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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trui
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby trui » Fri Jan 11, 2019 5:40 pm

tommus wrote:Je moet geen vrienden met hun worden. Het zijn sukkels.

Don't be friends with them. They are losers.

Note the "Het" instead of "Ze". Is this standard Dutch? Is this common usage? What are the guidelines for using "het" instead of "ze" or "zij"?


Yup! That's standard Dutch. In fact, Ze zijn sukkels would be plain incorrect.

You use Het zijn (and also dit/dat zijn for these/those are) in the construction of "Het zijn (meervoudig zelfstandignaamwoord)".

I've known this rule for a while, but my Dutch grammar class explained it in a more universal way. It's to do with certain things sounding weird if they're not emphasized if I recall correctly. I'll get back to you on that.

I've been busy with my Dutch exams (in the Netherlands!) so I haven't got around to posting, but hallo! Nice to see everyone who is learning Dutch here :)

Edit: By the way, just double checked and yup, "met hun" should be "met hen", officially. Of course 'officially' is different than what people might use... ;)
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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Fri Jan 11, 2019 9:08 pm

trui wrote:Yup! That's standard Dutch. In fact, Ze zijn sukkels would be plain incorrect.

Yes, you're right. This is very different than what a native English speaker would expect, which makes it very difficult to master in speaking or writing Dutch. I guess it will take many many hours of listening and reading to get these right. Here is the explanation in DutchGrammar.com. Note the very subtle differences concerning nouns and adjectives.

http://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Pronouns.ps04
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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Sat Jan 12, 2019 12:26 pm

Dutch adverbs and conjunctions

Adverbs and conjunctions are probably the most difficult to learn and remember because they tend to be abstract. Nevertheless, they are pervasive in everything, so thus important. A good source of lists of Dutch adverbs and conjunctions is Wiktionary.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_adverbs

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_conjunctions

There are about 1000 adverbs and about 75 conjunctions in those lists. Of course, some of these are quite rare but many of them are important to know. It doesn't take long to copy these words into the left column of a table, put them into DeepL and put the translation in the right column. My technique then is to go through the lists and concentrate on learning the ones that are the most challenging to remember even though I see them a lot.
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Elsa Maria
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Elsa Maria » Mon Jan 21, 2019 9:52 pm

I am back from my trip to the Netherlands, and I posted a bit of a trip report on my log, if you are interested.

Most of you are much further along in Dutch than I am, but I'm excited to say that I did manage some short conversations in Dutch. One of the highlights for me was going to bookstores with a Dutch friend, and I will post later about some of the books that I bought.

How is everyone else's study going? Any thoughts on what would you like to see in this Study Group space?
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SGP
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby SGP » Mon Jan 21, 2019 11:49 pm

Elsa Maria wrote:I am back from my trip to the Netherlands, and I posted a bit of a trip report on my log, if you are interested.
Welcome back.

Elsa Maria wrote:How is everyone else's study going? Any thoughts on what would you like to see in this Study Group space?
As for a certain Jack of Many Trades but Master of None :D :lol: :o, well, I wish I would make more Dutch progress than I really was able to do in the past weeks. But still, at least I had a few conversations with non-flying Dutchmen who live in Germany. Or so they say. One of them (or even more, don't really recall) did admit being either a flying Dutchman, or a "fliegender Händler" (literally: "flying merchant"). But he only did so after I asked him, so he didn't tell me in advance. Why??

I went to their shops with a phrasebook, even if they are Very C2 Deutsch. And they are open-minded enough not to object it. As for what I'd like to see in this space, I'd fancy something really fancy. Something that just might rekindle one's Nederlands Interest (the language, I mean).
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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Thu Jan 24, 2019 5:22 pm

Elsa Maria wrote:Any thoughts on what would you like to see in this Study Group space?

Yes. Participation.

There don't seem to be many Dutch learners here who are very active in posting anything in or related to Dutch. There are some Dutch-speaking natives who answer questions, but they rarely post anything else in Dutch. I think we should be posting all manner of things that we come across in our daily Dutch reading, listening and studying, but it rarely happens. We need much more material here actually written in Dutch. Examples, questions, observations, interesting tidbits, links, resources, useful expressions, etc. Some of the other Dutch-related threads on LLorg have suffered the same fate as this one appears to be suffering; lack of participation. Here are two examples on LLorg:

Discussies in het Nederlands

Questions about Dutch sentences

Also, nobody is contributing to the Dutch section of the LLorg Wiki. I added quite a bit on Dutch language islands and parallel text. But there seems to be no interest in using the Dutch Wiki material or contributing to it.

