that allows fairly-complex consonant clusters. Dutch also retains full use of the velar fricatives of Proto-Germanic that were lost or modified in many other Germanic languages. Dutch has final-obstruent devoicing. At the end of a word, voicing distinction is neutralised and all obstruents are pronounced voiceless. For example, Dutch  (̇'good') is  but the related form  is . Dutch shares this final-obstruent devoicing with German (the Dutch noun  is pronounced , the adjective  is pronounced , like the German noun , pronounced , adjective , pronounced  vs English gold and golden, both pronounced with .)

Voicing of pre-vocalic initial voiceless alveolar fricatives occurs although less in Dutch than in German (Dutch , German  with  versus English seven and Low German  with ), and also the shift  → . Dutch shares only with Low German the development of  →  (Dutch ,  and Low German ,  versus German ,  and English foxes, oxen), and also the development of  →  though it is far more common in Dutch (Dutch  and Low German  versus German  and English soft, but Dutch  versus German  and English craft).

Notes:
  is not a separate phoneme in Dutch, but is inserted before vowel-initial syllables within words after  and  and often also at the beginning of a word.
 The realisation of  phoneme varies considerably from dialect to dialect and even between speakers in the same dialect area. Common realisations are an alveolar trill , alveolar tap , uvular trill , voiced uvular fricative , and alveolar approximant .
 The realisation of  also varies somewhat by area and speaker. The main realisation is a labiodental approximant , but some speakers, particularly in the south, use a bilabial approximant  or a labiovelar approximant .
 The lateral  is slightly velarised postvocalically in most dialects, particularly in the north.
  and  may be true velars  and , uvular  and  or palatal  and . The more palatal realisations are common in southern areas, and uvulars are common in the north.
 Some northern dialects have a tendency to devoice all fricatives, regardless of environment, which is particularly common with  but can affect others as well.
  and  are not native phonemes of Dutch and usually occur in borrowed words, like  and  ('baggage'), but may occur if  and  are palatalised.
  is not a native phoneme of Dutch and occurs only in borrowed words, like .

Vowels
Like English, Dutch did not develop i-mutation as a morphological marker and shares with most other Germanic languages the lengthening of short vowels in stressed open syllables, which has led to contrastive vowel length being used as a morphological marker. Dutch has an extensive vowel inventory. Vowels can be grouped as back rounded, front unrounded and front rounded. They are also traditionally distinguished by length or tenseness.

Vowel length is not always considered a distinctive feature in Dutch phonology because it normally occurs with changes in vowel quality. One feature or the other may be considered redundant, and some phonemic analyses prefer to treat it as an opposition of tenseness. However, even if it is not considered part of the phonemic opposition, the long/tense vowels are still realised as phonetically longer than their short counterparts. The changes in vowel quality are also not always the same in all dialects, some of which may be little difference at all, with length remaining the primary distinguishing feature. Although all older words pair vowel length with a change in vowel quality, new loanwords have reintroduced phonemic oppositions of length. Compare   ("suns") versus   ("zone") versus   ("sons"), or   ("mug") versus   ("cruise").

Notes:
 The distinction between  and  is only slight and may be considered allophonic for most purposes. However, some recent loanwords have introduced distinctively-long , making the length distinction marginally phonemic.
 The long close-mid vowels  are realised as slightly closing diphthongs  in many northern dialects.
 The long open-mid vowels  occur only in a handful of loanwords, mostly from French. In certain Belgian Dutch varieties, they may also occur as realisations of .
 The long close and close-mid vowels are often pronounced more closed or as centering diphthongs before an  in the syllable coda, which may occur before coda  as well.

Diphthongs

Unique to the development of Dutch is the collapse of older ol/ul/al + dental into ol + dental, followed by vocalisation of pre-consonantal /l/ and after a short vowel. That created the diphthong : Dutch ,  and  corresponds with Low German , , ; German , ,  and English gold, salt, bolt. It is the most common diphthong, along with . All three are the only ones commonly considered unique phonemes in Dutch. The tendency for native English speakers is to pronounce Dutch names with  (written as ij or ei) as , (like the English "long i"), which does not normally lead to confusion for native listeners since in a number of dialects (such as in Amsterdam), the same pronunciation is heard.

In contrast,  and  are rare in Dutch. The "long/tense" diphthongs are indeed realised as proper diphthongs but are generally analysed phonemically as a long/tense vowel, followed by a glide  or . All diphthongs end in a close vowel () and are grouped here by their first element.

Phonotactics
The syllable structure of Dutch is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C). Many words, as in English, begin with three consonants:   (street). There are words that end in four consonants:   (autumn),   (worst),   (most interesting),   (strongest), the last three of which are superlative adjectives.

The highest number of consonants in a single cluster is found in the word   (writing worst), with seven consonant phonemes.   (scream in fear) has six in a row.

Polder Dutch
A notable change in pronunciation has been occurring in younger generations in the Dutch provinces of Utrecht, North and South Holland, which has been dubbed "Polder Dutch" by Jan Stroop. Such speakers pronounce ,  and , which used to be pronounced respectively as , , and , as increasingly lowered to , , and  respectively. In addition, the same speakers pronounce , , and  as the diphthongs , , and  respectively, making the change an example of a chain shift.

The change is interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view because it has apparently happened relatively recently, in the 1970s and was pioneered by older well-educated women from the upper middle classes. The lowering of the diphthongs has long been current in many Dutch dialects and is comparable to the English Great Vowel Shift and the diphthongisation of long high vowels in Modern High German, which had centuries earlier reached the state now found in Polder Dutch. Stroop theorises that the lowering of open-mid to open diphthongs is a phonetically "natural" and inevitable development and that Dutch, after it had diphthongised the long high vowels like German and English, "should" have lowered the diphthongs like German and English as well.

