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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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Thu Mar 16, 2023 12:14 pm

tommus wrote:Netherlands public broadcaster seems to be using AI to generate subtitles.
.....
..... there has been a huge improvement in NOS subtitles (ondertiteling).

Well, I guess I was too quick to praise NOS for better subtitles. NOS Journaal 20:00 seems to have gone back to poor quality subtitles. Or maybe some of the subtitlers are using AI and some are not.

I never understood why the Netherlands public broadcaster doesn't put more effort into providing accurate subtitles. Most of the other Dutch public broadcaster programs have accurate subtitles. They keep using the excuse that the news is in real time. But sometimes they can produce perfect subtitles. Why not all the time? There are several good reasons for accurate subtitles in the national news.

1. New immigrants would benefit greatly as they work to improve their language skills.
2. The hearing impaired (who require subtitles) could get accurate information.
3. Others who want to improve their Dutch would benefit and be grateful.
4. Other countries do it accurately for their national newscasts.
5. It is the right thing to do.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Thu Mar 16, 2023 2:55 pm

tommus wrote:Well, I guess I was too quick to praise NOS for better subtitles. NOS Journaal 20:00 seems to have gone back to poor quality subtitles. Or maybe some of the subtitlers are using AI and some are not.

I never understood why the Netherlands public broadcaster doesn't put more effort into providing accurate subtitles. Most of the other Dutch public broadcaster programs have accurate subtitles. They keep using the excuse that the news is in real time. But sometimes they can produce perfect subtitles. Why not all the time? There are several good reasons for accurate subtitles in the national news.

1. New immigrants would benefit greatly as they work to improve their language skills.
2. The hearing impaired (who require subtitles) could get accurate information.
3. Others who want to improve their Dutch would benefit and be grateful.
4. Other countries do it accurately for their national newscasts.
5. It is the right thing to do.

It's a fair time since I've regularly watched Dutch TV (and that was on free cable without fancy options), but this seems to have been an eternal problem even beyond the news. When you were here you must have heard natives mocking the laughable attempts at subtitling; though they usually refer to the alleged poor subtitling of import programming. I do catch the NOS news now and again and I checked the subs after reading your other post. They are indeed ridiculous. They look like teletext subs, but aren't half as effective. Sometimes even with spelling errors! The worst is perhaps that they're way out of kilter with regard to who is speaking during interviews.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:08 pm

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

[...]

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.


That spelling doesn't work like that for these words. Double vowels (and retained pronunciation: like 'rook' and 'roken') are always enclosed and plurals doesn't affect it. There is no long sound on the final vowel of a name like Marina or Frida or any ordinary word ending like that in such a vowel. The addition of plural 's' has no such closing effect upon it.

'Marina's fiets' written like that with an English type of possessive apostrophe, doesn't exist in Dutch.

PeterMollenburg wrote: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.


They don't! That's purely English.

PeterMollenburg wrote: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.


'Bus' ends in a consonant but the plural is 'bussen'. Trein ends like that too and the plural is treinen not treins. Others are e.g: boek, stoel, huis, man, woord, sigaret. All these end in -en. Overwhelmingly plurals for nouns in Dutch take the -en ending, also in irregular plurals. The reason those you named above have such plurals with an 's' is based on a handful of final sounds in the singular:

kamer = kamers
jongen = jongens
meisje = meisjes
tafel = tafels
vakantie = vakanties
radio = radio's

You can see that the final one radio is the only on with the apostrophe plural. Considered a non-ingeburgerd loanword.

