More Dutch speakers I would say about 23 million people speak Dutch rahter than 20 million Netherlands 16 million Belgium 6 million Suriname Antilles other communities 1 million total 23 million anonymous I don t know where you get those numbers where comes the 1 million number population Antilles 212 226 Aruba 103 000 Suriname 438 144 the population of these three regions does nt reach one million and Dutch is definetly not a national language in these places Plus the Netherlands and Belgium have a lot of immigrants So I belive more in the 20 million figure rather than the 23 million one 5 July 2005 11 27 UTC There are for example probably about 12 million native speakers in the Netherlands once you sutract immigrants Frisian Limburgish and other Germanic language speakers Suriname definitely isn t natively Dutch speaking some of the languages there are closer to English if you can even recognize gbe for leave as derived from English So 20 million may be a rather generous number 2005 July 5 17 50 UTC