Dutch Study Group

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
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tungemål
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tungemål » Thu Feb 16, 2023 10:26 pm

Le Baron wrote:
tungemål wrote:Grammar: "should have"
gratuitous grammar lesson.

The Dutch use this construction for "should have done something": hadden moeten (infinitiv)

examples:
- Ik had dat niet moeten zeggen - I shouldn't have said that
- je had het vaccin moeten nemen - you should've taken the vaccine
- ik had moeten weten dat... - I should've known that...


A worthy lesson. I can't tell you how much I broke my head trying to figure out differences equating to should/ought to. It was enough bother to me knowing that in English should doesn't express the same level of obligation as ought to. However realising the fact that would/should are often the same thing: zouden, and that this also encompassed ought to (when not aiming directly for must) and still getting all the meaning across, was actually a relief.

Also realising that in Germanic languages these modal auxiliaries have in most cases replaced the need for a specially-formed subjunctive mood, made me appreciate them more.

Careful: "I should do" is completely different from "I should have done". At least how I understand it.
The grammar of this is pretty complicated. Norwegian and English express "should have" exactly the same way, while both Dutch and German use expressions that are very unintuitive to me, so I need to memorise examples.
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Le Baron
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Fri Feb 17, 2023 2:16 pm

tungemål wrote:Careful: "I should do" is completely different from "I should have done". At least how I understand it.

Yes, one is zouden moeten the other is hadden moeten.

I was really pointing to the issue that this sort of sentence:

ik zou het niet moeten zeggen, means 'I ought not to to say it' and that it is a thin nuance from 'should' which like would is more conditional than obligation.

And also this variant which adds another nuance: dat had ik niet hoeven zeggen = I didn't have to say that. You add 'echt' to get: dat had ik niet echt hoeven zeggen and it's back to the idea of 'should' = 'I really shouldn't have said that/I didn't really have/need to say that ' yet also 'I ought not to have said that'. And then there's also 'zouden mogen' which is another variant of direct obligation (must not/not permitted): Tien dingen die je nooit tegen een klant zou mogen zeggen

Should/would/ought to in English are not as clear as all that, but in Dutch it was tricky (for me at least) because of the build up of verbs.
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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:50 am

Netherlands public broadcaster seems to be using AI to generate subtitles.

The Dutch public broadcaster NOS has traditionally had very poor subtitles for language learners. The NOS subtitlers took a lot of poetic licence to shorten, rephrase, change and omit a lot of the transcribing of the speech. This was especially bad for the main daily news NOS Journaal where they made the excuse that it was done in real time so there wasn't time to do subtitles 100% and they would be delayed behind the actual audio.

Well, recently, there has been a huge improvement in NOS subtitles (ondertiteling). And the timing is very good. You see the subtitles during the speech they refer to. It is not perfect but it is very good. There seems to be problems when other languages occur such as in interviews. And in the daily news, they seem to have not applied AI subtitling to the weather reports and forecasts. They are still bad. Try it yourself for the daily 8:00 PM NOS Journaal, NOS Jeugdjournaal and NOS Nieuwsuur. Turn on Ondertitels.

NOS Journaal

NOS Jeugdjournaal

NOS Nieuwsuur
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Le Baron
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Mon Mar 13, 2023 3:56 pm

Dutch doesn't use a possessive apostrophe. Things which 'belong to' are rendered pretty much as in German: Peters Geburtstag/Geburtstag von Peter. It's almost identical: 'de verjaardag van Peter' and also 'Peters verjaardag'. There is, however, another possessive structure in Dutch: Peter's father = Peter zijn vader/Peter z'n vader.

In that last version it's pretty much the same structure as possessive 's', 'Peter (hi)'s father'. Ik ga spreken met Peter z'n vader.

My wife who grew up in the south still uses old constructions (still says 'neen' rather than nee sometimes). I remember her saying this to a friend of hers we met in town:
We moeten een verjaardagscadeau uitzoeken voor LeBaron zijn vader.

Which I thought was weird at first, but soon saw that it wasn't.

The actual apostrophe use in Dutch is mildly grating for me though. Apart from the use in those truncations like 's morgens/'s avonds (from des morgens/des avonds) and in 's-Hertogenbosch (check out that curious hyphen), the use for rendering plurals of foreign loanwords has always struck me as random and unnecessary. And it really is with loanwords, from either German, French, English in different bursts of exposure over time. There's also the group from Greek/Latin using -ci or -a: technicus/technici.