In general, for nouns plurals ending in -s, the rules run like so:

- Nouns ending in -e, -el, -em, -en or -er (with a so-called 'dull' e as in the word de) usually take on an -s in the plural: pauzes, tafels, bezems, kussens en kamers, etc.
- Nouns, mostly with than one syllable ending in -eur or -ier (basically people doing things) take -s in the plural: monteurs, winkeliers, bakkers.
- Quite a lot of nouns that have come from other languages, but considered 'ingeburgerd' often take an -s in the plural: cadeaus, trams, films, stations, hotels, telefoons, microfoons.
- Nouns ending in a: -a, -i, -o, -u, or -y before the plural ending are pluralized with an 's (thus an apostrophe): aura's, taxi's, auto's, paraplu's, baby's.
- Nouns ending in -e take -s in the plural: loges. -e is also a vowel, but oddly not subjected to the previous rule.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tungemål » Thu Mar 16, 2023 10:37 pm

I'm thinking that long vowels can only be on stressed syllables. Right?
So Marina: the final a is an unstressed schwa and thus not long.
While paraplu has a stressed final syllable and would change its pronunciation with the -s: paraplus. So that explanation seems plausible - it's written with an apostrophe: paraplu´s.
Also café ends with a stressed syllable. Plural is cafés, but diminuativ is cafeetje (double ee).

But that doesn't explain beby's, radio's etc.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Thu Mar 16, 2023 11:46 pm

tungemål wrote:Also café ends with a stressed syllable. Plural is cafés, but diminuativ is cafeetje (double ee).

It's considered that the accented é already retains the long vowel, so that cafétjes is legitimate. This doesn't stop the co-existence of double ee. And more often than not people still write 'kafeetje' with a 'k'. This is almost universal as part of a name: 't Kafeetje' or whatever. Also in this case you'll also see confusion with regard to adding a possessive apostrophe to a name in the English style: Ton's Kafeetje' (in the way Peter referenced) rather than 'Tons Kafeetje'. In complete contradiction to the regular formulation of 'Tons fiets'.

The whole thing is presented as a set of coherent rules, but it's a mess.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Mar 17, 2023 11:03 am

Le Baron wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:
The apostrophe can be used in certain Dutch possessives where pronunciation would be otherwise altered.

[...]

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.


That spelling doesn't work like that for these words. Double vowels (and retained pronunciation: like 'rook' and 'roken') are always enclosed and plurals doesn't affect it. There is no long sound on the final vowel of a name like Marina or Frida or any ordinary word ending like that in such a vowel. The addition of plural 's' has no such closing effect upon it.


No, it does work like that. Long vowels in closed syllables require doubling the vowel, as you indicated for rook and roken. Furthermore, vowels are indeed considered long at the end of words like Marina, paraplu and auto.

I can see why you might consider them short, however, given that in speech they are perhaps prone to being pronounced a little shorter compared to long vowels in closed syllables, but not short enough to be actual short vowels. They are indeed long vowels.

Le Baron wrote:'Marina's fiets' written like that with an English type of possessive apostrophe, doesn't exist in Dutch.


Correct. The apostrophe is not there to indicate ownership, it's there to indicate a missing double vowel. The s alone indicates the ownership (not the apostrophe, agreed).

Le Baron wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote: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.


They don't! That's purely English.


No, it's not. If you don't believe me, I suggest you take Bruce Donaldson's word for it, which I looked up to check after your reply. Apostrophe's do not indicate possession as is the case with English (we agree), but they do use apostrophes with possession to indicate that certan letters are missing (not ownership, nothing to do with possession), as I stated previously.

Bruce Donaldson Dutch A Comprehensive Grammar P11 wrote:APOSTROPHE
Unlike English, the apostrophe is not used to show possession:

Karels book 'Charles's book', mijn moeders auto 'my mother's car'

Only when the proper noun ends in a, o, u, y or a sibilant is the apostrophe used.

Helma's woordenboek, Hans' boek

The above is keeping with the principle that the apostrophe in Dutch is literally a weglatingsteken, i.e. where no letter is left out, no punctuation is required. Thus Shell's woordvoeder is wrong, although commonly seen, and the above Hans' and Helma's are right because in the former case an additional s has been omitted and in the latter a hypothetical a (in a closed syllable the long vowel would normally be indicated by a doubling of the vowel, i.e. Helmaas, but Dutch has opted to omit the second a in this case and show it has been dropped by replacing it with an apostrophe).


Le Baron wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote: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.