Instead, he argues that the development has been artificially frozen in an "intermediate" state by the standardisation of Dutch pronunciation in the 16th century in which lowered diphthongs found in rural dialects were perceived as ugly by the educated classes and were accordingly declared substandard. Now, however, he thinks that the newly-affluent and independent women can afford to let that natural development take place in their speech. Stroop compares the role of Polder Dutch with the urban variety of British English pronunciation called Estuary English.

Among Belgian and Surinamese Dutch-speakers and speakers from other regions in the Netherlands, this vowel shift is not taking place.

Grammar

Dutch is grammatically similar to German, such as in syntax and verb morphology (for verb morphology in English verbs, Dutch and German, see Germanic weak verb and Germanic strong verb). Grammatical cases have largely become limited to pronouns and many set phrases. Inflected forms of the articles are often grace surnames and toponyms.

Standard Dutch uses three genders across natural and grammatical genders but for most non-Belgian speakers, masculine and feminine have merged to form the common gender (with  for "the"). The neuter (which uses ) remains distinct. This is similar to those of most Continental Scandinavian tongues. Less so than English, inflectional grammar (such as in adjectival and noun endings) has simplified.

Verbs and tenses
When grouped according to their conjugational class, Dutch has four main verb types: weak verbs, strong verbs, irregular verbs and mixed verbs.

Weak verbs are most numerous, constituting about 60% of all verbs. In these, the past tense and past participle are formed with a dental suffix:
 Weak verbs with past in
 Weak verbs with past in

Strong verbs are the second most numerous verb group. This group is characterised by a vowel alternation of the stem in the past tense and perfect participle. Dutch distinguishes between 7 classes, comprising almost all strong verbs, with some internal variants. Dutch has many 'half strong verbs': these have a weak past tense and a strong participle or a strong past tense and a weak participle. The following table shows the vowel alternations in more detail. It also shows the number of roots (bare verbs) that belong to each class, variants with a prefix are excluded.

There is an ongoing process of "weakening" of strong verbs. The verb "" (to experience) used to be strictly a class 6 strong verb, having the past tense "" and participle "", but the weak form "" for both past tense and participle is currently also in use. Some other verbs that were originally strong such as "" (to guess) and "" (to bump), have past tense forms "" and "" that are at present far less common than their weakened forms; "" and "". In most examples of such weakened verbs that were originally strong, both their strong and weak formations are deemed correct.

Genders and cases
As in English, the case system of Dutch and the subjunctive have largely fallen out of use, and the system has generalised the dative over the accusative case for certain pronouns (NL: , ; EN: me, you; LI: ,  vs. DE: , ). While standard Dutch has three grammatical genders, this has few consequences and the masculine and feminine gender are usually merged into a common gender in the Netherlands but not in Belgium (EN: none; NL/LI: common and neuter; in Belgium masculine, feminine and neuter is in use).

Modern Dutch has mostly lost its case system. However, certain idioms and expressions continue to include now archaic case declensions. The definite article has just two forms,  and , more complex than English, which has only the. The use of the older inflected form  in the dative and accusative, as well as use of  in the dative, is restricted to numerous set phrases, surnames and toponyms. But some dialects still use both, particularly "" is often used instead of "haar" (her).

In modern Dutch, the genitive articles  and  in the bottom line are commonly used in idioms. Other usage is typically considered archaic, poetic or stylistic. One must know whether a noun is masculine or feminine to use them correctly. In most circumstances, the preposition , the middle line, is instead used, followed by the normal article  or , and in that case it makes no difference whether a word is masculine or feminine. For the idiomatic use of the articles in the genitive, see for example:
 Masculine singular: "" (lit: "of the devil") (common proverbial meaning: Seething with rage)
 Feminine singular: "" ("the dictionary of the Frisian language")
 Neuter singular: "" ("the lady of the house")
 Plural: de voortgang "" ("the progress of (public) works")

In contemporary usage, the genitive case still occurs a little more often with plurals than with singulars, as the plural article is  for all genders and no special noun inflection must be taken account of.  is commonly used in order to avoid reduplication of , e.g.  instead of  ("the bulk of the author's poems").

There is also a genitive form for the pronoun  ("that [one], those [ones]"), namely  for masculine and neuter singulars (occurrences of  for feminine singular and all plurals are extremely rare). Although usually avoided in common speech, this form can be used instead of possessive pronouns to avoid confusion. Compare:

  – He spoke about his son and his (own) wife.
  – He spoke about his son and the latter's wife.

Analogically, the relative and interrogative pronoun  ("who") has the genitive forms  and  (corresponding to English whose, but less frequent in use).

Dutch also has a range of fixed expressions that make use of the genitive articles, which can be abbreviated using apostrophes. Common examples include "" (with  as abbreviation of ; "in the morning") and  (lit: "of the need", translated: "if necessary").

The Dutch written grammar has simplified over the past 100 years: cases are now mainly used for the pronouns, such as  (I),  (me),  (my),  (who),  (whose: masculine or neuter singular),  (whose: feminine singular; masculine, feminine or neuter plural). Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (except for the genitive of proper nouns (names): -s, -'s or -'). In the spoken language cases and case inflections had already gradually disappeared from a much earlier date on (probably the 15th century) as in many continental West Germanic dialects.

Inflection of adjectives is more complicated. The adjective receives no ending with indefinite neuter nouns in singular (as with   'a/an'), and  in all other cases. (This was also the case in Middle English, as in "a goode man".)  belongs to the masculine/feminine category, while  and  are neuter.

An adjective has no e if it is in the predicative:

More complex inflection is still found in certain lexicalised expressions like de heer des huizes (literally, "the man of the house"), etc. These are usually remnants of cases (in this instance, the genitive case which is still used in German, cf. Der Herr des Hauses) and other inflections no longer in general use today. In such lexicalised expressions remnants of strong and weak nouns can be found too, e.g. in het jaar des Heren (Anno Domini), where -en is actually the genitive ending of the weak noun. Similarly in some place names: 's-Gravenbrakel, 's-Hertogenbosch, etc. (with weak genitives of graaf "count", hertog "duke"). Also in this case, German retains this feature.

