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You are reading an article written by a citizen of eRepublik, an immersive multiplayer strategy game based on real life countries. Create your own character and help your country achieve its glory while establishing yourself as a war hero, renowned publisher or finance guru.

[MoE] International Entertainment - Languages in the Netherlands

Day 4,111, 15:18 • Published in Netherlands

• by Ministerie van Media en Recrui

Dear readers,

Today the Ministry of Education will inform the rest of the eWorld on the languages spoken in the Netherlands. We do so after being invited to join an eBrazillian international entertainment program. Thank you eBrazil for inviting us!

In the Netherlands or what people call Holland people speak Dutch or 'Nederlands' as we pronounce it. However the the Dutch have been sailing the world a while back. Back in the day we were quite the important player on the world stage in terms of trading and wealth. The Dutch created a Kingdom. This Kingdom consisted of several countries and islands. We could be found in Indonesia, but also in the United States of America, South Africa, the Caribbean and later even in Suriname (South America). We did some pretty bad stuff and ripped off locals for great trade deals. Anyway let's get back to languages. Because of our history abroad many languages are spoken in our Kingdom. Let's simplify this for you.

In the Netherlands you know we speak Dutch (Nederlands) but in different regions we also have many different dialects. One of these is a recognized language. In the region called Friesland people speak Fries. Cool huh? In primary and high school every Dutch citizen learns English. We are well known for the fact that our English is quite good. Fun fact, many countries dub movies and tv series, the Netherlands does not. We do proide Dutch subtitles but we like to watch our Hollywood movies with the original English voices. So other than English we also learn French and German in high school. Not everyone speaks these languages but as German is quite similar in terms of sound and many people go to France on holliday quite some people have mastered these languages to some extent.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands used to be huge but many of our collonies have been given back their freedom. However some of these collonies have been governed and funded by the Netherlands for so long we still have a very strong ties with them. So other languages spoken in the Kingdom of the Netherlands are Papiamento which is spoken in the Caribbean and English which is an official language on some of our Islands e.g. Saba.

In eRepublik our official languages have been Dutch and English for a long time. Currently our leading language is English since the eNetherlands is home to several foreign players. As every real life Dutch player is able to read and write English this is the ideal language to include these foreign players into our community. Yes we are like that, we will try to include you in our community and make you feel at home.

If you want to lean what the differences are between Holland, the Netherlands and the Kingdom of the Netherlands please have a look at the video below.

Thank you for reading!

Shawtyl0w

Minister of Education

Comments

AGENT BOURNE Day 4,111, 15:28

It's great to see you participating

Shawtyl0w Day 4,111, 15:31

International projects are always fun. I'll be reading some Brazillian media tomorrow morning!

Arcanic Mindje Day 4,111, 15:51

Brazil do have interesting events 😛

AGENT BOURNE Day 4,111, 16:14

I agree, this one was very creative

Eduard Douwes Dekker Day 4,111, 15:33

loooool

I like the video and it was quite educational 😃

Monster Grinder Day 4,111, 15:43

A good initiative and a quite educational as well.

Sterben4kk Day 4,111, 15:45

Hey Dutch, give me back the East Indies and the Cape pls.

Sincerely: a portuguese citizen who loves you.

Thedillpickl Day 4,111, 15:59

How cool, Netherlands is also known as Holland.
Little known fact: Canada is also known as Mooseville.

Jimkats1 Day 4,111, 16:36

The literal translation of your country from Greek is Holland, even though in English we write almost always Netherlands, even though (I may be mistaken at this point, sorry in advance) for us (The) Netherlands means Holland and Belgium (maybe Luxembourg aswell).

Krivi Kurjak Day 4,111, 16:53

This is also the case with the translation from Serbian.
Холандија - also the pronunciation is the same or similar as Ολλανδία

Shawtyl0w Day 4,111, 17:13

Very interesting !! Didn't know that

Jimkats1 Day 4,111, 17:17

As I just re-read now in Wikipedia, at least from what I understand, the "Low Countries" (as inclusive term) is the geographic region which includes the 3 countries. Meanwhile the "Netherlands" is the country which also means pretty much "Low Countries". And Holland is one region within the Netherlands. So, not only there's a confusion when it comes from translations, but also within English themselves? Ookie 😃