Language studies in higher education in the Netherlands

Dutch is one of the two official languages of the Netherlands. It is the mother tongue of 15 million Dutchmen and 5,5 million Belgians. The second official language is Frisian, which is spoken by the 500,000 inhabitants of Friesland - a province of the Netherlands, 1,248 square miles in area, in the north with coastlines on the IJsselmeer and the Waddenzee. Sranan is the native language of the 263,000 members of the Surinamese community in the Netherlands, and Papiamento, the creole language of the Netherlands Antilles, is spoken by the 91,000 Arubans and Antilleans in the Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 1994). There are also 35,000 Moluccans, who speak Dutch but use Malay among themselves. Major immigrant languages are Turkish, the mother tongue of 241,000 Turkish nationals, and Arabic, spoken by the 196,000 Moroccan citizens in the Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 1994)