Word order
Dutch shares much of its word order with German. Dutch exhibits subject–object–verb word order, but in main clauses the conjugated verb is moved into the second position in what is known as verb second or V2 word order. This makes Dutch word order almost identical to that of German, but often different from English, which has subject–verb–object word order and has since lost the V2 word order that existed in Old English.

An example sentence used in some Dutch language courses and textbooks is "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is", which translates into English word for word as "I can my pen not find because it far too dark is", but in standard English word order would be written "I cannot find my pen because it is far too dark". If the sentence is split into a main and subclause and the verbs highlighted, the logic behind the word order can be seen.

Main clause: "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden"

Verb infinitives are placed in final position, but the finite, conjugated verb, in this case "kan" (can), is made the second element of the clause.

In subordinate clauses: "omdat het veel te donker is", the verb or verbs always go in the final position.

In an interrogative main clause the usual word order is: conjugated verb followed by subject; other verbs in final position:
"Kun jij je pen niet vinden?" (literally "Can you your pen not find?") "Can't you find your pen?"
In the Dutch equivalent of a wh-question the word order is: interrogative pronoun (or expression) + conjugated verb + subject; other verbs in final position:
"Waarom kun jij je pen niet vinden?" ("Why can you your pen not find?") "Why can't you find your pen?"
In a tag question the word order is the same as in a declarative clause:
"Jij kunt je pen niet vinden?" ("You can your pen not find?") "You can't find your pen?"
A subordinate clause does not change its word order:
"Kun jij je pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is?" ("Can you your pen not find because it far too dark is?") "Can you not find your pen because it's far too dark?"

Diminutives

In Dutch, the diminutive is used extensively. The nuances of meaning expressed by the diminutive are a distinctive aspect of Dutch, and can be difficult for non-native speakers to master. It is very productive and formed by adding one of the suffixes to the noun in question, depending on the latter's phonological ending:
 -je for ending in -b, -c, -d, -t, -f, -g, -ch, -k, -p, -v, -x, -z or -s: neef → neefje (male cousin, nephew)
 -pje for ending in -m: boom (tree) → boompje
 -kje for ending in -ing if the preceding syllable carries the stress: koning (king) → koninkje (the 'ng'-sound transforms into 'nk'); but ring → ringetje (ring), and vondeling → vondelingetje (foundling) without this stress pattern
 - for ending in -h, -j, -l, -n, -r, -w, or a vowel other than -y: zoen → zoen (kiss). A single open vowel is doubled when adding "-" would change the pronunciation: auto → autoo (car).
-′ for ending in -y and for abbreviations: baby → baby', cd → cd', A4 → A4'
 -etje for ending in -b, -l, -n, -ng or -r preceded by a "short" (lax) vowel: bal → balletje (ball). Final consonant is doubled (except for -ng) to preserve the vowel's shortness.

The diminutive suffixes -ke (from which - has derived by palatalisation), -eke, -ske, - (only for words ending -ch, -k, -p, or -s), -kie (instead of -kje), and -pie (instead of -pje) are used in southern dialects, and the forms ending on - as well in northern urban dialects. Some of these form part of expressions that became standard language, like een makkie, from gemak = ease). The noun joch (young boy) has, exceptionally, only the diminutive form jochie, also in standard Dutch. The form -ke is also found in many women's given names: Janneke, Marieke, Marijke, Mieke, Meike etc.

In Dutch, the diminutive is not restricted to nouns, but can be applied to numerals (met z'n tweetjes, "the two of us"), pronouns (onderonsje, "tête-à-tête"), verbal particles (moetje, "shotgun marriage"), and even prepositions (toetje, "dessert"). Adjectives and adverbs commonly take diminutive forms; the former take a diminutive ending and thus function as nouns, while the latter remain adverbs and always have the diminutive with the -s appended, e.g. adjective: groen ("green") → noun: groen ("rookie"); adverb: even ("a while") → adverb: eventjes ("a little while").

Some nouns have two different diminutives, each with a different meaning: bloem (flower) → bloempje (lit. "small flower"), but bloemetje (lit. also "small flower", meaning bouquet). A few nouns exist solely in a diminutive form, e.g. zeepaardje (seahorse), while many, e.g. meisje (girl), originally a diminutive of meid (maid), have acquired a meaning independent of their non-diminutive forms. A diminutive can sometimes be added to an uncountable noun to refer to a single portion: ijs (ice, ice cream) → ijsje (ice cream treat, cone of ice cream), bier (beer) → biertje. Some diminutive forms only exist in the plural, e.g. kleertjes (clothing).

When used to refer to time, the Dutch diminutive form can indicate whether the person in question found it pleasant or not: een uurtje kletsen (chatting for a "little" hour.) The diminutive can, however, also be used pejoratively: Hij was weer eens het "mannetje". (He acted as if he was the "little" man.)

All diminutives (even lexicalised ones like "meisje" (girl)) have neuter gender and take neuter concords: "dit kleine meisje", not "deze kleine meisje".

Pronouns and determiners
There are two series of personal pronouns, subject and objects pronouns. The forms on the right-hand sides within each column are the unemphatic forms; those not normally written are given in brackets. Only ons and u do not have an unemphatic form. The distinction between emphatic and unemphatic pronouns is very important in Dutch. Emphatic pronouns in English use the reflexive pronoun form, but are used to emphasise the subject, not to indicate a direct or indirect object. For example, "I gave (to) myself the money" is reflexive but "I myself gave the money (to someone else) " is emphatic.

