Why do Dutch people speak languages so well?

When I tell people here in Singapore I’m Dutch, one of the reactions I get pretty regularly, especially from people who have visited my country, is the question: “How come you guys speak so many languages”? While I would argue against the idea that simply holding a Dutch passport means you become a natural at languages, there are a couple of reasons I can think of:

Dutch is small language area surrounded by dominant languages. There are approximately 20 million people worldwide who speak Dutch as their mother tongue, mainly living in the Netherlands and the north of Belgium. To our West is the UK, using English. To the east is Germany, speaking German. To the south is France, origin of the French language. When leaving our home soil, for travel or visits, there is obviously no way we can expect any of these neighbouring fellow Europeans to speak our little language. So as a matter of survival, we need to learn their languages.

Being a small language area, our TV production capacity is obviously limited and so lots of movies and TV shows come from the US and the UK. Unlike surrounding countries, which use voiceover, Dutch and Flemish TV stations opt for subtitles, which leaves anyone watching TV exposed to the sounds of English.

The Netherlands have an open economy. Not unlike Singapore, the Netherlands are a landing place for multinationals to do business in the wider European Union. This has to do with corporate tax rates, which are among Europe’s lowest, as well as the harbour of Rotterdam, which is among the world’s largest. This yet again makes it important we are able to deal with foreigners in their own language.

The education system really focuses on languages. As a result of the above, language is a major focus of the Dutch education system. It starts with understanding Dutch grammar, and in the course of secondary education, any people will be exposed to a minimum of 4 years of English language teaching, usually accompanied with at least basic education in French or German. It may be at the expense of other subjects, like mathematics or science, where we really are not stars, but the result is visible. During my course of education, I was exposed to Dutch, English, French, German, Latin and Ancient Greek language teaching. While I followed VWO, which prepares for University entrance, this language offering is nothing out of the ordinary among Dutch secondary schools. In fact, some schools offer Spanish classes as well and just this year Mandarin language was introduced as an exam subject.

Once you speak a second language, the third (and fourth etc.) become easier. When I left secondary school, I really only could speak Dutch, English and German to a sufficient degree, although I had studied other languages as well. But I have always found it easier to pick up new languages simply because certain languages have patterns and words in common. If you’ve been exposed to French, learning Spanish (which I did in Spain years later) becomes easier. I felt having studied classic languages like Latin and Greek were a major support for me when learning Mandarin. Not that they have much in common, but just having studied a language very different from my mother tongue before gave me the confidence that I could even master Mandarin.

What other circumstances do you think help to develop multilingual ability?