Dutch language

becomes IPA| [t] ), which presents a problem for Dutch speakers when learning English. This is partly reflected in the spelling: the singular of "huizen" (houses) becomes "huis", and that of "duiven" (doves) becomes "duif". The other cases, viz. "p"/"b" and "d"/"t" are always written with the voiced consonant, although a devoiced one is actually pronounced, e.g. sg. "baard" (beard), pronounced as "baart", has plural "baarden" and sg. "rib" (rib), pronounced as "rip" has plural "ribben".

Because of assimilation, often the initial consonant of the next word is also devoiced, e.g. "het vee" (the cattle) is IPA|/(h)ətfe/. This process of devoicing is taken to an extreme in some regions (Amsterdam, Friesland) with almost complete loss of IPA|/v/,IPA|/z/ and IPA|/ɣ/. Further south these phonemes are certainly present in the middle of a word. Compare e.g. "logen" and "loochen" IPA|/loɣən/ vs. IPA|/loxən/. In the South ("i.e.," Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg) and in Flanders the contrast is even greater because the g becomes a palatal. ('soft g').

The final 'n' of the plural ending -en is often not pronounced (as in Afrikaans where it is also dropped in the written language), except in the northeast Netherlands (where dialects of Low Saxon are spoken rather than the Low Franconian dialects spoken in the remainder of the Netherlands and in Flanders. Some linguists consider dialects of Low Saxon native to the Netherlands to be a variety of Dutch, "vide" Dutch Low Saxon) and western Flanders (where West Flemish is spoken) where the ending becomes a syllabic n sound.

Dutch is a stress language; the stress position of words matters. Stress can occur on any syllable position in a word. There is a tendency for stress to be at the beginning of words. In composite words, secondary stress is often present. There are some cases where stress is the only difference between words. For example "vóórkomen" (occur) and "voorkómen" (prevent). Marking the stress (´) in written Dutch is optional, never obligatory, but sometimes recommended.

The syllable structure of Dutch is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C). Many words, as in English, begin with three consonants; for example, straat "(street)". There are words that end in four consonants—e.g., herfst "(autumn)", ergst "(worst)", interessantst "(most interesting)", sterkst "(strongest)"—most of these being adjectives in the superlative form.

The greatest number of consonants in a single cluster is found in the word slechtstschrijvend "(worst writing)" with 9 consonants (though there are only 7 phonemes since 'ch' represents a single phoneme, and in normal speech the number of phonemes is usually reduced to 6 because of assimilation of 'tstsch' to 'stsch', or even to 5 by many speakers who pronounce the cluster 'schr' as 'sr').

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Dutch is large, with 14 simple vowels and four diphthongs. The vowels IPA|/eː/, IPA|/øː/, IPA|/oː/ are included on the diphthong chart because they are actually produced as narrow closing diphthongs in many dialects, but behave phonologically like the other simple vowels. IPA| [ɐ] (a near-open central vowel) is an allophone of unstressed IPA|/a/ and IPA|/ɑ/.

Where symbols for consonants occur in pairs, the left represents the voiceless consonant and the right represents the voiced consonant.

Notes:
# is not a native phoneme of Dutch and only occurs in borrowed words, like "goal".
# is not a separate phoneme in Dutch, but is inserted before vowel-initial syllables within words after IPA|/a/ and IPA|/ə/ and often also at the beginning of a word.
# In some dialects, notably that of Amsterdam, the voiced fricatives have almost completely merged with the voiceless ones, and IPA|/v/ is usually realized as IPA| [f] , IPA|/z/ is usually realized as IPA| [s] , and IPA|/ɣ/ is usually realized as IPA| [x] .
# and IPA| [ʒ] are not native phonemes of Dutch, and usually occur in borrowed words, like "show" and "bagage" (baggage). And even then they are usually realized as IPA| [sʲ] and IPA| [zʲ] respectively. However, IPA|/s/ + IPA|/j/ phoneme sequences in Dutch are often realized as IPA| [sʲ] , like in the word "huisje" (='little house'). In dialects that merge s and z IPA|/zj/ often is realized as IPA| [sʲ] .
# The realization of the IPA|/r/ phoneme varies considerably from dialect to dialect. In "standard" Dutch, IPA|/r/ is realized as IPA| [r] . In many dialects it is realized as the voiced uvular fricative IPA| [ʁ] or even as the uvular trill IPA| [ʀ] .
# The realization of the IPA|/ʋ/ varies considerably from the Northern to the Southern and Belgium dialects of the Dutch language. In the South, including Belgium, it is sometimes realized as IPA| [w] . Some, mainly Hollandic, dialects nearly pronounce it like IPA| [v] .