Like English, Dutch has generalised the dative over the accusative case for all pronouns, e.g. NL 'me', 'je', EN 'me', 'you', vs. DE 'mich'/'mir' 'dich'/'dir'. There is one exception: the standard language prescribes that in the third person plural, hen is to be used for the direct object, and hun for the indirect object. This distinction was artificially introduced in the 17th century by grammarians, and is largely ignored in spoken language and not well understood by Dutch speakers. Consequently, the third person plural forms hun and hen are interchangeable in normal usage, with hun being more common. The shared unstressed form ze is also often used as both direct and indirect objects and is a useful avoidance strategy when people are unsure which form to use.

Dutch also shares with English the presence of h- pronouns, e.g. NL hij, hem, haar, hen, hun and EN he, him, her vs. DE er, ihn, ihr, ihnen.

Compounds

Like most Germanic languages, Dutch forms noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second ( = doghouse). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, Dutch (like the other Germanic languages) either uses the closed form without spaces ( = tree house) or inserts a hyphen ( = outstanding member of the VVD, a political party). Like German, Dutch allows arbitrarily long compounds, but the longer they get, the less frequent they tend to be.

The longest serious entry in the Van Dale dictionary is  (ceasefire negotiation). Leafing through the articles of association (Statuten) one may come across a 30-letter  (authorisation of representation). An even longer word cropping up in official documents is  (health insurance company) though the shorter  (health insurer) is more common.

Notwithstanding official spelling rules, some Dutch-speaking people, like some Scandinavians and German speakers, nowadays tend to write the parts of a compound separately, a practice sometimes dubbed  (the English disease).

Vocabulary
Dutch vocabulary is predominantly Germanic in origin, with loanwords accounting for 20%. The main foreign influence on Dutch vocabulary since the 12th century and culminating in the French period has been French and (northern) Oïl languages, accounting for an estimated 6.8% of all words, or more than a third of all loanwords. Latin, which was spoken in the southern Low Countries for centuries and then played a major role as the language of science and religion, follows with 6.1%. High German and Low German were influential until the mid-20th century and account for 2.7%, but they are mostly unrecognisable since many have been "Dutchified": German  → Dutch . Dutch has borrowed words from English since the mid-19th century, as a consequence of the increasing power and influence of Britain and the United States. English loanwords are about 1.5%, but continue to increase. Many English loanwords become less visible over time as they are either gradually replaced by calques (skyscraper became Dutch ) or neologisms (bucket list became ). Conversely, Dutch contributed many loanwords to English, accounting for 1.3% of its lexicon.

The main Dutch dictionary is the Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal, which contains some 268,826 headwords. In the field of linguistics, the 45,000-page  is also widely used. That scholarly endeavour took 147 years to complete and contains all recorded Dutch words from the Early Middle Ages onward.

Spelling and writing system

Dutch is written using the Latin script. Dutch uses one additional character beyond the standard alphabet, the digraph . It has a relatively high proportion of doubled letters, both vowels and consonants, due to the formation of compound words and also to the spelling devices for distinguishing the many vowel sounds in the Dutch language. An example of five consecutive doubled letters is the word  (food storage container). The diaeresis (Dutch: ) is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately when involving a pre- or suffix, and a hyphen is used when the problem occurs in compound words, e.g  (influenced),  (the seas) but  (scoter; lit. sea duck). Generally, other diacritical marks occur only in loanwords. However, the acute accent can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms, and its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite article   "a, an" and the numeral   "one".

Since the 1980s, the Dutch Language Union has been given the mandate to review and make recommendations on the official spelling of Dutch. Spelling reforms undertaken by the union occurred in 1995 and 2005. In the Netherlands, the official spelling is currently given legal basis by the Spelling Act of September 15, 2005. The Spelling Act gives the Committee of Ministers of the Dutch Language Union the authority to determine the spelling of Dutch by ministerial decision. In addition, the law requires that this spelling be followed "at the governmental bodies, at educational institutions funded from the public purse, as well as at the exams for which legal requirements have been established". In other cases, it is recommended, but it is not mandatory to follow the official spelling. The Decree on the Spelling Regulations 2005 of 2006 contains the annexed spelling rules decided by the Committee of Ministers on April 25, 2005. In Flanders, the same spelling rules are currently applied by the Decree of the Flemish Government Establishing the Rules of the Official Spelling and Grammar of the Dutch language of June 30, 2006.

The , more commonly known as  (i.e. "the green booklet", because of its colour), is the authoritative orthographic word list (without definitions) of the Dutch Language Union; a version with definitions can be had as ; both are published by Sdu.

Example text
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Dutch:

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

See also

 Bargoens
 Dutch Braille
 Dutch grammar
 Dutch Language Union
 Dutch literature
 Dutch name
 Dutch orthography
 Dutch-based creole languages
 Flemish
 French Flemish
 Grand Dictation of the Dutch Language
 Indo-European languages
 Istvaeones
 List of English words of Dutch origin
 List of countries and territories where Afrikaans or Dutch are official languages
 Low Franconian
 Meuse-Rhenish
 Middle Dutch
 Old Frankish
 Surinamese Dutch

Notes

Citations

General references

 Maurer, Friedrich (1942), Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanischen und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Strasbourg: Hünenburg.

External links

 The Nederlandse Taalunie, Dutch language union
 The Dutch Learner's Grammar , from The University of Sheffield
 K-Dutch CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Dutch, hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal (Dutch Language Institute)

Articles containing video clips
Germanic languages
Languages of Belgium
Languages of Saint Martin (island)
Languages of the Dutch Caribbean
Languages of the Netherlands
Low Franconian languages
Stress-timed languages
Subject–object–verb languages
Standard languages
Verb-second languages


The 2008 Zenit St.Petersburg season was the club's fourteenth season in the Russian Premier League, the highest tier of association football in Russia.
Domestically, Zenit finished fifth in the Russian Premier League, reached the Fifth round of the 2008–09 Russian Cup and won the Russian Super Cup. In Europe, Zenit won the 2007–08 UEFA Cup and the 2008 UEFA Super Cup before finishing third in their Champions League group.

