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What countries speak Dutch?

Dutch is an official language in six countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. It is also official on Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, which belong to the Netherlands itself. Together these places have about 25 million native speakers, and Afrikaans, Dutch's daughter language, adds roughly 7 million more in southern Africa.

The complete list of countries where Dutch is official:

1. The Netherlands (Europe): the only nationwide official language, about 18 million people.
2. Belgium (Europe): one of three official languages; the language of Flanders, about 6.8 million speakers.
3. Suriname (South America): the sole official language, around 500,000 speakers.
4. Curaçao (Caribbean): co-official with Papiamento and English.
5. Aruba (Caribbean): co-official with Papiamento.
6. Sint Maarten (Caribbean): co-official with English.

Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are autonomous countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, so they count as countries even though they are not independent states. If you count only sovereign states, the answer is three: the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname.

Dutch-speaking countries by continent

Dutch is official on three continents. Africa, Asia and Oceania have no Dutch-speaking countries today, though each has a historical or diaspora link.

Dutch is also one of the 24 official languages of the European Union and an official language of the Benelux Union. The Taalunie (Dutch Language Union), the treaty body that governs standard Dutch spelling and grammar, has three member states: the Netherlands, Belgium (through Flanders) and Suriname.

Countries ranked by number of Dutch speakers

Figures are rounded native-speaker estimates based on population data. Diaspora figures count people who speak Dutch at home and are rougher.

More than 95% of all native Dutch speakers live in the Netherlands and Belgium. Roughly five million more people speak Dutch as a second language, many of them in Suriname, the Caribbean and the border regions of Germany and France.

Europe: the heartland

The Netherlands is home to about 18 million people, virtually all of whom speak Dutch; it is the sole nationwide official language. Dutch is the language of government, media and education everywhere, though the country has several other recognised languages (see below).

In Belgium, Dutch is one of three official languages and the mother tongue of about 6.8 million people, roughly 60% of the population. It is the sole official language of Flanders, the northern half of the country, and shares official status with French in the Brussels-Capital Region. Belgian Dutch is popularly called Flemish, but it is the same standard language with a different accent and some vocabulary of its own — see Dutch vs Flemish for the details. A small Dutch-speaking community also persists in French Flanders, around Dunkirk in France, though without official status.

South America: Suriname

Suriname is the Dutch-speaking country of South America. A former Dutch colony independent since 1975, it kept Dutch as its only official language. Around 500,000 Surinamese speak it, for many as their first language, and it remains the language of education, government and the press. Everyday life is multilingual — Sranan Tongo serves as the street lingua franca, alongside Sarnami (a Hindustani variety), Javanese and several Maroon languages. Surinamese Dutch is a recognised national variety with its own accepted vocabulary.

Neighbouring Guyana was also Dutch until the early 19th century (the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice), but English replaced Dutch there. Its Dutch-based creole, Berbice Dutch, lost its last known speaker around 2010.

The Caribbean

Dutch is official in the three autonomous Caribbean countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands — Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten — and in the special municipalities of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius. In practice it shares space with Papiamento (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) and English (Sint Maarten, Saba, Statia): Dutch dominates administration, law and much of schooling, while the local languages dominate the street.

Is Dutch spoken in South Africa?

Not as such. No African country has Dutch as an official language today. Dutch reached the Cape with the Dutch East India Company in 1652 and developed there into Afrikaans, now spoken natively by about 7 million people in South Africa and Namibia. Dutch itself remained South Africa's official written language into the 20th century; from 1925 the law treated “Dutch” as including Afrikaans, and Dutch was dropped from the constitution in 1961.

On a map, Afrikaans is strongest in the west: it is the most widely spoken home language in the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces, with large communities in Gauteng, the Free State and southern Namibia, where it still serves as a lingua franca. Afrikaans simplified Dutch grammar dramatically — no verb conjugation, no grammatical gender — yet a Dutch speaker can read it with little effort. See Dutch vs Afrikaans for how close the two really are.