'Bus' ends in a consonant but the plural is 'bussen'. Trein ends like that too and the plural is treinen not treins. Others are e.g: boek, stoel, huis, man, woord, sigaret. All these end in -en. Overwhelmingly plurals for nouns in Dutch take the -en ending, also in irregular plurals. The reason those you named above have such plurals with an 's' is based on a handful of final sounds in the singular:

kamer = kamers
jongen = jongens
meisje = meisjes
tafel = tafels
vakantie = vakanties
radio = radio's

You can see that the final one radio is the only on with the apostrophe plural. Considered a non-ingeburgerd loanword.

In general, for nouns plurals ending in -s, the rules run like so:

- Nouns ending in -e, -el, -em, -en or -er (with a so-called 'dull' e as in the word de) usually take on an -s in the plural: pauzes, tafels, bezems, kussens en kamers, etc.
- Nouns, mostly with than one syllable ending in -eur or -ier (basically people doing things) take -s in the plural: monteurs, winkeliers, bakkers.
- Quite a lot of nouns that have come from other languages, but considered 'ingeburgerd' often take an -s in the plural: cadeaus, trams, films, stations, hotels, telefoons, microfoons.
- Nouns ending in a: -a, -i, -o, -u, or -y before the plural ending are pluralized with an 's (thus an apostrophe): aura's, taxi's, auto's, paraplu's, baby's.
- Nouns ending in -e take -s in the plural: loges. -e is also a vowel, but oddly not subjected to the previous rule.


Okay, so the reason I pointed out the unstressed last syllable in nouns such as vader and tafel was to differentiate them from those with an apostrophe such as auto = auto's. Unstressed meaning there is a schwa [ə] in vader and tafel mentioned above (not to mention they are followed by consonants), so the apostrophe does not come into play. In your short list above this is also the case for every word except radio. A straight s is added to these nouns because of an unstressed -el, -em, -en, -er or -e ending, i.e. also containing a schwa [ə]. By adding an -s ending no long vowels are affected since there aren't any, so no apostrophe needed. Radio does contain the long vowel ending -o, so in the plural the apostrophe is needed.

You are right in pointing out that there are a whole host of rules and exceptions, as you mention trein = treins and I mentioned tram = trams, but you mentioned bus = bussen and other such examples. And you are absolutely right. My discussion however was really in answering your bewilderment of the use of the apostrophe, which does have a pattern and reason to it, as quoted above from Bruce Donaldson's Dutch A Comprehensive Grammar. Were I to branch out into all the rules of when Dutch adds s, en or something else for forming the plural, then this post would become insanely long. There again there is logic however (or rules), but they are lengthy and again all listed in the aforementioned grammar book. I only introduced some of these to round out the discussion regarding the use of the apostrophe in order to provide contrast or illustrate exceptions.

I will however add weight to the apostrophe use being logical with another quote from the same grammar book on the topic of plurals, found on page 36 of that book:

Bruce Donaldson Dutch A Comprehensive Grammar P36 wrote:Nous ending in -a, -o, and -u (all are of foreign origin)
firma's 'firms', auto's 'cars', paraplu's 'umbrellas'

The apostrophe is inserted because auto's, for example, would otherwise be pronounced with a short o; a long o sound can be preserved in a closed syllable only by doubling the letter. The Dutch would find the spelling autoos strange and thus replace the second o with an apostrophe. Thus it is not necessary in cadeaus, cafés and Hindoes, for example, but it is used in words ending in y and i (e.g. baby's, ski's), although strictly speaking nothing has been omitted.


So, I stand by my first post on the reasoning behind the apostrophe with foreign loan words ending with a long vowel as well as names. I was wrong on taxi's and baby's. It seems they might be short vowel endings as per the above quote, although it's not strictly stated. In any case, it seems 'they' wanted to keep with the pattern provided with the long -a, -o and -u endings. As for café, cafés, I assume the French é ending here is considered long, but maybe I'm interpreting that incorrectly.

tungemål wrote:I'm thinking that long vowels can only be on stressed syllables. Right?
So Marina: the final a is an unstressed schwa and thus not long.
While paraplu has a stressed final syllable and would change its pronunciation with the -s: paraplus. So that explanation seems plausible - it's written with an apostrophe: paraplu´s.
Also café ends with a stressed syllable. Plural is cafés, but diminuativ is cafeetje (double ee).