Squad

Out on loan

Transfers

In

Out

Loans out

Released

Friendlies

Competitions

Overall record

Russian Super Cup

UEFA Super Cup

Premier League

Results by round

Results

League table

Russian Cup

UEFA Cup

Final

UEFA Champions League

Group stage

Squad statistics

Appearances and goals

|-
|colspan="14"|Players away from the club on loan:
|-
|colspan="14"|Players who left Zenit St.Petersburg during the season:
|}

Goal scorers

Clean sheets

Disciplinary record

References

Zenit Saint Petersburg
2008
2007-08 FC Zenit Saint Petersburg season


Netherlands–Ukraine relations are foreign relations between the Netherlands and Ukraine. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1992. Notable incidents in their relations include was the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 and the 2016 Dutch Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement referendum. the Netherlands is a member of the European Union, which Ukraine applied for in 2022. Both countries are full members of Council of Europe.

Resident diplomatic missions
 Netherlands has an embassy in Kyiv.
 Ukraine has an embassy in The Hague.

See also
 Foreign relations of the Netherlands
 Foreign relations of Ukraine
 Ukrainians in the Netherlands

References

External links
  Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs about relations with Ukraine (in Dutch only)
 Dutch embassy in Kyiv (Archive)
  Ukrainian embassy in The Hague (new site)
  Ukrainian embassy in The Hague (old website version)\

Ukraine
Bilateral relations of Ukraine


Raffaele De Rosa (born 25 March 1987 in Naples) is an Italian motorcycle road racer. He competes in the Supersport World Championship aboard a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R, he won the FIM Superstock 1000 Cup in 2016.

Career

125cc World Championship (2004–2008)
De Rosa made his World Championship debut in the 125cc class in the 2005 season.

250cc/Moto2 World Championship (2009–2011)
De Rosa was the Rookie of The Year in the 250cc Class in 2009.

Career statistics

Career highlights
2003 – 29th, Italian 125cc Championship #35 Aprilia RS125R
2004 – 15th, Italian 125cc Championship #35 Honda RS125R
2005 – 23rd, 125cc World Championship #35 Aprilia RS125R
2006 – 16th, 125cc World Championship #35 Aprilia RS125R
2007 – 16th, 125cc World Championship #35 Aprilia RS125R
2008 – 18th, 125cc World Championship #35 KTM 125 FRR
2009 – 6th, 250cc World Championship #35 Honda RS250RW
2010 – 27th, Moto2 World Championship #35 Tech 3 Mistral 610
2011 – 33rd, Moto2 World Championship #35 Moriwaki, FTR, Suter
2012 – 24th, Supersport World Championship #35 Honda CBR600RR
2013 – 19th, Supersport World Championship #5 Honda CBR600RR
2014 – 10th, Supersport World Championship #35 Honda CBR600RR
2015 – 3rd, FIM Superstock 1000 Cup #35 Ducati 1199 Panigale
2016 – 1st, FIM Superstock 1000 Cup #35 BMW S1000RR
2017 – 15th, Superbike World Championship #35 BMW S1000RR
2018 – 6th, Supersport World Championship #35 MV Agusta F3 675
2019 – 6th, Supersport World Championship #35 MV Agusta F3 675
2020 – 6th, Supersport World Championship #35 MV Agusta F3 675

Grand Prix motorcycle racing

Races by year
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Superbike World Championship

Races by year
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Supersport World Championship

Races by year
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)

 Season still in progress.

FIM Superstock 1000 Cup

Races by year
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)

References

External links

250cc World Championship riders
125cc World Championship riders
Italian motorcycle racers
1987 births
Living people
Moto2 World Championship riders
Superbike World Championship riders
Supersport World Championship riders
FIM Superstock 1000 Cup riders


Joy Marie Burch is an Australian politician and the current Speaker of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly. She has been a Labor Party member for the seat of Brindabella in the ACT Legislative Assembly since the 2008 ACT election.

Biography
Prior to being elected to the Legislative Assembly, Burch was a registered nurse. She worked for several years as a community nurse across southern NSW and the ACT.

Burch lived for several years in Alice Springs, as the Executive Director of the Australian Rural Health Education Network, as Executive Director of the Northern Territory Remote Workforce Agency and as the CEO of the Rural Health and Community Support Services. She also was the owner and operator of a Childcare Centre.

Burch has formal tertiary education, with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies, and Post-Graduate qualifications in Health Administration and Information Systems Management.

Burch is married with three sons and lives in Tuggeranong. Her hobbies include spending time with her family, community events and volunteering, swimming, gardening, walking, reading, and listening to music.

Political career
Burch was first elected to the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly in the Brindabella electorate at the 2008 election. Upon entering the Assembly, Burch was appointed Government Whip, Assistant Speaker and ALP Caucus Secretary.

A year later, Burch was appointed to Cabinet. Over the next seven years, she held a number of Ministerial positions, including:
•	Minister for Education and Training (November 2012 – January 2016)
•	Minister for Police and Emergency Services (December 2014 – December 2015)
•	Minister for Disability (November 2012 – January 2016)
•	Minister for Racing and Gaming (May 2011 – January 2016)
•	Minister for Arts (May 2011 – January 2016)
•	Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Affairs (May 2011 – October 2012)
•	Minister for Ageing (November 2009 – October 2012)
•	Minister for Children and Young People (November 2012 – July 2014)
•	Minister for Community Services (November 2009 – October 2012)
•	Minister for Multicultural Affairs (November 2009 – January 2015)
•	Minister for Women (November 2009 – January 2015)

She was re-elected at the 2012 election.

