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: Use of er in Dutch

Postby tungemål » Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:19 pm

Le Baron wrote:
tungemål wrote:In the quantitative case it means something like "of them" (He has three of them).

Indeed. Like French's Il en a trois. Er + telwoord. Heeft tungemål boeken thuis? Ja, hij heeft er zeker 800 (van).

Aha, so this one is really only a special case of the prepositional use - ervan but you leave out the van.

tungemål wrote:The grammatical er doesn't have any meaning; it's only a grammar requirement. In Norwegian we'd use "det" in this case, in English "there", or nothing.

Aside from the 'er', this sort of phrase really baffled me at the beginning. It's so common to say 'Er wordt gebeld' and the 'wordt' tripped me up because I read it just as 'becoming' when here it essentially just means 'is'. So only until I forced myself to see Er wordt gelachen as 'laughter is occurring', did it make sense to me.

Somehow I've never noticed anything unnatural with using wordt here - but the word does mean become, so it's not logical. Er wordt verwondert.

With the sentence: Wij sporen er de buurvrouw toe aan, I would look at these in the past and think 'how?!' The NT2 instructor encouraged us to rewrite such sentences to find the separable verbs and er + preposition, so I'd end up with: wij willen haar ertoe aansporen. Like term grouping in algebra!

Good tip - what confuses me is the position of er - it seems to want to be placed as early as possible in the sentence.

One other thing about 'er'. Sometimes, quite a bit actually, you hear people say daar where you'd expect er. So: Je hebt er drie van (ervan). Mag ik er eentje daarvan? (daarvan unseparated). Wat denk je d'rvan?. The common sentence: Hij is er niet often sounds like 'hij is d'r niet'. Somewhat like how French adds a 't' to stop a vowel clash.

Also especially if you want to add stress: Daar hou ik niet van
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Le Baron
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Re: Use of er in Dutch

Postby Le Baron » Sun Feb 13, 2022 10:43 pm

tungemål wrote:what confuses me is the position of er - it seems to want to be placed as early as possible in the sentence.

Unless it's er + prep. it generally comes after the first verb.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tungemål » Fri May 20, 2022 3:32 pm

Hi, how is it going with your Dutch studies? Me, I'm lazy, I only read or watch youtube (in Dutch) when I feel for it. Oh, I also try to speak Dutch with Dutch people that I know or meet.

LeBaron mentioned a spreekwoord in his log:
Het neusje van de zalm - an interesting expression which means "the best". Apparently the meat just under the mouth of the salmon is the best.
https://historiek.net/het-neusje-van-de ... ing/94704/

I think it's fun to learn these expressions, at least after I have the basics down. I checked my Anki deck to see if I had saved any (I mark them with "idiom"), and these are the ones I've encountered so far. These are mostly uitdrukkingen - that is, expressions that you don't understand even if you understand all the words. Do you know any of these?

  • op een laag pitje staan
  • het voortouw nemen
  • het was er maar een dooie boel
  • het heft in handen nemen
  • het voor gezien houden
  • de handen ineen slaan
  • in de gaten houden
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Le Baron
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 20, 2022 10:22 pm

In de gaten houden (commonly said) is indeed one of those I didn't think about at all for years. Then it dawned on me one day that the 'gaten' are your eyes.

I'm terrible for remembering these expressions and tend to only remember the ones in common use. So I know 'op een laag pitje staan' and 'het voortouw nemen' (one of the few business phrases not in English). Dooi boel, yes though I more commonly hear 'een saai boel'. Also I learned 'het voor gezien houden' as 'voor bekeken houden'.

The pitje in 'een laag pitje' is a gas ring on low flame, or the heating 'op een laag pitje zetten'. It seems to have nuances this phrase, I've heard it used to mean 'on the backburner' but also things being at a low ebb.

Here's a couple for the Anki list: eigen schuld, dikke bult. Lots of people say it, but don't know the origin. It originally referred to a woman having imprudent relations and getting pregnant (the 'dikke bult').

Onder vier ogen spreken. Means just you and another person, having a private chat with no-one else present. That one also exists in German.
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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Fri Jun 03, 2022 11:51 am

Another update about the five year old girl from Hungary who came to the Netherlands. Earlier notes here followed the progress Nene has been making in learning Dutch. Here is a link to her father's latest report.

Nene leert rijmpjes
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Dutch: 01 September -> 31 December 2020
Watch 1000 Dutch TV Series Videos : 40 / 1000

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Le Baron
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jun 04, 2022 3:29 pm

This bit is a shame:
toen ze hier kwam was ze vijf en sprak ze alleen Hongaars. Dat Hongaars is nu helemaal verdwenen

It's probably only the second time I've ever seen the word uitkafferen, it's rather uncommon word. For me at any rate. Maybe the natives think otherwise.

What about this though:
Je kunt sommige ervan ook als predicatief bijvoeglijk naamwoord gebruiken (“hij is netjes”, of in Nene’s taal “het is gezelligjes”), maar niet attributief (‘een netjes huis’, ‘een gezelligjes avondje’)

Actually you hear quite a few people saying 'een netjes huis' or netjes plek' rather than 'een net huis' or 'nette plek'. Like many things it's informal and officially 'wrong', but it's there.
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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Thu Jun 09, 2022 5:47 pm

Kletsheads (Chatheads) is a free Dutch-language podcast about multilingual children for parents, teachers and speech therapists. It is published about every two weeks on Friday. Each episode is a half hour or more. It has complete, high-quality transcripts. It is a conversational format which is very helpful in improving conversational Dutch. There are currently about 34 episodes available, and they are downloadable.

Kletsheads
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Dutch: 01 September -> 31 December 2020
Watch 1000 Dutch TV Series Videos : 40 / 1000

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Le Baron
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:08 pm

For a laugh (though we're not laughing) I persuaded the neighbour, who is Dutch, to have a go at the dialang Dutch test and we reached the question below. What would you suggest as an answer, because we both spent a while looking at it? I got it correct, but it's not very natural.

Image
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Klara
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Klara » Sat Jul 02, 2022 8:12 pm

Two words came in to my mind: "Het" and "Er". I'd go for the latter, but I can't explain it, it's just a feeling. :roll:
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jul 02, 2022 8:37 pm

Klara wrote:Two words came in to my mind: "Het" and "Er". I'd go for the latter, but I can't explain it, it's just a feeling. :roll:

You are indeed correct with 'er'. It's what I put too.

For the record here's what I'd expect to hear generally:

Iemand heeft vanochtend gebeld (or some rearrangmment of that: vanochtend heeft iemand gebeld).
Iemand belde vanochtend.

Not necessarily:'opgebeld'. Could also be 'een telefoontje', though this might now be considered old. Another is 'een belletje'.

Or with 'er': er is vanmorgen/vanochtend gebeld.

I found the test answer strange, but I'm not a native so I'm not an accurate judge. I also use vanochtend far more than vanmorgen. After all we know you can't even say 'tomorrow morning' without 'ochtend' or it sounds absurd!
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