• In the language itself: Drèents
• ISO 639-3 standard: ISO 639-3 standard: drt

• Classification: Indo-European → Germanic → Northwest Germanic → West Germanic → North Sea Germanic → Altsächsisch → Middle-Modern Low German → Low German → West Low German → Westphalic → Drents. For more information, see dren1238 at Glottolog.
• Script: Latin

Drents is considered a variety of Low Saxon by the Dutch government ^{2) 3)} and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), but according to Glottolog ⁴⁾ it is part of the Westphalic branch of the West Low German family, together with a few other varieties in both the Netherlands and Germany. Whatever the categorisation may be, Drents is recognised to have a handful of varieties of its own. Glottolog lists only two: North Drents and South Drents, but the officially recognised Dictionary of Drents Dialects ⁵⁾ identifies different (geographically marked) varieties.

Although the Low Saxon language was officially recognised as a regional language in 1996, it is not standardised. However, there have been some standardisation efforts made with regards to the Drents language. In 1987 the Province of Drenthe published the official orthography for the Drents language ⁶⁾, which is in use by the Province of Drenthe and other, non-governmental organisations such as Huus van de Taol. Efforts to create a dictionary of the Drents language began in the 1960s and were finalised in 2000, when the definitive edition of the dictionary was presented to Her Majesty the Queen ⁷⁾. The digitalised version of the dictionary can be found here.

Map 1 (see below) ⁸⁾ shows the geographical extent of the Low Saxon language in the Netherlands, as well as its main varieties: Gronings (in the province of Groningen); Drents (in the province of Drenthe); Stellingwerfs (mainly in the province of Friesland, but also in Drenthe and Groningen), Sallaands, Twents and West-Overijssels (all in the province of Overijssel); and lastly Achterhoeks and Veluws (both in the province of Gelderland).

Map 1: Low Saxon in the Netherlands. The map was retrieved from this article in Trouw

Drents is often subdivided into various varieties, mostly along geographical lines. Whereas Glottolog only has two distinct categories, namely Northern and Southern Drents, both the official dictionary of the dialects of Drents ⁹⁾ and the organisation Huus van de Taol ¹⁰⁾ identify nine varieties of Drents: Kop van Drenthe, Midden-Drenthe, Veenkoloniën, South-East Sand Drents, South-East Peat Drents, South-West South Drents, and South-West North Drents.

Map 2 shows only four varieties of Drents, namely Noord-Drents, Veenkoloniaals, Midden-Drents, and Zuid-Drents.

Map 2: Linguistic Situation in the North of the Netherlands. The map was made by T. Bosse and made public in February 2007 ¹¹⁾.

In total, Low Saxon is estimated to have 350.000 speakers between the ages of 6 and 69 in the Netherlands in 2021 ¹²⁾.

For Drents specifically, it is unfortunately less clear how many people are proficient in it or use it, and if so, how much they use it. As of October 2024 there are no sources that give a reliable estimate of the number of speakers of Drents. However, there are some studies that have researched percentages of dialect speakers in given population sample. According to a governmental study ¹³⁾, around 31.3% of people in Drenthe have Drents as their dominant household language. Another study ¹⁴⁾ showed that 20% of 376 first and second year high-school students were proficient in Drents. Such studies aid in obtaining a more complete view of the extent and depth of proficiency in and usage of the Drents language, but for the moment nothing conclusive can be said about absolute numbers of speakers.

Drents might be used as an informal language of communication between children, teachers, parents and other actors in the educational system, but Drents has never had any official place in the educational system, not as a subject nor as a language of instruction.

Interest in researching and codifying of the Drents language grew in the late 50s and early 60s and resulted in the publication of a Drents dictionary and the establishment of the Drents orthography by the Dutch government. And even though other academics have researched Low Saxon in general and Drents in particular through the past decades ^{15) 16) 17)}, there has never been governmental action when it comes to the implementation of Drents in the education system.

However, primary and secondary schools and daycare institutions are legally allowed ¹⁸⁾ to use Low Saxon (and therefore Drents). It is unclear, however, what is meant by 'using' Low Saxon, how many schools use it and how they would use it, because it is obligatory to use Dutch as the official language in all curricular settings.

The Low Saxon people as an ethnic group are not recognised, let alone protected, by any European convention or charter. In the fourth report of the Netherlands as carried out by the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 2021 ¹⁹⁾, it mentions Low Saxon once, in a short segment on the Regional Languages Symposium. Otherwise it does not make any mention of the Low Saxons as an ethnic minority or distinct ethnic group.

Nevertheless, Low Saxon as a language is recognised protected by the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages ²⁰⁾, not Drents specifically, but Drents does enjoy this recognition as an officially recognised variety of Low Saxon. Because of this European-level recognition and protection, the Dutch government has made some provision for the inclusion of Low Saxon (and therefore of Drents) in the education system.

According to article 9, section 13 of the Dutch Law on primary education (art. 9 lid 13 Wet op het primair onderwijs) ²¹⁾, primary schools and daycare institutions may use the regional language together with Dutch (which remains the official language and the only legal language of instruction), in areas where the regional language is 'alive'.