Historical sound changes

Dutch (with the exception of the Limburg dialects) did not participate in the second Germanic (High German) Sound Shift - compare German "machen" IPA|/-x-/ Dutch "maken", English "make", German "Pfanne" IPA|/pf-/, Dutch "pan", English "pan", German "zwei" IPA|/ts-/, Dutch "twee", English "two".

Dutch underwent a few changes of its own. For example, words in -old or -olt lost the l in favor of a diphthong as a result of vocalisation. Compare English "old", German "alt", Dutch "oud".

Germanic */uː/ turned into /y/ through palatalization, which sound in turn became a diphthong /œy/, spelt 〈ui〉. Long */iː/ also diphthongized to IPA|/ɛi/, spelt 〈ij〉.

The phoneme IPA|/ɡ/ became a voiced velar fricative IPA|/ɣ/, or a voiced palatal fricative IPA|/ʝ/ (in the South: Flanders, Limburg, Brabant).

Grammar

Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for some Anglophones learning Dutch. A simple example often used in Dutch language classes and text books is "Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is" which word-for-word translates to "I can my pen not find because it much too dark is" but actually translates to "I can't find my pen because it's much too dark". This can be explained by saying that the first (main) verb goes at the beginning of a clause while the remaining verbs go at the end of the clause. It must also be noted that Dutch (like German) often splits larger sentences into smaller ones, each of which can have distinctly different grammatical rules depending on what is actually being said and where the emphasis is placed. Because of Dutch resembling German more than English in both sentence structure and vocabulary, this also means that English speakers who study German extensively (meaning the equivalent of about three years of university courses) can often understand written Dutch fairly well.

The Dutch written grammar has simplified over the past 100 years: cases are now mainly used for the pronouns, such as "ik" (I), "mij, me" (me), "mijn" (my), "wie" (who), "wiens" (whose: masculine or neuter singular), "wier" (whose: feminine singular, masculine or feminine plural). Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (except for the genitive of proper nouns (names): -s, -'s or -'). In the spoken language cases and case inflections had already gradually disappeared from a much earlier date on (probably the 15th century) as in all continental West Germanic dialects.

Inflection of adjectives is a little more complicated: nothing with indefinite neuter nouns in singular and -e in all other cases::"een mooi huis" (a beautiful house):"het mooie huis" (the beautiful house):"mooie huizen" (beautiful houses):"de mooie huizen" (the beautiful houses):"een mooie vrouw" (a beautiful woman)

More complex inflection is still found in certain lexicalized expressions like "de heer des huizes" (literally, the man of the house), etc. These are usually remnants of cases (in this instance, the genitive case which is still used in German, cf. "Der Herr des Hauses") and other inflections no longer in general use today. In such lexicalized expressions remnants of strong and weak nouns can be found too, e.g. "in het jaar des Heren" (Anno Domini), where “-en” is actually the genitive ending of the weak noun. Also in this case, German retains this feature.

Dutch nouns can take endings for size: -je for singular diminutive and -jes for plural diminutive. Between these suffixes and the radical can come extra letters depending on the ending of the word::"boom" (tree) - "boompje":"ring" (ring) - "ringetje":"koning" (king) - "koninkje":"tien" (ten) - "tientje" (a ten euro note)

