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Markus Karlsson talks to Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, the Chief Executive of the French chemicals company Rhodia. It recently accepted a 3.4 billion euro takeover offer from the Belgian competitor Solvay.

For something a little more unique than you'll find on the high street, marketing student Jonna Jarvenpaa picks five brands that combine high quality with vintage appeal

Despite the rise of cheap fashion, consumers have become more discerning when it comes to product quality – looking at where and how things are made. Even in the wake of the credit crunch, people want to buy products that are unique. Here we examine five "sleeping beauties" of the fashion and design worlds, vintage names that are due for a revival.

Delvaux

Despite being the world's oldest fine leather luxury goods company, founded in 1829 and patronised by the Belgian royal family, not many have heard of Delvaux. Their designs are simple and beautiful, often compared with Hermes. The company recently appointed Veronique Branquinho as artistic director, to freshen up their image, while the Belgian model Hannelore Knuts has collaborated on a selection of handbags.

Heschung

A former ski boot maker, Heschung has a strong presence in France but is relatively unknown elsewhere. Initially designed for skiing, hunting, and hiking, Heschung have developed a more cosmopolitan style while keeping their sense of tradition. Each pair of shoes is handmade and requires three to four weeks of production time. The focus on natural materials creates an authentic feel, while the designs are sober and clean, offering a combination of elegance and attitude.

Cacharel

The French fashion house Cacharel is known for its contemporary sportswear and perfume lines but has suffered an identity crisis in recent times after going through multiple creative directors. The head of womenswear, Cedric Charlier, appears to have succeeded in turning things around, creating collections full of youth, poetry and authenticity, whilst maintaining the brand's sense of heritage.

Lee

Lee, which was founded in 1889 in Kansas, missed the last boom for designer jeans but their persistence seems to have finally paid off. In the 1970s Lee shifted its focus from workwear to fashion but struggled to escape its middle America reputation until Terry Richardson's provocative advertising campaign helped put the company back on the map. The transition from work overalls to skinny jeans hasn't been pretty but Lee is finally there.

Iittala

Iittala could be the homeware accessories company of choice but is rarely appreciated outside its home of Finland. Iittala's products aim to reflect modern Scandinavian design and are widely recognised for their style and quality. From glassware to candle holders, items are created to achieve long-lasting, everyday use – at the core of their philosophy is an aversion to the modern cult of "throw away-ism". Responsible for interior design classics such as Oiva Toikka's mouth-blown glass birds, Iittala is deserving of international recognition.

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Last Saturday, at the end of an hour-long spectacle showcasing the work of ten contestants at the Hyères Fashion Festival, all the designers, hairdressers, make-up artists and models stormed the runway, clutching each other, larking, and cavorting. Yet this youthful glee and carefree abandon was missing from most of the collections. In fact, one got the feeling that these up-and-comers were only interested in pleasing the audience with “shock tactics,” not in opening any creative new doors. One German contestant, Janosch Mallwitz, for example, displayed truly enticing, urban pieces, but they ultimately looked derivative of other things—those i-D editorials, that Raf Simons aesthetic (whom, by the way, he assisted two years ago).

Simons presided over the high-profile jury this year, and they rightly awarded the €15,000 first prize to Léa Peckre, a French designer whose irresistible collection, grimly inspired by mausoleums, could be summed up as nuns with a hourglass figure. The silhouette consisted of a habit on the head and jackets or skirts with full hips and intriguing wooden sequins. It made for a multi-layered and original point of view.

Two secondary prizes went to Céline Meteil, a former assistant at John Galliano and Balenciaga, who crafted see–through white dresses out of jaconet, the sheer muslin fabric designers use for samples. Meteil was a favorite among journalists throughout the festival, but her outfits looked fairly banal and sexless to me. Emilie Meldem went home with a special jury prize. She explored her Swiss heritage with buttery leather pieces, and even a dress made of thin branches.

One designer who should have been honored is Michael Kampe, a young German consultant at Diesel who won a special prize at Trieste last year. The pieces he sent out, jeans with geometric stitching and architectural coats with an “exploded” effect, indicated a modern-minded talent to watch.

The contestants' show was followed by that of Alexandra Vershueren, last year’s Belgian winner. Bland is the only word I can think of to describe the procession of loose, summery dresses and jackets.

