Dutch Study Group

[Le Baron]

Ok.
Nor: "Hvor er bilen? Den står ute".
Dutch: "Waar is de auto? Hij staat buiten."

Using "den" instead of "han" since it's a thing. This is common for Scandinavian languages. However, Nynorsk would use "han".

Okay, in principle in relation to all the above, the answer is: yes. Though in general I feel the first word of the reply would more likely be 'het' and in speech just truncated to 't.
As Tommus's enquiry indicated, and correctly I think, it a may well be 'hij' sometimes, but if I had to I'd put my money on what someone might say I'd go for 'het.'

With regard to 'die' it matters what kind of sentence it is. Example:

- Heb je de blauwe (auto) niet meer?
- Nee, die is vorig jaar kapotgegaan.

which is pretty much standard use of 'die' as 'that one'. And somewhat different from e.g.

- ik heb een nieuwe auto.
- O, waar is (d)ie dan?

In that the ie is really 'hij' and might come out as 'die'.

Further the replacement of het (it) with hem/'m does occur more commonly even if the hij/zij thing has or hasn't been done in the same exchange:

- Vergeet je sleutel niet.
- Ik heb hem ('m) al, in m'n broekzak.

- M'n telephone doet het niet, hij/'t zit vast.
- Probeer hem uit te zetten en dan weer aan.

- Het is een leuke film, ken je het niet?
- Nee, ik heb 'm/'t nooit gezien.

[tommus]

I like making posts in this thread because I know I will learn a lot of Dutch from Le Baron's responses. I lived in the Netherlands for six years but totally failed to get the ability and insight that Le Baron has achieved. It would be interesting (and useful) to hear about how le Baron achieved such a good ability in Dutch, including such a good insight into the idiosyncrasies of the language. It would be useful for all of us who are aspiring to get a better grip of the Dutch language.

[Le Baron]

I like making posts in this thread because I know I will learn a lot of Dutch from Le Baron's responses. I lived in the Netherlands for six years but totally failed to get the ability and insight that Le Baron has achieved. It would be interesting (and useful) to hear about how le Baron achieved such a good ability in Dutch, including such a good insight into the idiosyncrasies of the language. It would be useful for all of us who are aspiring to get a better grip of the Dutch language.

It's very decent of you to say. Sometimes I just feel like a busybody . Also because I don't really have an organised 'planned' grammar in my head or anything, just accumulation. So I often rely upon seeing questions and other discussions here to jog my mind.

When I say accumulation it has just been interaction with a lot of different types of people in different situations. From government functionaries to people down on their luck. Being fed diverse words and patterns of speaking, where I have asked questions. As you'll know/remember it can be quite hard to get Dutch people fired up with pride about their own language in the way you can with e.g. French or Spanish people. There's a sort of 'oh yes, but Dutch is boring...let's just speak English!'. But you can open the floodgates a little by pressing certain buttons. Bringing up topics than mean things to people, like: 'wat is hete bliksem?' (the dish) or local history questions. One time I asked a man about his father, who was one of the chief engineers at Philips who set up a laboratory in the U.S., and his reminiscences just fired out words and ideas that only really make sense in Dutch. I did a similar thing quite early on when I could only speak basic Dutch, just got chatting to an old man (who is probably dead now) near a cathedral, who told me about being sent to Germany as a worker during the war.

I've read a lot of fiction and non-fiction over time and watched many films. Some TV. I had this obsession that to fit in and understand the language it would be a good idea to steep myself in the history of popular culture. To know about things like the famous 'Molukse Treinkaping' in Drenthe. If you're familiar with this sort of thing people tend to talk to you less like a foreigner, and I like to sit and listen and just pick up new ways of speaking, which I can use elsewhere. I haven't really done a great deal of grammar study, except for when I was initially learning and later whenever I've needed to know a particular thing. Most of my learning has been exposure over a long period, instigating discussion and listening to people talk. Interacting as much as possible. Investigating the words and structure afterwords. I have done things to try and get better, like watching loads of Polygoon journaal videos and old VPRO radio programmes from the library about topics of interest to me.

So I don't ramble on forever I'll say just one more thing. That we all here know as language learners that the books only provide part of the story, which can't be helped because it's impossible to fit the entirety of any language into instruction. But that strangely even watching native TV and documentaries and reading books doesn't always capture all the odd everyday quirks of informal speech; which may be informal, but makes up so much of common discourse. So I always think they're worth mentioning to anyone who is learning, as a supplement to the official Dutch. As a learner myself I know how hard they are to come by.