But that doesn't explain beby's, radio's etc.


I popped your quote in at the end, tungemål. A schwa in Dutch, as far as I understand is never represented by the letter a (happy to be proven wrong if someone has an example), given the pronunciation [ə] which is usually written as e as in tante, i as in the -ig word ending found in gelukkig or ij as in the word ending -lijk as found in vriendelijk. The a in Marina is long, otherwise an apostrophe would not be used in the plural form, not to mention it's an open syllable ending in a long vowel (and yes some open syllables at the end of words do end in vowels that are not long, such as the e in tante).

There are long vowels that are unstressed. The a in familie is unstressed but long. The two a's in paraplu are long despite the u being the position of the word stress. The reasoning behind the apostrophe's I've explained above.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Fri Mar 17, 2023 3:10 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:No, it does work like that. Long vowels in closed syllables require doubling the vowel, as you indicated for rook and roken. Furthermore, vowels are indeed considered long at the end of words like Marina, paraplu and auto.

I can see why you might consider them short, however, given that in speech they are perhaps prone to being pronounced a little shorter compared to long vowels in closed syllables, but not short enough to be actual short vowels. They are indeed long vowels.

It's like that for the rook/roken, but even then the plural ending has no effect upon the sound. After all 'roken' used to be 'rooken' and the spelling was just changed. The plural endings are a thing apart. Tungemal said it correctly that those words above ending in a vowel are merely stressed syllables, not always long vowels.
PeterMollenburg wrote:Correct. The apostrophe is not there to indicate ownership, it's there to indicate a missing double vowel. The s alone indicates the ownership (not the apostrophe, agreed).
In this case it is a possessive , in accordance with that spelling rule of a vowel (but not 'e'). There is no missing vowel. I don't quite know where this idea of missing double vowels in these words has come from. The name Marina has a short 'a' at the end. 'Paraplu' just ends in 'u' and the apostrophe accords with the rule of a vowel or y (but not e). This is not something in dispute.

PeterMollenburg wrote: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.


**************************************

We can cut through a lot of this without requiring long quotations/responses.

Those long vowels, either visible or retained in pronunciation, within words like rook/roken are a completely different thing than so-called 'long' final vowels. Those latter are a matter of pronunciation style for many words (almost all loanwords), they aren't written/spelling conventions. Aside from those formerly spelled with a double vowel which retained that sound.

The use of apostrophe is not indicating that something is being left out, it merely attempts to retain the sound of pronunciation. Such as in Hengelo's spoorbaan. This is actual possession using an apostrophe, rather than a rule use for plurals. The apostrophe's only role here is so that it isn't pronounced as 'Hengeloss' (even though no-one would do that anyway, nor would they commonly formulate it like that as a sentence). Is this what you are referring to?

In the case of the name 'Marina' this idea does not hold theoretically and is in the area of irregularity, which is why I started the discussion. Similar to the use of an apostrophe for oma/oma's (used as a possessive and plural for no good reason). Where in fact it would make little difference to actual pronunciation if there was no apostrophe. The longest vowel in 'Marina' is 'i'; the 'a' is short. If you write Marina's fiets/Marinas fiets on a piece of paper and ask any Dutch person to say them I guarantee you they will pronounce them exactly the same and discern no difference as spoken forms.

When you mentioned it as 'weglatingsteken' this is a different use again. In cases like: 's morgens (Des morgens) or the common A'dam for Amsterdam. This one indicates actual missing letters, but in the latter case has no role to play in oral production.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sat Mar 18, 2023 4:36 am

Le Baron wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:No, it does work like that. Long vowels in closed syllables require doubling the vowel, as you indicated for rook and roken. Furthermore, vowels are indeed considered long at the end of words like Marina, paraplu and auto.

I can see why you might consider them short, however, given that in speech they are perhaps prone to being pronounced a little shorter compared to long vowels in closed syllables, but not short enough to be actual short vowels. They are indeed long vowels.