Jean Pierre Blanc, founder of the festival, said attendance was significantly up this season. Besides its shows and exhibitions (Raf Simons and Erwin Blumenfeld), the event—held in the picturesque village in the south of France—offers fashionistas a pleasant spring break with long lunches in verdant gardens, pleasant strolls through the city center, and late-night beach parties.

But the star attraction this year was the jury, which, besides Simons, included fashion scribes Tim Blanks and Cathy Horyn (a staunch admirer of Simons), DJ extraordinaire Michel Gaubert (who does his soundtracks), the legendary Franca Sozzani of Italian Vogue, and young designers du jour Proenza Schouler and Christopher Kane.

I pointed out to Blanc that the festival has international appeal, but this year included exclusively European designers. “There were 50 nationalities between the 300 first contestants," he replied, "but they unfortunately didn’t make it to the final selection. Hopefully other countries will take part next year.”

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Now Glencore is going public, the destructive power it can wield to force up food prices could be even greater

What does it take to make the food speculators at Goldman Sachs look like they're playing for lunch money? A secretive Swiss-based company, and one of the world's largest commodity trading firms, knows. With its initial public offering announced on Thursday, Glencore – a multibillion-dollar mining, energy and food trader that will soon list in London and Hong Kong – is the envy of Wall Street. When Goldman Sachs was floated, the then CEO Hank Paulson made off with $219m. Glencore's chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, has already earned the moniker "The Ten Billion Dollar Man" for his share of the bonanza.

Glencore will be the first company in 25 years to make the FTSE 100 on its first day of trading, with an estimated valuation of about $60bn. The company has had an average return on equity of 38% (compared to Goldman Sachs's 12%). Its base in the Swiss town of Baar has freed it of even the minimal regulation US-based companies entertain. Not by accident does Glencore find itself in Switzerland. Like the mining and oil trading company Trafigura, Glencore is a descendant of the Marc Rich group. Rich fled the US in 1983 after being indicted by a federal prosecutor, Rudolph Giuliani, for tax evasion and trading with Iran (though he was pardoned by Bill Clinton). As Marcia Vickers reported in a Businessweek exposé: "Rich's philosophy is that no law applies to him."

In exchange for going public and raising money for further acquisitions, Glencore will now have to submit to the bared gums of UK regulators – whose rules are far less onerous than their US counterparts. With the funds from its flotation, the company looks set to dominate the fields in which it chooses to operate. Although primarily a mining and energy company, it has substantial interests in food – controlling around a quarter of the global market for barley, sunflower and rape seed, and 10% of the world's wheat market.

In the weeks before flotation, Glencore allowed us a glimpse of the kind of power it wields. Last year Russia, the world's third largest wheat exporter, experienced a drought the like of which had never been recorded; fires damaged tens of thousands of acres of cereal.

Glencore has now revealed its traders placed bets that the price of wheat would go up. On 2 August Glencore's head of Russian grain trading called on Russia's government to ban wheat exports. Three days later, that's what it did. The price of wheat went up by 15% in two days. Of course, just because a senior executive at one of the world's most powerful companies suggested a course of action that a country chose to follow doesn't mean Glencore made it happen. But happen it did, and the consequences rippled round the world.

At the time, Mozambique experienced a massive uprising in response to increased food and fuel prices. Protests were organised via text messages and, in actions that foreshadowed those of governments in the Arab spring, the Mozambican state responded by shutting down text capability for pre-paid phones and sweeping up hundreds of protesters. Over a dozen people died, many were injured, and millions of dollars of damage was caused. It's safe to say that tens of thousands were pushed further towards hunger as a result of the higher wheat prices.

According to the Financial Times, Glencore's speculation didn't necessarily bring riches to the company. Although the bets on the future price of wheat paid off, Glencore is so big that other parts of the company were tripped up. Its wheat customers in the Middle East had contracts that needed to be fulfilled, and the company was left scrambling after its Russian supplies were walled away.

But Glencore itself admits to prodding the boundaries of how markets ought to work – its flotation prospectus reveals that its Belgian agricultural subsidiary is embroiled in charges of corruption, allegedly involving inside information on European export subsidies.