Despite rule no.1 stating Dutch plurals end in -en students quickly find that there are ordinary words in Dutch which have plurals ending in 's'. Like moeders (not 'moederen' or bemoederen because that's like 'to mother' as in coddle), broers... In general words which end in 'e' also form a plural that way (including diminutives): groente/groentes (which can also be 'groenten'!), briefje/briefjes, but also sundry others like: cadeau/cadeaus, restaurant/restaurants. Also accented words (often loanwords) like café/cafés, paté/patés.

So the reason for such words as: auto's, baby's (I particularly dislike that one), dilemma's (!), accu's, radio's... to be rendered in this way is baffling. The concept of 's' being plural is well-established in Dutch, especially now it's more common to say 'Lukes auto' in many situations rather than 'de auto van Luke' and no-one is ever confused. Even in the spelling reforms they've just carried over this annoying practice of putting an apostrophe into these words. If radio's was radios, no-one would be confused. And if café/cafés, paté/patés, despite being loanwords, aren't rendered as café/café's, paté/paté's, why not? Festival is a loanword (English/French) yet the plural is just 'festivals'. No apostrophe. Sometimes if it feels 'ingeburgerd' it gets a normal plural ending.

You might say that I'm looking at it from an English vantage point and being annoyed because it looks like a possessive apostrophe, but isn't. There could be some of that, though I'm at well ease with the language and really it's just that I can't see any actual meaningful system behind the choices. And this is a chosen spelling system because these words are just haphazardly incorporated. So 'telephones' but 'radio's'. 'Computers', but 'PC's' It's mind-boggling.
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tungemål
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tungemål » Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:39 pm

Couldn't figure out if your post was an answer to Tommus' (apostroph).

Le Baron wrote:Dutch doesn't use a possessive apostrophe. Things which 'belong to' are rendered pretty much as in German: Peters Geburtstag/Geburtstag von Peter. It's almost identical: 'de verjaardag van Peter' and also 'Peters verjaardag'. There is, however, another possessive structure in Dutch: Peter's father = Peter zijn vader/Peter z'n vader.

Is this genitive construction old-fashioned in Dutch? Interesting fact: Norwegian also has this genitive: "Peter sin far". In Norwegian it was long considered less elegant and a bit boorish - probably because Danish doesn't have this construction.
Apart from the use in those truncations like 's morgens/'s avonds (from des morgens/des avonds) and in 's-Hertogenbosch

That has got to be the only place name in the world that begins with an apostroph. What's the etymology?

Anyway, I agree with your point... the apostroph before plural -s looks wrong.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:58 pm

tungemål wrote:Is this genitive construction old-fashioned in Dutch? Interesting fact: Norwegian also has this genitive: "Peter sin far". In Norwegian it was long considered less elegant and a bit boorish - probably because Danish doesn't have this construction.

It's good that you mention this, because the very reason I started thinking about it was because I was looking at Norwegian (then Danish, and to German) to see if the same thing existed, but couldn't find examples for Norwegian to convince me. Now I know.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:41 pm

I know it as Garpegenitiv (Wikipedia: ...i norsk, nederlandsk, afrikaans og tysk...) and was almost shocked when I first heard it IRL. It existed for real!

It seems that there is an English counterpart:
His genitive

"This construction enjoyed only a brief heyday in English in the late 16th century and the 17th century, but is common in some varieties of a number of Germanic languages, and standard in Afrikaans."
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Iversen » Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:28 pm

I have just listened to some English masque music from queen Bess her days, and some of those pieces had titles like Wilson his love and Lord Souch his masque - but I don't think it was particularly common construction even back then. Today it lives precariously on in Norwegian and Low German, and it is also used in Dutch/Flemish, but its real stronghold seems to be modern Afrikaans.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:42 pm

Yes it is in Afrikaans. I have a bad habit of treating Afrikaans as a sort of 'farm Dutch', so I lump them together, which isn't quite right. Mostly I like reading Afrikaans to spot words and constructions that have fallen into disuse in Dutch.

This particular construction hasn't disappeared from Dutch though. You still hear it regularly. Even from people under 30.

The English counterpart you both mention above completely slipped my mind. I didn't think of that at all. Shameful, England will now revoke my membership. :lol:
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Mar 16, 2023 11:51 am

Le Baron wrote:The actual apostrophe use in Dutch is mildly grating for me though. Apart from the use in those truncations like 's morgens/'s avonds (from des morgens/des avonds) and in 's-Hertogenbosch (check out that curious hyphen), the use for rendering plurals of foreign loanwords has always struck me as random and unnecessary. And it really is with loanwords, from either German, French, English in different bursts of exposure over time. There's also the group from Greek/Latin using -ci or -a: technicus/technici.

