Learning the Language

The English and the Dutch waged a number of wars in the latter half of the seventeenth century, usually over trading disputes. A key strategy to trade was learning the language of the competition, hence the existence of William Sewel’s A Compendious Guide to the Low-Dutch Language (1706).

Even though the book was published just four years after the death of the Dutch-born King William in 1702, Dutch interest in the English language was low. French was used for the court and Latin preferred by academics. At a very handy size, the book would have fitted easily into a back pocket of an English merchant in Amsterdam. The work is not only a dictionary, it also teaches grammar lessons, standardized sentences, and even includes a couple of templates for a complete letter.