Burch faced controversy when it was alleged that her chief of staff briefed the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) on matters regarding ACT Policing which are still under investigation. She resigned as Minister for Police and Emergency Services in December 2015 before resigning from all other ministerial positions a month later in January 2016. She then became Deputy Speaker and Government Whip.

Burch was again re-elected at the 2016 election, and was subsequently elected Speaker of the ACT Legislative Assembly. and she was elected Speaker of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly.

Burch was again re-elected at the 2020 Australian Capital Territory general election, receiving the highest vote of any candidate in the Brindabella Electorate, and obtaining a significant swing towards her. She was re-elected Speaker of the ACT Legislative Assembly for the tenth parliament.

References

Australian Labor Party members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
Living people
Members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
21st-century Australian politicians
21st-century Australian women politicians
Year of birth missing (living people)
Women members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
Women legislative speakers


Arya 2 is a 2009 Indian Telugu-language romantic action film directed by Sukumar. Starring Allu Arjun, Navdeep, and Kajal Aggarwal, it is a spiritual sequel to Arya (2004). Devi Sri Prasad composed the film's music, while Aditya Babu and B. V. S. N. Prasad produced the film under the Aditya Arts banner. The plot revolves around the complex love–hate relationship between three characters, Arya (Allu Arjun); Ajay (Navdeep), Arya's childhood friend and Geetha (Kajal Aggarwal), a woman working at Ajay's company, whom both Arya and Ajay love. The film theatrically released on 27 November 2009.

Plot
Two orphans, Ajay and Arya, meet at an orphanage, where the psychotic and toxic Arya forcibly befriends Ajay and grows possessive about him, while Ajay despises him but pretends not to. Ajay is adopted by a rich family, while Arya is left alone. Ajay grows to become a businessman and owner of an IT company. One day, when some rowdies trouble him, Arya enters their house and injured brutally using surgical instruments. He is arrested and Ajay gets him bailed, and soon, their car meets with an accident, leading to Arya saving Ajay from falling off a bridge in exchange, Ajay agrees to make Arya as his business partner, but with a condition that Arya must reform himself. Arya undergoes a transformation and becomes a suave and hardworking businessman. Within a few time, he earns everyone's respect at Ajay's company, including Shanti, who develops a liking for him.

One day, when Geetha joins the company, both Arya and Ajay fall for her. Ajay keeps his feelings to himself, but Arya constantly keeps confessing his love for Geetha. Soon, she learns of Arya's real behavior and tries to expose him, but in vain. However, one night, she manages to emotionally blackmail Arya into exposing himself. However, when he proposes to her, she, in turn, proposes Ajay to get rid of him. Ajay frames Arya for a car crash so that Geeta will actually love him. As both Geetha and Ajay express their attraction for each other, Arya decides to get them married. However, Geetha gets taken away by her violent family members on the day of her marriage. Her father Raji Reddy is a hardcore criminal who wants her to marry the son of Kashi Reddy, a rival, in order to end the conflict between both gangs. Arya goes to bring Geetha and stays at her house. Arya conspires to get the marriage stopped and is asked by Raji Reddy to marry her after he rescues Geetha from her kidnapping.

However, he helps Ajay reunite and flee with Geetha, further justifying that he married her to prevent her from marrying someone else. Back home, where everyone is searching for Geetha, Arya reveals that she is at the railway station. Realizing what he has done, he rushes to the railway station and saves Ajay from getting killed by Raji Reddy. Arya reveals to Ajay that he was the one who informed Raji Reddy as he was unable to sacrifice his wife. Later, Ajay is taken hostage by Raji Reddy and Arya makes Kashi Reddy hold Geetha hostage to demand Ajay's freedom. Arya and Subbi (whose marriage with Geetha was stalled) become friends, and the latter helps the trio escape.

Arya and Shanti arrange for passports and tickets to help Ajay and Geetha flee to America, but Arya demands one friendly day with them, during which Geetha grows closer to Arya. Ajay changes their destination to Australia in order to prevent Arya from stopping them and Geetha looks down on Ajay for betraying Arya. Before they leave, Ajay spots Raji Reddy. Geetha informs Ajay that she called her father, as she wanted to discuss their love matter with him, rather than let Arya take the fall for everything. Raji Reddy arrives and starts thrashing Ajay. Arya threatens to kill Geetha, but Raji Reddy tells Arya to kill her, as Arya cannot kill her. Raji Reddy attempts to stab Ajay. However, Arya covers him, gets stabbed, and is hospitalized. Ajay has a change of heart seeing Arya ready to sacrifice even his own life for his friendship. In the hospital, Arya asks Ajay to press a button in the hospital equipment which causes him to suffocate as the oxygen supply stops. Arya is saved on time, but Ajay, who pressed the button without any ill-intentions, is slapped by Geetha. Arya secretly apologizes to Ajay, who then leaves with a smile, realizing Geetha and Arya's love.

Cast

Allu Arjun as Arya
Navdeep as Ajay
Kajal Aggarwal as Geetha
Shraddha Das as Shanti
Brahmanandam as Dasavatharam
Mukesh Rishi as Raji Reddy (voiceover by R.C.M. Raju)
Raghu Babu as Raghu Arya's friend
Sayaji Shinde as Kashi Reddy
Ajay as Subbi Reddy
Radha Kumari as Raji Reddy's mother
Venu Madhav
Srinivasa Reddy
Krishnudu
Devi Charan
Erina Andriana in item number "Ringa Ringa"

Music

The soundtrack and background score were composed by Devi Sri Prasad. The music was released on 1 November 2009 at Rock Heights, Madhapur, Hyderabad. The audio rights of the soundtrack were purchased by Sony Music India. It was also recorded in Malayalam and Hindi. The tracks "Ringa Ringa", "Uppenantha Prema" and "My Love Is Gone" topped the music charts. The song "Ringa Ringa" received a cult status. The music of the song was re-used by Devi Sri Prasad in the Salman Khan's film, Ready as "Dhinka Chika". And it was also re-used in Kannada movie 5 Idiots.