Like most Germanic languages, Dutch forms noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: "hondenhok" (doghouse). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, Dutch (like the other Germanic languages) either uses the closed form without spaces, for example: boomhuis (Eng. tree house) or hyphenated: VVD-coryfee (outstanding member of the VVD, a political party). Like German, Dutch allows arbitrarily long compounds, but the longer they get, the less frequent they tend to be. The longest serious entry in the Van Dale dictionary is "wapenstilstandsonderhandeling" (ceasefire negotiation). Leafing through the articles of association (Statuten) one may come across a 30-letter "vertegenwoordigingsbevoegdheid" (right of representation). An even longer word cropping up in official documents is "ziektekostenverzekeringsmaatschappij" (health insurance company) though the shorter "ziektekostenverzekeraar" (health insurer) is more common. Sometimes "hottentottententententoonstelling" or further expanded versions of this word ("exhibition of Hottentot tents", a tongue twister, meant, in its written form, to confuse the reader with its four consecutive "ten"s) are jocularly quoted as the longest Dutch word, but outside this usage it actually never occurs. Notwithstanding official spelling rules, some Dutch people nowadays tend to write the parts of a compound separately, which is sometimes dubbed “the English disease” or "de Engelse ziekte". [ [http://www.spatiegebruik.nl/ SOS! - In het Nederlands moeten samengestelde woorden gewoon aan elkaar geschreven worden] nl] [ [http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelse_ziekte_(taal) Engelse ziekte] - Dutch language Wikipedia nl]

Vocabulary

The Dutch vocabulary is one of the richest in the world and comprises at least 186,000 headwords. [ [http://www.babylon.com/display.php?id=721&tree=5&level=3 Van Dale Dutch-English-Dutch Dictionary] , "The Van Dale Handwoordenboeken Engels is a bidirectional Dutch-English dictionary containing over 186,000 headwords"]

Like English, Dutch includes words of Greek and Latin origin. Somewhat paradoxically, most loanwords from French have entered into Dutch vocabulary via the Netherlands and not via Belgium, in spite of the cultural and economic dominance exerted by French speakers in Belgium until the first half of the 20th century. This happened because the status French enjoyed as the language of refinement and high culture inspired the affluent upper and upper-middle classes in the Netherlands to adopt many French terms into the language. In Belgium no such phenomenon occurred, since members of the upper and upper-middle classes would have spoken French rather than Frenchify their Dutch. French terms heavily influenced Dutch dialects in Flanders, but Belgian speakers did (and do) tend to resist French loanwords when using standard Dutch. Nonetheless some French loanwords of relatively recent date have become accepted in standard Dutch, also in Belgium, albeit with a shift in meaning and not as straight synonyms for existing Dutch words. For example, "blesseren" (from French "blesser", to injure) is almost exclusively used to refer to sports injuries, while in other contexts the standard Dutch verbs "kwetsen" and "verwonden" continue to be used.

Especially on the streets and in many professions, there is a steady increase of English loanwords, rather often pronounced or applied in a different way (see Dutch pseudo-anglicisms). The influx of English words is maintained by the dominance of English in the mass media and on the Internet. Unlike some other languages, Dutch adopts these new English terms with little or no resistance. Efforts to develop Dutch alternatives for English loanwords have extremely little success and indeed are often met with derision.

Writing system

Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet. Arguably the Dutch have one additional character beyond the standard alphabet, the digraph IJ. It has a relatively high proportion of doubled letters, both vowels and consonants. This is due to the formation of compound words and also to the spelling devices for distinguishing the many vowel sounds in the Dutch language. An example of five consecutive doubled letters is the word "voorraaddoos" (supply box).

The diaeresis (Dutch: "trema") is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately. In the most recent spelling reform, a hyphen has replaced the diaeresis in compound words (i.e., if the vowels originate from separate words, not from prefixes or suffixes), e.g. "zeeëend" (seaduck) is now spelled "zee-eend".

The acute accent occurs mainly on loanwords like "café", but can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite article 'een' (a, an) and the numeral 'één' (one); also 'hé' (hey, also written 'hee').

The grave accent is used to clarify pronunciation ('hè' (what?, what the ...?, tag question 'eh?'), 'bèta') and in loanwords ('caissière' (female cashier), 'après-ski'). In the recent spelling reform, the accent grave was dropped as stress sign on short vowels in favour of the accent aigu (e.g. 'wèl' was changed to 'wél').

Other diacritical marks such as the circumflex only occur on a few words, most of them loanwords from French.

The most important dictionary of the modern Dutch language is the "Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal", [nl icon [http://www.vandale.nl www.vandale.nl] ] more commonly referred to as the "Dikke van Dale" ("dik" is Dutch for "fat" or "thick"). However, it is dwarfed by the 45,000-page "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal", a scholarly endeavour that took 147 years from initial idea to first edition.

