niederländischen

Niederländischen is the inflected form of the German adjective niederländisch, meaning Dutch or from the Netherlands. It is used to describe nouns relating to the Netherlands, its people, language, culture, or geography. In German, adjectives are declined according to case, number, and the presence of articles, so the ending -en appears in several common contexts.

Examples of usage include: dem niederländischen Mann (dative singular masculine), die niederländischen Städte (nominative plural with a definite article), mit den niederländischen Nachbarn (dative plural), der niederländischen Kultur (genitive singular or plural depending on the noun). The form can occur in other cases as well, always carrying the -en ending in these typical contexts.

For the language itself, German usually uses the capitalized noun Niederländisch. For instance: Ich lerne Niederländisch. When describing the language with an adjective and a noun, one would say die niederländische Sprache or die niederländischen Wörter, depending on the noun being described.

Etymologically, niederländisch derives from the term for the Netherlands, the Niederlande, itself rooted in historical designations of the Low Countries. The inflected form niederländischen thus functions as a grammatical variant of the same root in contexts requiring an adjective ending.

See also: Netherlands, Dutch people (Niederländer), the Dutch language (Niederländisch), Niederlande.