Despite rule no.1 stating Dutch plurals end in -en students quickly find that there are ordinary words in Dutch which have plurals ending in 's'. Like moeders (not 'moederen' or bemoederen because that's like 'to mother' as in coddle), broers... In general words which end in 'e' also form a plural that way (including diminutives): groente/groentes (which can also be 'groenten'!), briefje/briefjes, but also sundry others like: cadeau/cadeaus, restaurant/restaurants. Also accented words (often loanwords) like café/cafés, paté/patés.

So the reason for such words as: auto's, baby's (I particularly dislike that one), dilemma's (!), accu's, radio's... to be rendered in this way is baffling.

The concept of 's' being plural is well-established in Dutch, especially now it's more common to say 'Lukes auto' in many situations rather than 'de auto van Luke' and no-one is ever confused. Even in the spelling reforms they've just carried over this annoying practice of putting an apostrophe into these words. If radio's was radios, no-one would be confused. And if café/cafés, paté/patés, despite being loanwords, aren't rendered as café/café's, paté/paté's, why not? Festival is a loanword (English/French) yet the plural is just 'festivals'. No apostrophe. Sometimes if it feels 'ingeburgerd' it gets a normal plural ending.

You might say that I'm looking at it from an English vantage point and being annoyed because it looks like a possessive apostrophe, but isn't. There could be some of that, though I'm at well ease with the language and really it's just that I can't see any actual meaningful system behind the choices. And this is a chosen spelling system because these words are just haphazardly incorporated. So 'telephones' but 'radio's'. 'Computers', but 'PC's' It's mind-boggling.


The apostrophe can be used in certain Dutch possessives where pronunciation would be otherwise altered.

Generally speaking, in Dutch one can have their name followed by s or a family member title can also be followed by s to indicate possession, such as: moeders fiets or Tons fiets. In these cases no alteration to vowel length occurs by adding the s ending.

Conversely, take Marina's fiets. The apostrophe is used here because Marina normally ends in an open syllable, thus a long vowel sound, a long a. Adding an s alone would (without say an additional a as in Marinaas fiets) as per Dutch spelling rules, strictly speaking, alter the pronunciation of the final long vowel a turning it from a long a to a short a when followed by the s to indicate possession.

In other words, with Marinas fiets, the a with the addition of the plural s would become enclosed in a closed syllable, changining the pronunciation of long [a] in Marina to short [ɑ] in Marinas. The apostrophe reminds us not to do this, to mind your step, as you retain the long vowel sound in the plural form even in the absence of a double letter.

Why not just add another a to resolve the vowel length issue, then? Well, I'm assuming the problem with this would be an actual alteration of the spelling of names in limited circumstances. That doesn't work too well. So instead they use the apostrophe in Dutch to indicate that the vowel is to remain long without actually adding another vowel and thereby avoiding the change of spelling to names ending in long vowels.

As a side note, names ending in s such as Marius add an apostrophe but no additional s to indicate possession, again avoiding spelling changes to the name, i.e. Marius' fiets.

On to nouns (not people). With unstressed vowels or a 'schwa', represented by the letter e in Dutch, and phonetically by [ə], vowel length is unaffected with the addition of s. Eg tafel = tafels, bezem = bezems, vader = vaders. Thus, no need for an apostrophe.

Then we come to the foreign nouns (again not people) adding s to indicate plural form. Some end in consonants and others in vowels. For those ending in consonants, eg tram becomes trams, and perron becomes perrons because they end in consonants and no alteration to vowel length occurs with the addition of the s, so no need to use an apostrophe.

However, taxi = taxi's, foto = foto's, paraplu becomes paraplu's and baby = baby's. Like with names of people ending in long vowels, the apostrophe is used in plural form here to indicate that a long vowel sound is to be retained in the plural form with the addition of s, despite the absence of a double letter. Why use the apostrophe in plural forms of foreign nouns ending in long vowels when adding an s, as opposed to just duplicating the letter of the vowel in question in the plural form? I don't know for sure, but I believe it's again due to wanting to avoid changing the original form by adding extra vowels in the plural.

And additionally, now having read all of Le Baron's post (this is another edit), for words such as café, I believe there is no apostrophe in the Dutch plural given the French é is already a long vowel sound and doesn't require another e in order to produce the long [e] sound.

Edited to add relevant quote (Le Baron), and to actually edit for better understanding.
Last edited by PeterMollenburg on Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:17 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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