Could the Netherlands be considered part of Scandinavia?
Geographical proximity has nothing to do with it. The French-speaking part of Belgium and France itself of course, are much closer to the Netherlands, but since French has latin roots, rather than the germanic roots of modern Dutch, there is no direct relation. South-African on the other hand is similar enough for Dutch and South-African speakers to have a meaningful conversation. Finland too, which shares its border with Sweden has nothing in common as far as Scandinavian languages are concerned. Finnish (Suomi) is part of the Finno-Ugric family, which for instance also comprises Hungarian. All this is the result of tribal movements over the past 2000 years or so, as well as colonial influences. Whereas Dutch belongs to the West-Germanic language family branch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian form part of the North-Germanic branch (collectively called Nordic). Although all Germanic languages share certain linguistic features at a syntactic level, the differences are far too great to eff
