The dialects of Dutch do not only differ from Standard Dutch in their words and sounds, but also in the way they build their words (morphology) and sentences (syntax). The Morphological Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (MAND) and the Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND) provide a description of the surprisingly rich morphological and syntactic variation in the Dutch language area (i.e. The Netherlands, Dutch speaking Belgium and north west France) and present this variation on maps. The first volume of these atlases appeared in 2005. The second and final volume appears today. This is the completion of a unique project of the Meertens Institute (Amsterdam) and the University of Ghent that started in 1979.

Together with the Phonological Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (FAND; three volumes) that has already appeared, MAND and SAND constitute a triptych without precedent. There is no other language area in the world for which such a systematic, extensive and detailed description of grammatical variation and its geographic distribution exists. This description is very important for research into the structure of natural language and for research into the history of the Dutch language area and Dutch.

SAND 1 gives the variation in complementizers and complementizer inflection, inflection on yes/ no, subject clitics, reflexives, Wh-sentences and relative clauses. SAND 2 presents the variation in the order of verbs and correlated variation in their form, and negative sentences.