This story may help economists who are having a hard time understanding how speculation works. In its recent thoughts on the global food market, the Economist defended speculators because "trading cannot drive prices up in the long term since for every buy, there is a sell". By definition, for every smart or lucky trader who comes out with a yacht, some other trader loses their shirt. It's all very nicely confined to the paddling pool of the futures exchange, and the yellow water needn't taint the rest of the market, where the real demand is.

While the economic world ought to work this way in theory, it doesn't in practice. Goldman Sachs has an investment structure that is only about buying food futures. Despite what the theorists say, speculators have profited from hunger. And there's now mounting evidence from some economists that the rush of money into commodity funds is indeed driving prices higher.

But even these kinds of analysis assume that there are rational moves made by actors within the market's confines. When financial powerhouses like Glencore are able to control and engineer the terms on which they are governed, economics has painfully little to say. Rather than being "price takers", today's financial behemoths are price makers. To understand the power at play, we're better served by the insight of the French historian Fernand Braudel – that capitalism is, at its pinnacle, not about the facilitation of free exchange, but about its destruction.

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Clijsters in fitness race SkySports Kim Clijsters is facing a race against time to be fit for the French Open starting on May 22. The Belgian has been sidelined with shoulder, wrist and ankle injuries and returned to the court for the first time in five weeks on Wednesday. ... and more »

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In the Geo Quiz, we're searching for the Doyenne. La Doyenne means "the oldest". It's also the French nickname for one of Europe's most famous bike races. Unlike the grueling Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia, the Doyenne is a one-day race. It traverses the Ardennes, a hilly region of Belgium that figured in both world wars. The race starts and ends in a Belgian city we want you to to name.

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World number two Kim Clijsters has reportedly started training for the French Open 2011. Belgian media reported that Clijsters was seen doing endurance training with trainer Sam Verslegers this week. The Australian Open 2011 champion took time off from the tour after suffering a torn ligament at a wedding recently. The former world number one is [...]

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A photographic tribute to the legendary DJ AM and his amazing vintage t-shirt collection. Shirt #11: Wu-Tang Clan Fact: Wu-Tang was on regular rotation on AM's decks. US Auctions Australian Auctions Austrian Auctions Belgian Auctions Canadian Auctions French Auctions German Auctions Indian Auctions Irish Auctions Italian Auctions Dutch Auctions Spanish Auctions Swiss Auctions UK Auctions [...]

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Master brewer behind a revival in the white beer of Hoegaarden

Pierre Celis, who has died aged 86, put the small Belgian town of Hoegaarden on the beer map in the 1960s when he revived cloudy wheat or "white" beer made with the addition of spices and fruit. White beer for centuries had been a style brewed in the Belgian region of East Brabant, where the rich, dark soil is ideal for growing barley, oats and wheat. Brewing in the area has been traced back to the 14th century. By the 1500s, Hoegaarden had a brewers' guild and in the 19th century there were some 30 breweries crowded into the town.

The special character of the white beers of Brabant was created not only by the use of wheat and oats alongside barley malt, but also exotic spices and fruits brought to the Low Countries by Dutch traders. Hoegaarden became the centre for brewing the style, but in the 20th century the white beer breweries started to close, unable to compete with mass-marketed lagers, in particular those produced in Leuven by Stella Artois. The last brewery in Hoegaarden, Tomsin, pulled down the shutters in the late 1950s. It was mourned by many in the town, including Celis, a milkman who had done some part-time work in the brewery when he was a schoolboy.

He was drinking in a bar with some friends one evening and they started to reminisce about the much-missed local beers. Celis decided to make a batch in his wife Juliette's copper. He remembered the ingredients from his time in the brewery. Grain and hops were easily available, and he added milled coriander seeds and Curaçao orange peel.

His beer was so well received that he decided to make it commercially. In 1966, he bought a small brewing plant and installed it in the stables next to his house, but demand for the beer forced Celis to move into larger premises – a derelict lemonade factory.

The cloudy, unfiltered beer had taken Leuven by storm, where university students considered it to be a more natural beer than lager. Celis broke into the important Antwerp market and then into the Netherlands, France and Britain. The beer's fortunes were aided by the eight-sided glass it was served in: by chance, Celis had found the Italian prototype in a shop in Hoegaarden.