Following the internet phenomenon of "Why This Kolaveri Di" in 2011, "Ringa Ringa" was featured alongside "Oh Podu", "Appadi Podu" and "Naaka Mukka" in a small collection of South Indian songs that are considered a "national rage" in India.

Track list

Telugu
{| class="wikitable tracklist" style="font-size:95%;"
! Song title !! Singers !! Lyricist !! Duration
|-
| "Mr. Perfect" || Baba Sehgal, Devi Sri Prasad, Rita, Sachin Tyler Sadachcharan || Kedarnath Parimi || 4:38
|-
| "Uppenantha"|| K.K. || Balaji || 5:29
|-
| "Baby He Loves You" || Devi Sri Prasad || Chandrabose || 5:23
|-
| "Ringa Ringa" || Priya Himesh || Chandrabose || 5:35
|-
| "Karige Loga" || Kunal Ganjawala, Megha || Vanamali || 6:05
|-
| "My Love Is Gone" || Ranjith || Chandrabose || 4:50
|-
| "Karige Loga (D-Plugged)" || Sagar|| Vanamali || 2:56
|-
| "Mr. Perfect (Remix)" || Devi Sri Prasad || Kedarnath Parimi || 4:18
|}

 Malayalam

 Hindi

Reception

Critical receptionOneindia gave a review stating "For those who go to watch Allu Arjun film with some expectations, the film would be a true feast. What all one could expect from Allu Arjun"s film could be available in this movie. With the excellent dances and melodious audio, the film would surely be a big hit. The film had all kinds of masala that are needed for a commercial formula film and it would definitely ring the box office and would remain another milestone in Allu Arjun"s career." IndiaGlitz gave a review stating "Arya-2, though not in any way a second edition of that mature predecessor, is nevertheless both interesting and sympathetic. Its greatest asset is the riveting second half. Its biggest drawback is the slowness Arjun's character takes to grow on us.  If its intelligence and humour in the second half make it enjoyable, the drabness, tacky comedy and excruciating scenes make it unwatchable in the first half. Thankfully, everything is undone by the second 80 minutes, which you will want to watch again and again" and called it an "Entertaining, on again, off again" film. 123telugu.com gave a review stating "The film redefines the word 'Style'! Allu Arjun is back with a totally new look and style. The entire story is woven around Arya's character. The film has its share of brilliance, especially the scenes between Brahmanandam and his team, conversations between Allu Arjun and Navdeep and the entire episode involving Ajay. Arya-2 is the kind of film in which you will either dazzle you or bore you to death, there's no middle way. Either way, we end up hallucinating under its influence!" and rated the film 3/5 terming that it "Redefines Style". fullhyderabad.com gave a review stating "As for visuals, Arya 2 is undoubtedly a slickly made production. The overall design is as colourful and as cheerful as the promos have led you to believe, with the title song being one of the smartest portions of the film. For an audience starved of merry-making at the movies, this one could quite be the party whose invitation won't be chucked away so soon" and rated the film 6.5/10.

ReleaseArya 2 was released in 1000 screens worldwide. It was also dubbed in Malayalam under the same title, in Odia as I Love You Geeta & in Hindi as Arya: Ek Deewana'' (2010).

Box office
The film grossed  in its first week, including  from Nizam area. However the film was affected when its screening was halted in Telangana region due to Telangana Agitation.

The film was dubbed into Malayalam with the same title, and released across Kerala on 5 February 2010 with 100 prints and was successful in the state.

Accolades
57th Filmfare Awards South
Won
Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer – Telugu - Priya Hemesh - "Ringa Ringa"
Filmfare Award for Best Dance Choreographer - South - Prem Rakshit - "Mr. Perfect" song

Nomination
Best Film
Best Director - Sukumar
Best Actor - Allu Arjun
Best Music Director - Devi Sri Prasad
Best Male Playback - Baba Sehgal - "Mr. Perfect"
Best Lyricist - Vanamali - "Karigeloga Jeevitam"

References

External links

2009 films
2000s Telugu-language films
Indian action comedy films
Indian buddy films
2009 action comedy films
2000s buddy films
Films about friendship
Films about orphans
Films directed by Sukumar
Films scored by Devi Sri Prasad
Indian sequel films


Bulgarian-Chinese relations are foreign relations between Bulgaria and China. Both countries established diplomatic relations on October 4, 1949. Bulgaria has an embassy in Beijing, China. China has an embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria.

In 2019, Bulgaria and China raised their characterization of their mutual foreign relations to a strategic partnership.

See also
 Foreign relations of Bulgaria
 Foreign relations of China
 Chinese people in Bulgaria
 China–European Union relations

References

External links
  Bulgarian embassy in Beijing
  Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs about relations with Bulgaria
   Chinese embassy in Sofia

China
Bilateral relations of China


Ziarat Tehsil is an administrative subdivision (tehsil) of Ziarat District in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. The tehsil is administratively subdivided into five Union Councils and is headquartered at the city of Ziarat.

References

Tehsils of Balochistan, Pakistan
Ziarat District


Tasso Janopoulo (; 16 October 1897 in Alexandria – 1970 in Paris) was an Egyptian pianist of Greek descent, and a naturalised French citizen. He collaborated with musicians such as Henryk Szeryng, Jacques Thibaud, Paul Tortelier, Pierre Fournier and Ninon Vallin as an accompanist.

Biography
He was born to a Greek family in Alexandria, Egypt in 1897. He was orphaned as a young child and played the piano in brasseries. He went to Belgium and became a pupil of Arthur De Greef while continuing to earn his living playing. Presented to Eugene Ysaye by Greef, he became the violinist's accompanist. He met Jacques Thibaud in Brussels in 1923 touring with him that year, and continuing the association until Thibaud's death in 1953. Later he accompanied other major violinists (Milstein, Menuhin, Francescatti) and singers (Flagstad, Vallin).

