Dutch-language literature comprises all writings of
literary merit written
through the ages in the
Dutch language, a language which currently has around 23 million native speakers. Dutch-language literature is the produce of
Netherlands,
Belgium,
Suriname, the
Netherlands Antilles and of formerly Dutch-speaking regions, such as
French Flanders,
South Africa, and
Indonesia. The
Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was called under Dutch colonization, spawned a
separate subsection in Dutch-language literature. Conversely, Dutch-language literature was and is produced by people originally from abroad who came to live in Dutch-speaking regions, such as
Anne Frank and
Kader Abdolah. In its earliest stages, Dutch-language literature is defined as those pieces of literary merit written in one of the Dutch dialects of the
Low Countries. Before the 17th century, there was no unified standard language; the dialects that are considered Dutch evolved from
Old Frankish. A separate
Afrikaans literature started to emerge during the 19th century, and it shares the same literary roots as contemporary Dutch, as
Afrikaans evolved from 17th-century Dutch. The term Dutch literature may either indicate in a narrow sense literature from the Netherlands, or alteratively Dutch-language literature (as it is understood in this article).