Production grew rapidly to 300,000 hectolitres a year by 1985. Celis had just started to export to the US when a fire devastated the brewery and he found he was seriously under-insured. He turned to Stella Artois for help and the giant brewer offered to invest in return for 45% of the shares. In 1988, Stella merged with another lager brewer, Piedboeuf of Jupille, near Liège. Interbrew was born and, according to Celis, "the bankers took over". They wanted him to produce white beer and other beers he had introduced by the process of "high gravity brewing" – making one liquid and then watering it down into different beers. Celis refused but the pressure grew and he decided, at the age of 65, to sell the company to Interbrew.

The interest in Hoegaarden White in the US encouraged Celis to move to Austin, Texas, where he launched a brewery with the support of his daughter, Christine. Celis White was successful but Celis found his American backers wanted a quick return on their investment. In order to buy them out, he signed another Faustian pact with a corporate giant, Miller, America's second-biggest brewer.

Miller, Celis said, cheapened the beer and sales plummeted. He sold up and returned home to Hoegaarden, only to discover that Interbrew planned to close his old brewery in 2006 and transfer production to Jupille. The move caused outrage throughout Dutch-speaking Belgium, for Jupille is in the French region. In 2004 there was a mass rally in the town while most shops and houses carried a poster with the simple slogan "Hoegaarden brews Hoegaarden". The beer brewed at Jupille was poorly received and InBev, as it had become, following yet another merger, scuttled back to Hoegaarden and reopened the mothballed plant in 2007.

Celis, in his 80s, started to brew small batches of beer at the St Bernardus brewery in the village of Watou. In North America he joined forces with the Real Ale Brewery in Blanco, Texas, to launch a new wheat beer.

He is survived by Juliette, whom he married in 1953, and Christine.

• Pierre Celis, brewer, born 21 March 1925; died 9 April 2011

The complete lineup for the Director's Fortnight lineup at Cannes 2011 has been announced and joining Sion Sono's Guilty of Romance are films about a sleepwalking woman hunting down her mother's killer and a wheelchair bound man who hijacks a plane using a pair of hand grenades tucked into his adult diaper.Typically the edgier of the Cannes sidebar programs the Fortnight this year is dominated by French and Belgian titles with Sono's title being one of only three Asian selections.Here's the complete list of titles: DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT LINEUP "Apres le sud," France, Jean-Jacques Jauffret "Blue Bird," Belgium, Gust Van den Berghe "Breathing," Austria, Karl Markovics "Code Blue," Netherlands-Denmark, Urszula Antoniak "Corpo celeste," Italy-Switzerland-France, Alice Rohrwacher "End of Silence," France-Austria, Roland Edzard "La Fee," Belgium-France,...

Issues of violent crime, morality, sexuality and redemption are discussed in Peter Shaffer's Equus, now playing at the Rialto Theatre, thanks to Village Scene Productions.

Impossible, while watching this play, not to think of Wajdi Mouawad and the bizarre situation he's gotten himself into by casting an ex-con to play the leader of the Greek chorus a cycle of three plays by Sophocles. Does he see himself as a psychiatrist, like Martin Dysart in Equus, who coaxes his violent young patient to act out his demons? Is he trying to use theatre as a healing ceremony for his friend, Bertrand Cantat?  Perhaps we'll find out later today (April 18, 2011), when Mouawad talks to the press in Ottawa, during the launch of his final season as artistic director of the National Arts Centre French Theatre.

One thing is certain, Mouawad is stretching it when he claims that he didn't anticipate upsetting people with his circus-sideshow tactic of tossing a tabloid-headline rock star convicted of killing his  film-star girlfriend (Marie Trintignant) into the cast of an internationally booked show.  Not possible. He had to have been aware of the furor that broke out when Cantat appeared at a music festival in Bègles, France last October (2010). One of the other performers at that festival, a Belgian woman, apparently pulled out because of Cantat's presence, according to this article in The Guardian. Did Mouawad really think he could sneak him into Canada, or anywhere else, without anyone noticing? Don't think so.

But enough about Mouawad. Back to the Rialto Theatre and its ongoing renaissance as a performing arts venue. And director Paul Van Dyck's remarkable production of Equus, low-budget but beautifually staged to make the most of the venue. Read Gazette review here. Actor Noel Burton, who gives a deeply thoughtful performance as Dysart, is apparently a Welshman who grew up in the same area of the country as the late, great Richard Burton, who played the same role in the 1977 Sydney Lumet film.