LLorg Dutch Wiki

So to repeat. We need participation by Dutch learners and native speakers.
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SGP
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby SGP » Thu Jan 24, 2019 6:35 pm

tommus wrote:So to repeat. We need participation by Dutch learners and native speakers.
Any concrete ideas on what those learners who have got a "language juggling learning style" (like you-know-who ;)) could do?
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tommus
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby tommus » Thu Jan 24, 2019 8:18 pm

I think that the very name of the Dutch Study Group suggests that we discuss how we are studying Dutch. What did we study recently that would be of interest to others who are studying Dutch? What did we read recently to improve our Dutch? What web pages do we visit regularly to read the news, to follow a specific interest, such as science or history, etc.? What nuggets did we come across recently that probably other Dutch learners would find interesting and useful? In other words, what "Dutch" are we "Studying" that we could share with the "Group".

I have recently started to spend more time reading the comments at the end of news articles and other articles where readers provide their feedback and discussion. This approach was recently suggested in another thread as a good way to get exposed to more conversational-style words, expressions and ways of saying things that you don't usually find in the articles themselves.

Dutch newspaper that often has a lot of comments to articles

Dutch science web site that encourages comments by readers

For example, here is an article about climate change in nu.nl that has 528 comments (reacties):

Article with 528 comments

Two examples of useful comments: "Jeetje, dat is inderdaad gek." "Kan jij mij dat exacte plan aanwijzen?"

And an article in scientias.nl about the recent Chinese landing on the far side of the Moon that has 40 comments:

Chinese landing on the far side of the Moon

Useful comment: "De beste stuurlui staan in elk geval niet op de maan." That means that people who think they know it all about something weren't actually there (or don't know what they are talking about). That is derived from the common Dutch expression "De beste stuurlui staan aan wal" which literally says "The best helmsmen (on a ship) are on shore".

Het spreekwoord 'De beste stuurlui staan aan wal'
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Elsa Maria
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby Elsa Maria » Thu Jan 24, 2019 10:16 pm

tommus, I like your ideas - thanks for posting them. I'd also be happy to see people's stats and hear about their Dutch study routines. Most people post that kind of stuff in their logs, but (speaking only for myself, of course) I'd be fine with seeing it here. I'll perhaps worry that more advanced learners will tire of my A-level Dutch and my seemingly endless tolerance for children's books and nintje :)



On the plane, I watched a great documentary: De Wilde Stad. It is the city of Amsterdam from the point of view of the animals. There is actually a lot of dialogue - most of it in the form of a cat doing the narration :) It was a really interesting look at the wildlife within the city.

De Wilde Stad trailer on YouTube
Official film website


SGP wrote:
tommus wrote:So to repeat. We need participation by Dutch learners and native speakers.
Any concrete ideas on what those learners who have got a "language juggling learning style" (like you-know-who ;)) could do?

SGP, I would be interested in hearing about your experience learning Dutch with German as your native language. Do you find it easier than the other languages you are learning because of the similarities? Are there a lot of false friends? I am getting a good discount on Dutch because of my intermediate Danish, but the false friends are tripping me up. I keep making mistakes on the basics because of this. I just have to mentally work on that.
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SGP
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Re: Dutch Study Group

Postby SGP » Thu Jan 24, 2019 10:53 pm

Elsa Maria wrote:SGP, I would be interested in hearing about your experience learning Dutch with German as your native language. Do you find it easier than the other languages you are learning because of the similarities?
Yes, definitely easier. I even go as far as considering Nederlands and Deutsch as two flavors of, sort of, one single language. Because the idea of separating them just because of geographical borders isn't something that really fits into my head :). In addition, there are very many similarities between Plattdeutsch and Dutch, so ... that's why I don't really make that distinction. But the verbs aren't the easiest part. I still need to learn them one by one. Person / number / tense.

Are there a lot of false friends? I am getting a good discount on Dutch because of my intermediate Danish, but the false friends are tripping me up. I keep making mistakes on the basics because of this. I just have to mentally work on that.
There is a (really!) sufficient amount of those DE NL false friends. I wouldn't say that it is too difficult or time-consuming to learn all of them. But still... their number isn't too small. And I can fully relate to your Dansk-based experience.

Gift (DE): poison.
gift (EN, NL): a present (something that is given).

bellen (DE): to bark
bellen (NL): to ring the doorbell

seltsam (DE): strange
raar (NL): strange
zeldzaam (NL): rare
rar (DE): rare

From a German PDF about Dutch:
Someone from Germany, living in the Netherlands, had a Dutch TV speech. He said something (positive) about those "raar" houses. Because "rar" (DE) means "rare", he simply wanted to say that these houses are rare, not strange. But he didn't keep that False Friend in mind. So it sounded as if he was calling those houses in the Netherlands "strange", and not everyone liked that...
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