On the 18th of October 2018, the Minister of the Interior and the political representatives of the provinces of Friesland, Overijssel, Groningen and Drenthe, and the municipalities of Oost- and Weststellingwerf signed the Administrative Agreement on Recognition by the Netherlands of the Low Saxion regional language ²²⁾. In it, the above mentioned article 9 of the Law on primary education was also referred to with regard to the voluntary usage of regional languages in primary education. Furthermore, the agreement states that high schools are allowed to offer extracurricular classes in and/or about (a variety of) Low Saxon, in accordance with the Education Act of 2020 ²³⁾, which has since 2022 expired.

In other words, the national government has made legal room for the local governments to implement their regional languages in the education system as they see fit, provided they maintain the quality and content of the official, nation-wide obligatory curriculum.

Other than the official government body Education Inspectorate, there is no organisation, institution or body that inspects the quality of regional language education. Because most, if not all, of the language education concerning Drents is extracurricular or experiment-based, there are no official government reports on the quality of such education.

There are many institutions that support and/or facilitate the increasing awareness and use of the Drents language. First and foremost, the Dutch government supports the Drents language insomuch as it provides a legal space for other policy agents to act within, by ratifying and signing the ECRML ²⁴⁾ and administrative agreements ²⁵⁾, and making provisions within the national law ^{26) 27)}.

The provincial government has delegated any and all institutional support for the Drents language to the organisation Huus van de Taol. Huus van de Taol support and facilitate the Drents language in many ways ²⁸⁾, including but not limited to: creating teacher material in and for Drents, hosting lectures and presentations about Drents, offering extracurricular courses in and about Drents to primary and secondary education, creating learning materials for young children, and offering courses of Drents to adults.

The Drents language falls under the category 'Heritage' of the Province of Drenthe, so funding from the national and provincial government, for the most part, has to flow through that specific channel.

In recent years there has been more interest in exploring the possibilities of implementing regional languages in the education system in one form or other. The University of Applied Sciences NHL Stenden has been active in establishing and facilitating a project known as “Promotion of Drents and German in Education” ²⁹⁾, which experiments with using Drents both as a language of instruction and as subject matter for students of the PABO (Pedagogical Academy of Primary Education).

Even though Drents is struggling to find an official position within the education system, there is a host of published, digital and informal resources to promote and facilitate the acquisition and use of Drents. The organisation Huus van de Taol ³⁰⁾ does various things for Drents: they publish an annual magazine in Drents for primary school children ³¹⁾; they offer workshops and stand-alone classes about Drents to high-schools and secondary vocational education institutions; and they have made materials in and for Drents for teachers and other educators. They have also formulated core objectives for Low Saxon in primary education to provide a basis for future development of actual primary education in Drents ³²⁾.

Although Drents has no official position in education in general nor in preschool education in particular, there is a legal space provided by the government ³³⁾ to allow for regional language varieties to be used within the preschool setting. However, this does not mean that Dutch as an official language can be replaced in a daycare institution by the regional variety, only that the regional language can be used alongside Dutch. Dutch remains the only official language of preschool education.

As with preschool education, schools and institutes can decide themselves whether they want to use Drents alongside Dutch in their educational settings, as long as Dutch is maintained as the official language in curricular instruction. There are some primary schools which experiment with teaching in Drents, but there is no widespread or systematic implementation of the language. ³⁴⁾ The organisation Huus van de Taol has also formulated core objectives for primary education of Drents, to facilitate future possibilities of integrating it in the education system ³⁵⁾.

In general, high schools are free to use Drents alongside Dutch in the education setting, as long as Dutch is not supplanted as the official educational language. There is a legal space for extracurricular activities and teaching in and about the Drents language, offered by institutions such as Huus van de Taol³⁶⁾. Drents does not, however, have an official place within the education system, nor are there any high schools that have integrated or implemented Drents in an official educational setting.

Although Drents is not implemented officially and structurally in vocational education, there is a legal space provided in Dutch law for its usage. Using this space, the University of Applied Sciences NHL Stenden is experimenting with teaching Drents to students who want to become primary education teachers, and instructing them how to incorporate regional languages in general and Drents in particular in the education setting³⁷⁾.

Although there is research being done on Low Saxon in general and Drents in particular, the Drents language plays no role whatsoever in the educational setting of higher education or university education.

The organisation Huus van de Taol offers courses in Drents, for all age groups and proficiency levels ³⁸⁾. As far as is known, it is the only organisation to do so.

The main organisation that concerns itself with everything Drents is Huus van de Taol. From the creation of children's books to adult courses to academic research, this organisation is involved in almost every aspect of the Drents language.

NHL Stenden does research on and experiments with Drents in education ^{39) 40)}.

There is a digital version of the Dictionary of Dialects of Drenthe.

There is a podcast series, produced by Huus van de Taol, wherein people from Drenthe are interviewed about Drenthe and the Drents language.