Since Lumet died last week Village Scene inserted a small "in memoriam" note in the Equus program. Unfortunately, his name is misspelled (as Lamet). But I'm sure they meant well. 

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(Lucan, MN) - Brau Brothers announced their new Spring seasonal brew in yesterday's newsletter.  Here's all the info about Forgotten Flem...

"It's official, our spring seasonal is in the bottle and conditioning as we speak.  It's a Belgian Saison, brewed in the most traditional way.  Here's a brief descriptor:

Forgotten Flem Farmhouse Ale

Forgotten Flem is a fitting tribute to the many Belgian Farmers who settled the prairies of  Southwest Minnesota.  Brewed in a farmhouse brewery within feet of hop bines and barley fields,  Forgotten Flem Ale is a product of genuine ingredients and classic brewing technique.    Multiple yeast strains drive complexity and months of aging develop nuanced yet distinct flavors.  Even today it's not unusual to hear the thick accents of French and Belgian Farmers in and around Lucan.  We're very pleased to offer them a taste of home!

Description:

Traditionally, farmhouse ales were brewed with whatever ingredients the farm produced and could spare.  As an estate brewery, we’ve taken the same approach.  In addition to quality two-row barley, generous amounts of wheat and rye are added to give this ale a truly classic malt bill.  However the star of the show is the yeast.  A  unique saison strain is employed which ferments a spicy and fruity, yet dry beer  A second strain is used for bottle conditioning, which builds layers of complexity through rich yeast nuances

Service:

This complex ale was brewed to be served slightly chilled, in a thistle glass.   Bottle conditioning will leave a small amount of sediment which can be swirled to mix or decanted.  Slightly hazy and pale golden in color, Forgotten Flem will pour a generous, bright white head and release an aroma of mixed fruit and toasted grains. 

Profile:

ABV = 5.3%

Color = 8 SRM

Bitterness = 51 IBU

Hops = Willamette

Yeast = Belgian Saison, Champagne

This beer introduced us to some new (old) brewing techniques.  First, we fermented it very hot, well over ninety degrees.  There's a lot of rye in this beer, and it was as noticeable in the lauter tun as it is in the glass.  True to traditional old-world saison, Flem is moderately sized, aggressively hopped, and made with plenty of wheat and rye.  The complexities of rye, wheat, multiple yeast strains, and bottle conditioning make for a unique beer. 

Look for Forgotten Flem in sixers and on draft. "

This is a muscular, myth-busting study of Britain during the second world war

Britain's War Machine takes on some of our cherished national myths about the second world war. First, the image of a beleaguered but heroic island – encapsulated in "Very Well, Alone", David Low's celebrated cartoon after the fall of France in June 1940. David Edgerton calls this "one of the most misleading images in British history", noting that when Churchill spoke of fighting on "alone" he almost always referred to the British empire rather than the British Isles.

Edgerton reminds us that wartime Britain was the heart of a global empire formed by trade as much as by colonies. The outbreak of war did force global Britain to reorient its trading patterns: "near supplies" such as Danish bacon had to be replaced from outside Europe, with America becoming much more important, particularly after Japan's whirlwind victories of 1941-42, which denied Britain vital rubber, tin and oil from south-east Asia.

But Edgerton stresses the continued reliance on traditional suppliers, such as wheat and meat from Canada, Australia and Argentina, and oil from the Caribbean and the Middle East, much of it transported in British ships. Britain had the largest merchant marine in the world, and this proved vital to keep Churchill's island going until American shipping capacity developed later in the war. These imports, mostly on credit, enabled Britain to concentrate on war production rather than food supply and consumer needs.

Britain's global reach was vital on the battlefield as well. Two of the key divisions deployed against possible invasion in 1940 came from Canada; at Alamein in 1942 (now a famous "British" victory), nearly half of Montgomery's infantry were Indians, Australians, South Africans and New Zealanders. In 1945 British manpower constituted just over half the empire's fighting strength.

Britain was also a "warfare state", an "empire of machines". This fact, Edgerton argues, has been obscured by the likes of CP Snow and his view of the "two cultures" anti-technological bias of Britain's elite. Sometimes his chapters on technocrats and experts slide towards the encyclopaedic, with too much detail, but he makes several compelling points. For instance, the powerhouse of WMD development was not the universities, despite their contributions to the bomb and short-wave radar, but the big government research institutes such as the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, and major industrial corporations such as ICI and Vickers. Again, the imperial dimension was vital: faced with a shortage of rifles in 1940, the government set up Lee-Enfield factories in Canada and Australia as well as America.

