Author Description

Whilst the Dutch language cannot be considered a world language in the manner of English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French, the fact that speakers of Dutch have sailed to the four corners of the earth means that it cannot be overlooked in language-contact studies. This volume brings together scholars from across the globe to showcase the many varied outcomes of contact between Dutch and other languages in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These outcomes include language learning, translation, multilingualism, codeswitching, lexical borrowing, grammatical interference, the emergence of contact varieties such as creoles, and language shift or 'first-language attrition'. Other subjects that the volume covers include the circulation of Dutch loanwords, translanguaging, sprachbund studies, taboo words, animal names, call names, language beliefs, Dutch as a heritage language, and Dutch in online spaces. In short, the contributions in this volume tell the story of the many outcomes of contact between Dutch and other languages across the centuries and across the world.