Is Dutch spoken in Indonesia?

Hardly. Indonesia was a Dutch colony for about three centuries, but the Dutch never spread their language widely, and after independence (declared 1945, recognised 1949) Indonesian replaced it completely. A small number of elderly Indonesians still speak Dutch, and law students learn to read it because much of the country's civil and criminal law was drafted in Dutch. The lasting trace is vocabulary: Indonesian has thousands of Dutch loanwords, such as kantor from kantoor (“office”) and handuk from handdoek (“towel”).

Indonesia is in Southeast Asia. In East Asia, no country speaks Dutch, but two have Dutch history: from 1641 to 1853 the Dutch were the only Westerners allowed to trade with Japan, from the island of Dejima in Nagasaki, and Japanese scholars learned Western science through Dutch books (rangaku, “Dutch learning”); and the Dutch ruled southwestern Taiwan from 1624 to 1662.

Is Dutch spoken in Germany?

Dutch has no official status in Germany. It is spoken by Dutch migrants and cross-border commuters, and is taught in many schools in the border states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. Historically the boundary was blurrier: the local dialects on both sides of the border belong to one Low German/Low Saxon continuum, and until the 19th century Dutch was the church and school language in some German border areas, such as the County of Bentheim and parts of East Frisia. How Dutch and German relate as languages is covered in Dutch vs German.

Is Dutch spoken in the United States?

Only by emigrants and their families. The colony of New Netherland (New York and New Jersey) left Dutch dialects that survived for about two centuries after the English takeover of 1664 — President Martin Van Buren grew up speaking Dutch at home — and 19th-century emigrants founded Dutch-speaking towns in Michigan and Iowa, such as Holland and Pella. American English keeps Dutch loans such as cookie, boss and Santa Claus. Note that the “Pennsylvania Dutch” language is not Dutch at all but a German dialect; the name comes from Deitsch, “German”.

What languages are spoken in the Netherlands?

Dutch is the national language, but it is not the only one with legal standing:

Immigration added Turkish, Moroccan Arabic, Tamazight (Berber), Sranan Tongo, Papiamento and Polish, among others. English is not official in the European Netherlands, but around 90% of the population speaks it as a second language, and many university programmes are taught in it. A century ago the picture was different mainly in the dialects: in the early 1900s most people spoke a local dialect at home and learned standard Dutch at school, Frisian was the everyday language of rural Friesland, and Yiddish was still heard in Amsterdam's Jewish quarter.

Frequently asked questions

What countries speak Dutch?

Dutch is an official language in six countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. It is also official in the Caribbean Netherlands (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba), which are special municipalities of the Netherlands.

Which South American country speaks Dutch?

Suriname. It is the only country in South America with Dutch as its official language, and the only one outside Europe where Dutch is the sole official language. Around 500,000 Surinamese speak it.

Which countries speak Dutch in Africa?

None have Dutch as an official language today. Dutch was carried to South Africa in 1652 and developed into Afrikaans, which is spoken natively by about 7 million people in South Africa and Namibia and is largely intelligible to Dutch speakers in writing.

Which Asian country speaks Dutch?

No Asian country speaks Dutch today. Indonesia, in Southeast Asia, was a Dutch colony and some older Indonesians and legal scholars still read Dutch. In East Asia, Dutch was the language of Western science in Edo-period Japan, and the Dutch ruled part of Taiwan from 1624 to 1662, but neither left Dutch speakers behind.

Which country has the most Dutch speakers?

The Netherlands, with about 18 million people, followed by Belgium with about 6.8 million Dutch speakers in Flanders and Brussels. Suriname is a distant third with around 500,000.

Is Dutch spoken in Germany?

Dutch has no official status in Germany. It is spoken by Dutch migrants and cross-border commuters and is widely taught in schools along the border, and the Low German dialects on the German side are close relatives of the Low Saxon dialects in the eastern Netherlands.