Britain's War Machine is a stimulating exercise in muscular revisionism. Yet I feel at times that Edgerton – an outstanding historian of science and technology – distorts the nature of war. Technology always matters – be it longbows at Agincourt or rifles at Gettsyburg – but ultimately battles are decided by men, not machines. Take France in 1940. German victory had less to do with overall technological superiority than the success of its surprise armoured thrust through the Ardennes and the collapse of the French command and control system.

Edgerton argues that the fall of France should be seen as having had only a "minor" impact on the British war effort compared with the south-east Asian disasters of 1941-42. Yet 1940 forced a wholesale redefinition of British strategy. Previously the government had focused on naval and air power, with France expected to bear the brunt of the land war. Edgerton insists that the British Expeditionary Force on the western front in May 1940 was highly mechanised, but to call it "a great modern army" surely misses the point. The BEF boasted only 10 divisions, half the Belgian contingent and a tenth of the French.

As 2 million French soldiers trudged off to German POW camps in June 1940, Britain had to invent a mass army almost from scratch and to teach those novice soldiers how to use their machines. Haunting memories of the Somme and Passchendaele (about which Edgerton might have said more) strengthened the determination of British leaders from Churchill down to fight a war of machines rather than men.

Yet Edgerton is surely right in his conclusion. Britain came out on the winning side thanks in significant measure to its industrial capacity and its global resources. And the British people, for all their privations, were spared the total war that ravaged eastern Europe. His book offers a fresh and provocative view of our much-loved and much-misunderstood "finest hour".

David Reynolds's books include In Command of History (Penguin).

Summary

Wikitravel users have collectively created a free Dutch phrasebook with the goal of making it possible for travelers to "get by" while traveling in areas where Dutch is spoken.

Wikitravel phrasebooks are available in many languages and each one varies in depth and detail. Most of the phrasebooks include a pronunciation guide, a general phrase list, information about dates and numbers, a color list, transportation-related phrases, vocabulary for shopping and phrases for eating and drinking. Some are even more in depth, and all are free!

From Website

Dutch is a Germanic language spoken by about 27 million people world-wide. Most people living in the Netherlands and Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) use it as a first language, while in Suriname, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles it is widely used as a second language. Historically, French Flanders and parts of the Lower Rhine Region in Germany also belong to the Dutch language sphere, and during the age of colonization it has also spread to Indonesia and other former Dutch colonies.

Dutch is the ancestor of the Afrikaans language spoken in South Africa and Namibia, which is mutually intelligible to Dutch. Lastly, it is closely related with other West Germanic languages, such as German (especially the Low German dialects), English and West Frisian.

Dutch (Nederlands) is a West Germanic language spoken natively by majorities in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Spoken in the European Union as a first language by about 23 million and as a second language by another 5 million, it also holds official status in the Caribbean island nations of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint-Maarten. Historical minorities remain in parts of France and Germany, and to a lesser extent, in Indonesia, while there may be up to 600,000 native Dutch-speakers living in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa have been standardised into Afrikaans, a mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch which today is spoken to some degree by an estimated total of 15 to 23 million people in South Africa and Namibia.

Dutch is closely related to English and German and is said to be midway between both. Apart from not having undergone the High German consonant shift, Dutch—as English—also differs from German by the overall abandonment of the grammatical case system, the relative rarity of the Germanic umlaut, and a more regular morphology. Dutch has effectively two grammatical genders, but this distinction has far less grammatical consequences than in German. Dutch shares with German the use of subject-verb-object word order in main clauses and subject-object-verb in subordinate clauses. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and contains the same Germanic core as English, while incorporating more Romance loans than German.

Though Dutch generally refers to the language as a whole, Belgian varieties, collectively known as Flemish, are differentiated from Netherlands varieties, sometimes known as Netherlandic, though this last term is only used in specialist linguistic literature.

Dutch belongs to the following language family:

Indo-European Languages > Germanic Languages > West Germanic Languages > Low Franconian Languages > West Low Franconian (Dutch)

View the Dutch Phrasebook.

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