It's like that for the rook/roken, but even then the plural ending has no effect upon the sound. After all 'roken' used to be 'rooken' and the spelling was just changed. The plural endings are a thing apart. Tungemal said it correctly that those words above ending in a vowel are merely stressed syllables, not always long vowels.
PeterMollenburg wrote:Correct. The apostrophe is not there to indicate ownership, it's there to indicate a missing double vowel. The s alone indicates the ownership (not the apostrophe, agreed).
In this case it is a possessive , in accordance with that spelling rule of a vowel (but not 'e'). There is no missing vowel. I don't quite know where this idea of missing double vowels in these words has come from. The name Marina has a short 'a' at the end. 'Paraplu' just ends in 'u' and the apostrophe accords with the rule of a vowel or y (but not e). This is not something in dispute.

PeterMollenburg wrote: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.


**************************************

We can cut through a lot of this without requiring long quotations/responses.


We can, but I used them to support my argument. A comprehensive grammar book on the Dutch language is a pretty decent ally. If it said otherwise, I'd have been happy to admit fault.

Le Baron wrote:Those long vowels, either visible or retained in pronunciation, within words like rook/roken are a completely different thing than so-called 'long' final vowels. Those latter are a matter of pronunciation style for many words (almost all loanwords), they aren't written/spelling conventions. Aside from those formerly spelled with a double vowel which retained that sound.

The use of apostrophe is not indicating that something is being left out, it merely attempts to retain the sound of pronunciation. Such as in Hengelo's spoorbaan. This is actual possession using an apostrophe, rather than a rule use for plurals. The apostrophe's only role here is so that it isn't pronounced as 'Hengeloss' (even though no-one would do that anyway, nor would they commonly formulate it like that as a sentence). Is this what you are referring to?

In the case of the name 'Marina' this idea does not hold theoretically and is in the area of irregularity, which is why I started the discussion. Similar to the use of an apostrophe for oma/oma's (used as a possessive and plural for no good reason). Where in fact it would make little difference to actual pronunciation if there was no apostrophe. The longest vowel in 'Marina' is 'i'; the 'a' is short. If you write Marina's fiets/Marinas fiets on a piece of paper and ask any Dutch person to say them I guarantee you they will pronounce them exactly the same and discern no difference as spoken forms.

When you mentioned it as 'weglatingsteken' this is a different use again. In cases like: 's morgens (Des morgens) or the common A'dam for Amsterdam. This one indicates actual missing letters, but in the latter case has no role to play in oral production.


I provided the reasons behind the apostrophe use, and backed it up with an expert who taught Germanic languages including Dutch for years at the university level and has authored several books on the language, but you're not willing to see this point of view. Being an author does not make one right with everything, even in their field of expertise, however, the rule(s) make perfect sense to me as do his very specific explanations, which you seem to want to discard. I think at this point we are best to just leave this problem alone and conclude we have quite different points of view.
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Le Baron » Sat Mar 18, 2023 4:40 pm

I'm not challenging Donaldson. I did have a look at his book. I re-read because it's always good to not rely entirely upon memory - I read and used Donaldson and Shetter almost 24 years ago. It's the same as I remember it and they teach the same thing in the NT2 grammatica cursus. I don't dispute that they apportion the names to such vowels, the: 'lange klinkers' and that they say the apostrophe retains 'long' pronunciation. The point I started with is that it isn't consistent and that lots of people don't know the rules and still don't make any pronunciation mistakes.

I know it's annoying when you are putting forward the rules and I keep saying things like 'there is no double vowel'. Then we look at e.g. 'oma' and know what when someone makes it diminutive they sometimes say 'omaatje, indicating the existence of a so-called 'lange klinker' and therefore it's plural formation with an apostrophe. Yet it's not consistent at all. You're as likely to hear, in fact commonly: oma-tje exactly because 'oma' has a short a at the end, even though there is the existence of oma'tje, very much pointing towards what you said about retaining a long sound. And this goes for all these words which supposedly need this apostrophe to retain a sound which actually isn't there a lot of the time.

The very reason people, native speakers, still make the 'mistakes' is because there is no very perceptible sound difference and so the alleged existence of latent long or double vowels is questionable.

