Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken in the European Union by about 23 million people as a first language—including most of the population of the Netherlands and about sixty percent of that of Belgium—and by another 5 million as a second language.
Outside of the Low Countries, it is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname, and 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 up to half a million native speakers may reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined. The Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa have evolved into Afrikaans, a mutually intelligible daughter language which is spoken to some degree by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia.
Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is 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 the case system. Features shared with German include the survival of three grammatical genders—albeit with few grammatical consequences—and the use of modal particles,final-obstruent devoicing, and V2 with subject–object–verb word order. Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but fewer than English.
Antwerp (Dutch: Antwerpen [ˈɑntʋɛrpə(n)]) is the northernmost province both of the Flemish Region, also called Flanders, and of Belgium. It borders on (clockwise from the North) North Brabant province of the Netherlands and the Belgian provinces of Limburg, Flemish Brabant and East Flanders. Its capital is Antwerp which comprises the Port of Antwerp. It has an area of 2867 km² (1107 sq mi) and with 1.8 million inhabitants it is the country's most populous province. The province consists of 3 arrondissements: Antwerp, Mechelen and Turnhout. The eastern part of the province comprises the main part of the Campine region.
During the early Middle Ages the region was part of the Frankish Empire, which was divided into several pagi. The territory of the present day province belonged to several pagi of which the region around Antwerp belonged to the Pagus Renesium. The Pagus Toxandria stretched from North Brabant into the Campine region. To the south there was the Pagus Bracbatinse and the Pagus Hasbaniensis. In 843 the Carolingian Empire of Charlemagne was divided among his sons and the river Scheldt became the border between West Francia and East Francia. In 974 Otto II established the Margraviate of Antwerp as a defence against the County of Flanders.
Antwerp (i/ˈæntwɜːrp/, Dutch: Antwerpen [ˈɑntʋɛrpə(n)], French: Anvers [ɑ̃vɛʁ(s)]) is a city in Belgium which is the capital of Antwerp province. With a population of 510,610, it is the most populous city in Flanders.
Its metropolitan area houses around 1,200,000 people.
Antwerp is on the River Scheldt, linked to the North Sea by the Westerschelde estuary. The Port of Antwerp is one of the biggest in the world, ranking second in Europe and within the top 20 globally.
Antwerp has long been an important city in the Low Countries, both economically and culturally, especially before the Spanish Fury (1576) in the Dutch Revolt. The inhabitants of Antwerp are nicknamed Sinjoren, after the Spanish honorific señor or French seigneur, "lord", referring to the Spanish noblemen who ruled the city in the 17th century.
According to folklore, notably celebrated by a statue in front of the town hall, the city got its name from a legend about a giant called Antigoon who lived near the Scheldt river. He exacted a toll from passing boatmen, and for those who refused, he severed one of their hands and threw it into the river. Eventually the giant was killed by a young hero named Silvius Brabo, who cut off the giant's own hand and flung it into the river. Hence the name Antwerpen, from Dutch hand werpen, akin to Old English hand and wearpan (to throw), which has evolved to today's warp.