[tommus]

Thanks Le Baron for that insight. Obviously being immersed in a Dutch-speaking environment is a great advantage. I lived in the Netherlands for six years but I started that period with no Dutch at all. And my workplace was English. If I were now able to spend six more years in an immersion environment, it would be a wonderful improvement experience. When I started learning Dutch in 2001, there was very little good material available on the Internet. There was Gutenberg and Librivox but they had very old classic material with very outdated Dutch which I thought could be counter productive, but I used a lot of it. These days, I am overwhelmed with excellent Dutch material and resources. And I have had a number of Dutch <--> English language partners, which helps a lot. I think my current language partner and I have benefitted greatly from our many Zoom chats. It is essential that you find the language and things related to the language (countries, culture, history, etc.) fascinating so that the time you spend learning the language is very intriguing.

[tungemål]

Thanks Le Baron for that insight. Obviously being immersed in a Dutch-speaking environment is a great advantage. I lived in the Netherlands for six years but I started that period with no Dutch at all. And my workplace was English.
...

I think your problem was that you didn't need to learn Dutch, so didn't really make an effort the first year. The same with me. I went to university, and even if I did have an interest in learning Dutch, in practice we only used English.

My Dutch studies were half-hearted and besides I didn't have the confidence that I could learn the language really well.

Looking back, what I should have done was:
1. studying Dutch seriously, preferably before I went, every day (this I could have done)
2. done a lot of listening exercises (this was much harder to do back in the day)

[Le Baron]

I think your problem was that you didn't need to learn Dutch, so didn't really make an effort the first year. The same with me. I went to university, and even if I did have an interest in learning Dutch, in practice we only used English.

My Dutch studies were half-hearted and besides I didn't have the confidence that I could learn the language really well.

Looking back, what I should have done was:
1. studying Dutch seriously, preferably before I went, every day (this I could have done)
2. done a lot of listening exercises (this was much harder to do back in the day)

Agreed, there does need to be impetus from somewhere. Though in general I didn't need to learn Dutch. I was accepted in a job I applied for regardless of whether I could speak Dutch or not. It was because I was originally to give some lectures/tutorials in English to final year and foreign masters students.

However I did indeed start studying before I even left Wallonia, because I couldn't bear the thought of being among Dutch speakers and not being able to speak when they would inevitably start talking casually. And it would have been presumptuous of me to think just because I got that job that the requirements would be the same for any future job and that French proficiency really has limited value in NL.

On the question of listening... I note and agree that it was much harder to get 'content' back even in the days of Web 1.0 which was just a text read-only environment, let alone before. Yet when thinking back to both Dutch and German learning (and also shifting my French to a more professional level) I'm struck by how little organised listening I did. Granted this is about an immersion situation, so it's different than the media-heavy requirement of someone learning outside that situation. Yet I don't think a true immersion learner needs that media listening in the same way. It's one of the reasons I annoyingly harp on to german2k01 about listening through interaction and making capital of that fantastic opportunity. I consider media-heavy listening the second choice 'lesser option' when immersion is not available. Simply because face-to-face interaction is not one-way. It also strips away all the obstacles present in media listening, where you can stop the speaker and the speaker adjusts to your responses and the actual exchange at hand. This makes it actually congruent with the concept of 'comprehensible input'.

[lichtrausch]

I wonder how much Le Baron's apparent high verbal intelligence is a factor in reaching that level of Dutch. Even his written English seems to be in the ~90th percentile of native speakers.

[tommus]

het bestuderen van talen
de bestudering van talen

I see these two forms of saying the same thing. I see it for other verbs/nouns. Are they both correct? Is there a difference? Which is most common?

[Le Baron]

First one is standard. It's the only one I really would use. Specifically 'bestudering' often means the same as 'onderzoeken'. So you could say 'na bestudering' e.g. of a detailed legal document to discover evidence, and it would indicate you'd looked it over carefully. Whereas het besturen van is generally 'the study of' plants, languages or specific areas like: pregnant women, or market trends etc.

Could you give some other known examples using other verbs? It should jog my memory if I've read them before.

If a Dutch native could illuminate this more (and perhaps contradict me) it would be welcome.

[tommus]

Could you give some other known examples using other verbs?

de wisseling van de seizoenen
het wisselen van de seizoenen

de herinnering aan het verleden.
de herinneringen aan het verleden

de verzameling van boeken
het verzamelen van boeken

There are tons of Dutch verbs/nouns with "ing" or "en".

I think I see a pattern. "ing" seems to indicate "the thing" whereas "en" seems to indicate "the process of". In other words, "ing" seems to be "noun-ish" and "en" tends to be "verb-ish".