The official spelling is set by the "Wet schrijfwijze Nederlandsche taal" (Law on the writing of the Dutch language; Belgium 1946, Netherlands 1947; based on a 1944 spelling revision; both amended in the 1990s after a 1995 spelling revision). The "Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal", more commonly known as "het groene boekje" (i.e. "the green booklet", because of its colour), is usually accepted as an informal explanation of the law. However, the official 2005 spelling revision, which reverted some of the 1995 changes and made new ones, has been welcomed with a distinct lack of enthusiasm in both the Netherlands and Belgium. As a result, the [http://www.onzetaal.nl/ Genootschap Onze Taal] (Our Language Society) decided to publish an alternative list, "het witte boekje" ("the white booklet"), which tries to simplify some complicated rules and offers several possible spellings for many contested words. This alternative orthography is followed by a number of major Dutch media organisations but mostly ignored in Belgium.

Dutch as a foreign language

The number of non-native speakers of Dutch who voluntarily learn the language is small. Dutch is not geographically widespread and in its home countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, most of its speakers are proficient in other European languages. There are far fewer Francophone Belgians who speak Dutch than Flemings who speak French, although quite recently the number of the former is slightly on the rise.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation can be a challenge as many of the Dutch vowel sounds are difficult for non native speakers. Diphthongs such as the "ui" sound in such words as "zuid" (south) or "huis" (house), the "eu" in "keuze" (choice) or "sleutel" (key), and the "ij" sound in words like "mijt" (mite) or "wijn" (wine) present difficulties. Even though some of these words are superficially like their English equivalents the correct sound is very different.

Another issue with pronunciation is the "ch"-sound, which Dutch native speakers pronounce as /x/. It has no counterpart in English. Particularly the voiced equivalent /ɣ/ is rare among other European languages. Anglo-Saxons sometimes make fun of this feature of the Dutch language, and even speakers of Dutch who are well aware of this phonological speciality sometimes ironise it — for example Tom Meyer, a radio commentator, used to say on air that "Dutch isn't a language; it's a disease of the throat."

There is a well-known Second World War anecdote in which the name of Dutch town Scheveningen was used as a Shibboleth by the Dutch Resistance, as there is also no phonetic counterpart of this word-initial combination in German. Native German speakers will pronounce the consonant cluster "sch" in Scheveningen as /IPA|ʃ/ (as in the English word "short"), while Dutch native speakers will pronounce it as /sx/. According to the legend, this linguistic difference provided an excellent instrument to uncover German spies in the ranks of the Dutch resistance. It is a nice, Hans Brinker–like story, well-known, but little more than that. It rather shows a deeply felt need for the Dutch to readily contrast themselves with Germans which is also reflected in the change of the name of the language of the previous "Nederduitsch" to the current "Nederlands". The linguistic significance of this articulatory problem for foreigners, however, stays beyond doubt.

Consonant clustering

The morphologic versatility and cohesiveness of Dutch sometimes also produces words that might baffle speakers of other languages due to the high amount of consecutive consonants, such as the word audio|angstschreeuw.ogg|"angstschreeuw" (IPA|ɑŋstsxreːɥ) (scream in fear), which has grand total of eight in a row (ngstschr) (although the ng and ch are digraphs). It has to be noted though that the pronunciation of a word can differ greatly from its written form. In this case, "angstschreeuw" actually features 6 consonants (ng-s-t-s-ch-r) originating from two distinct compounded words ("angst" and "schreeuw"), which is reduced further by some speakers in everyday pronunciation by blending consecutive consonants into one sound - e.g. "ch" and "r".

ee also

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.minbuza.nl/en/welcome/Netherlands The Dutch Languagendash Dutch Department of Foreign Affairs]
* [http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/publicaties/taalgeschiedenis/en/ History of the Dutch Language]
* [http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/dutch.htm Sampa for Dutch]
* [http://www.miejipang-jpn2.net//untitled4.html Dutch and Afrikaans with Japanese translation] incl.sound files
* [http://neerlandais.dutch.free.fr/index_uk.php Nederlands - thematic Dutch vocabulary, audio lexicon, grammar]

Dictionaries

* [http://dutch.onebadmouse.com/ John and Grayson's Dutch Dictionary]

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