Consider the word 'diploma'. The long vowel is the 'o' not the a. This is self-evident in the pronunciation where the a is clipped. However the 'a' is for some reason considered 'long' and when a diminutive is formed it officially ends up as 'diplomaatje', looking and sounding the same as the diminutive for a diplomat! So when native speakers do this there's often confusion and someone invariably writes 'diplomatje or diploma'tje on a visual basis, retaining the long 'o', and never considering that the a is 'long'.

I'm not trying to provoke a dispute with you about official grammar rules, I am saying the grammar rules don't consistently reflect the language. They are prescriptive more than descriptive.
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PeterMollenburg
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Mar 20, 2023 9:50 am

Le Baron wrote:I'm not challenging Donaldson. I did have a look at his book. I re-read because it's always good to not rely entirely upon memory - I read and used Donaldson and Shetter almost 24 years ago. It's the same as I remember it and they teach the same thing in the NT2 grammatica cursus. I don't dispute that they apportion the names to such vowels, the: 'lange klinkers' and that they say the apostrophe retains 'long' pronunciation. The point I started with is that it isn't consistent and that lots of people don't know the rules and still don't make any pronunciation mistakes.

I know it's annoying when you are putting forward the rules and I keep saying things like 'there is no double vowel'. Then we look at e.g. 'oma' and know what when someone makes it diminutive they sometimes say 'omaatje, indicating the existence of a so-called 'lange klinker' and therefore it's plural formation with an apostrophe. Yet it's not consistent at all. You're as likely to hear, in fact commonly: oma-tje exactly because 'oma' has a short a at the end, even though there is the existence of oma'tje, very much pointing towards what you said about retaining a long sound. And this goes for all these words which supposedly need this apostrophe to retain a sound which actually isn't there a lot of the time.

The very reason people, native speakers, still make the 'mistakes' is because there is no very perceptible sound difference and so the alleged existence of latent long or double vowels is questionable.

Consider the word 'diploma'. The long vowel is the 'o' not the a. This is self-evident in the pronunciation where the a is clipped. However the 'a' is for some reason considered 'long' and when a diminutive is formed it officially ends up as 'diplomaatje', looking and sounding the same as the diminutive for a diplomat! So when native speakers do this there's often confusion and someone invariably writes 'diplomatje or diploma'tje on a visual basis, retaining the long 'o', and never considering that the a is 'long'.

I'm not trying to provoke a dispute with you about official grammar rules, I am saying the grammar rules don't consistently reflect the language. They are prescriptive more than descriptive.


Hey Le Baron,

I need to thank you for your considerate, polite reply, clear reply... Thank you. As you may have noticed my feathers were beginning to become a little ruffled. I was somewhat baffled of your apparent refusal to acknowledge Dutch grammatical rules, but your clearly written reply makes a whole lot of sense - you weren't disputing them at all.

Yes, I tend to agree the so-called long vowel endings are not so clearly long in speech, if long at all. Upon reflection I feel like some people may sound them out a little long while others might clip them. In fact, the same person (myself likely included) use a mixture of both for the same words depending on context and other factors affecting speech rhythm such as the speed at which one is talking, emphasis etc. I guess this is perhaps a good example of where while things on paper when explained from a grammar perspective make sense, when applied to speech, well, they don't necessarily.

Thing is, I rely heavily on course books at the beginning stages of language learning, so when it comes to being okay with rules, I usually am, eventually (after it's hammered in, even if I don't like them!), but most native speakers don't read/work with such books, so some can be prone to make errors where rules are seemingly unnatural, I guess is the best way to put it. And in this case, unless such rules are explained and internalised, native speakers are going to make errors given it's unnatural application - ie what's heard in speech is going to be written down and therefore often incorrectly.

So, your points make a lot more sense now, thank you for explaining. However, I guess I just feel like they make a fair bit of sense to me given I've learned this stuff straight out of books and then applied it to my Dutch mind as I speak the language. I don't know all the plural rules but I have a handful of the main ones memorised, drummed into my head even from my days of Hugo Dutch in 3 Months.
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