From 1947 he played for Georges Guétary (his nephew), including his London debut.

His recordings include Chabrier and Fauré songs, music of Spain and Mexico with Henryk Szeryng and violin music with Jacques Thibaud.

References

 Janopoulo's discography and writings, on WorldCat, accessed 23 August 2019.

Egyptian classical pianists
Egyptian people of Greek descent
20th-century French male classical pianists
1897 births
1970 deaths
Musicians from Alexandria
Egyptian emigrants to France


Alistair Bruce Coe (born 9 January 1984) is an Australian politician and a former leader of the Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). He was a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly from 2008 to 2021, representing the Ginninderra electorate from 2008 to 2016 and the Yerrabi electorate from 2016 to 2021. As Opposition Leader Coe led the Liberal Party to defeat at the 2020 election. He chose not to re-contest the party's leadership position, and resigned from the Assembly in 2021.

Legislative Assembly

Coe's first speech in the ACT Legislative Assembly was on 9 December 2008.

His portfolio responsibilities from 2008 to 2012 were as Shadow Minister for Urban Services, for Transport Services, for Housing, for Heritage, and for Youth. From 2012, Coe's responsibilities included Shadow Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, for Planning & Infrastructure, for Transport, and for Heritage.

At the 2012 election, Coe was returned with a quota of 0.9.

When Zed Seselja, then Leader of the Opposition, mounted a bid to win preselection for the Senate for the 2013 Australian federal election, Coe was elected as Deputy Leader of the Liberals.

Leader of the Opposition
In the wake of a fifth consecutive Liberal defeat in the 2016 election, former leader Jeremy Hanson resigned, and Coe was elected as his replacement with Nicole Lawder as his deputy.

During the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, Coe was the only federal, state or territory party leader to oppose same-sex marriage.

Coe led the Canberra Liberals to the 2020 election. His party faced an uphill battle as soon as the campaign began, with the Greens declaring they would not support a Liberal coalition government. This almost certainly meant that the Liberals had to win a majority in order to govern, something only ever done once in ACT history.

Ultimately, the Liberals were defeated at the election, losing 2 seats. Coe conceded on election night, when it became apparent that a Labor-Greens coalition would return to power. On 27 October 2020, Coe was replaced by Elizabeth Lee as Leader of the Canberra Liberals and Leader of the Opposition. On 24 January 2021 Coe announced his forthcoming resignation from the Legislative Assembly, which became effective on 12 March 2021.

Personal life
Alistair Coe and Yasmin were married on 9 March 2013, at St Paul's Church, Manuka. He identifies as member of the Anglican Church and is pro-life.

He was the Deputy Chairman of the International Young Democrat Union in 2011.

See also

2020 Australian Capital Territory general election

References

External links

 Canberra Liberals

Liberal Party of Australia members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
1984 births
Living people
Members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
International Young Democrat Union chairs
21st-century Australian politicians


Bulgaria and Japan have bilateral relations. Bulgaria has an embassy in Tokyo and an honorary consulate in Yokohama, while Japan has an embassy in Sofia.

Bulgaria and Japan were allies during the Second World War together with Nazi Germany, after the war, both countries officially re-established diplomatic relations in September 1959.

See also
 Foreign relations of Bulgaria
 Foreign relations of Japan
 Japan–European Union relations

External links
  Bulgarian embassy in Tokyo
  Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs about relations with Bulgaria
  Japanese embassy in Sofia (in Bulgarian and Japanese only)

Japan
Bilateral relations of Japan


Steven John Doszpot  (23 September 1948 – 25 November 2017) was an Australian politician and member of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly from 2008 to 2017. A member of the Liberal Party, he represented the electorate of Brindabella between 2008 and 2012, Molonglo from 2012 to 2016, and Kurrajong from 2016 to his death in 2017. In December 2012, Doszpot was elected as the Assistant Speaker.

Biography
He was born as István Doszpot in Budapest, Hungary and in 1957, aged nine, migrated to Australia with his refugee parents after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He completed his secondary education at the Christian Brothers' High School, Lewisham (1961–64). He moved to Canberra in 1974 and was involved in the computer industry as a senior executive with Wang Computers (Australia), Digital Equipment Corporation and Canon Australia, with a brief stint at the CSIRO ICT Centre as the Business Development Manager in Canberra, before his election to the ACT Legislative Assembly in 2008.

He was the Head of SOCOG in Canberra from 1998 to 2000, and managed the Olympic Football Tournament staged in Canberra as part of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. He was President of the ACT Olympic Council and Soccer Canberra and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Following the 2000 Olympic Games, he was awarded the Australian Sports Medal for his long-term commitment and service to the sport.

Doszpot was the Shadow Minister for Education and Training and the Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation from 2008; the Shadow Minister for Ageing and the Shadow Minister for ICT from 2012. He had previously held shadow portfolios for Multicultural Affairs and for Disability between 2008 and 2012. He was also the Chair of the ACT Assembly Standing Committee on Health, Community and Social Services from 2008.

On 24 October 2017, Doszpot announced that he would be resigning from the Legislative Assembly on 5 December, after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. However, he died from the disease on 25 November, becoming the first Member of the Legislative Assembly to die in office. He was given a state funeral.

See also

2008 Australian Capital Territory general election
2012 Australian Capital Territory general election
Members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, 2008–2012
Members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, 2012–2016

References

|-

1948 births
2017 deaths
Liberal Party of Australia members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
Hungarian emigrants to Australia
Members of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
Recipients of the Australian Sports Medal
21st-century Australian politicians
Deaths from cancer in the Australian Capital Territory
Deaths from liver cancer
Politicians from Budapest
Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia
Fellows of the Australian Institute of Company Directors