Could the Netherlands be considered part of Scandinavia?

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nuclearfuel

Geographical proximity has nothing to do with it. The French-speaking part of Belgium and France itself of course, are much closer to the Netherlands, but since French has latin roots, rather than the germanic roots of modern Dutch, there is no direct relation. South-African on the other hand is similar enough for Dutch and South-African speakers to have a meaningful conversation. Finland too, which shares its border with Sweden has nothing in common as far as Scandinavian languages are concerned. Finnish (Suomi) is part of the Finno-Ugric family, which for instance also comprises Hungarian. All this is the result of tribal movements over the past 2000 years or so, as well as colonial influences.

Whereas Dutch belongs to the West-Germanic language family branch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian form part of the North-Germanic branch (collectively called Nordic). Although all Germanic languages share certain linguistic features at a syntactic level, the differences are far too great to effectively communicate with eachother. Dutch could be placed somewhere halfway between German and English, and a very close relative of Dutch, the Frisian language which is spoken in one of the northern provinces of the Netherlands, is considered by quite a few linguists to be the closest relative of modern English.

To your average native speaker of Dutch, Scandinavian languages seem as foreign as Russian or Swahili for that matter.

Jay

Absolutely not......if you put a Swede in a room with a Dutch person they wpould not know what the other is saying. In fact Germany is closer and they don't understand swedish Danish or icelandic either

peppizola

no way.

Willeke

I am Dutch too, but I do understand Norwegian and a bit of Swedish without much difficulties.
But the Netherlands can not be seen as part of Scandinavia for historic reasons.
The Netherlands have never belonged to one kingdom with any of the Scandinavian countries, where Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and even Iceland have been combined in the same kingdoms at many times.
And the peoples of the Scandinavian countries are closely related, where the Dutch are not related at all.
England has more in common with Scandinavia than the Netherlands.
The Frisians of the past would have fitted in with the Scandinavians much better than the Dutch now, but even they did never belong in Scandinavia.

undir

No, the Netherlands could not be considered part of Scandinavia. The culture and history aren't similar enough and although the Dutch language is Germanic like the Scandinavian languages, it's not similar enough to be considered a Scandinavian language.

If the Netherlands were to be considered part of Scandinavia due to the language and geographic location then you'd have to add more countries and the whole thing wouldn't make sense.

Kimberlee Taylor

No, it is completely separate, and I don't think the languages are that similar. What has Iceland got to do with anything?

no way, no how.

Marko S

No.

The language is deifintely NOT "almost the same". Dutch has more in common with German I believe.

Geographical proxomity doesn't mean a thing. What matters is historical and cultural ties. The Netherlands don't share the same historical or cultural background as the Nordic/Scandinavian countries. in Finland we speak a totally different language than most of Scandinavia (Scandinavian languages belong to the Indo-European language group, while Finnish belongs to the Fenno-Ugric language group), but we share hundreds of years of common history and culture with Sweden, which makes us a Nordic country (although not Scandinavian one - to be a Scandinavian country, it should be on the Scandinavian peninsula, like Norway and Sweden).

Netherlands just doesn't have these kind of ties with Scandinavia/Nordic countries.

You could actually argue that Russia and England are more "Scandinavic/Nordic" than the Netherlands - Russia was (after a legend) founded by Swedish Vikings, and the Danes ruled much of England a thousand years ago.

Sophia

What makes you think that the language of Sweden and Netherlands is almost the same (laughing) ?

I am swedish, speak swedish and I have noooo idea what they say when I have been to the Netherlands.

I think that you have got confused about scandinavia, I suggest that you take a look at wikipedia, they have some good information on the subject. :) Good luck!

blondedude

No they cant. they are in different continent.

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