Talk:Dutch grammar

From Academic Kids

Template:Spoken Wikipedia request I don't think it's necessary to mention abbreviations (is this the right term?) like 't, z'n, d'r in an outline of the Dutch grammar. In written Dutch they aren't used a lot. I think the way it's done now could confuse people. It's probably better to mention them seperately. Guaka 18:46, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Gender

This article is not clear on how the 3 genders work in Dutch. Many non-Dutch speakers believe Dutch has only two genders like Danish and Swedish, especially since Dutch-teaching textbooks and dictionaries only ever seem to go as far as "de nouns" and "het nouns". We could use some example sentences showing how the correct pronoun for "it" must be used depending on the gender of the object being referred to.

The pronoun section also seems to throw everything in together making it hard to get a feel of the gender and case distinctins. — Hippietrail 01:21, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

there also seem to be some factual errors in here. referring especially to the distinction between second person singular pronoun and plural. somebody needs to clean this up a bit.

I just cleaned up the mistake regarding the 2nd person pronoun. I think a couple of things still need to be improved on. A section relating to adjectives and how they are inflected with -e seems important, 'pronouns' shouldn't be a sub-section of nouns, but rather a sub-section of its own, with separate entries on personal, demonstrative, interrogative pronouns, etc.

As for gender: I don't think a section on the difference between masculine and feminine genders should be given that much importance, because in practice Dutch has become a two-gender language: a phrase like "de zon en zijn stralen" is AFAIK considered correct by the ANS e.a. Most speakers in the Netherlands are completely unaware of the distinction between masculine and feminine nouns. Joost 00:26, 24 Jan 2005 (CET)

True; but over a third of the population is living in dialect area's where the dialects still have three genders - whether the speakers are aware of this is irrelevant.

MWAK--84.27.81.59 09:35, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Compared to other grammar articles on Wikipedia, I think this one is a bit "dumbed down" in the way it ommits the distinction between maculine and feminine genders. Or should there be a separate article for Dutch nouns or Dutch genders or Advanced Dutch grammar?

Something else I've just learned about Dutch which is interesting but not covered here is the use of "aan het" in particular verb constructions. I would like to know more about it please. — Hippietrail 01:09, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The only example of aan het I can think of is zonnebaden aan het strand (sunbathing on the beach). I think the meaning of aan het is best described as at the location, folowed by the actual location. I'm no expert though, just a random Dutch person. So I'm afraid I can't help you with any questions regarding when you can use it, because I do it intuitively - DodgeK

weak verbs showing irregularity?

A number of weak verbs such as denken show the irregularity associated with Rückumlaut: see the article on umlaut:

• denken, ik dachte (to think)

Last time I checked, the past tense of denken was ik dacht, which is simply a strong verb. I don't quite get the sentence above it either, maybe my knowledge of my own language is limited, but I think it can be completely removed. - DodgeK

No, this sentence is correct. Weak is not the same as regular - see the article on weak (grammatical term). denken forms its past tense by adding a dental (-t), therefore it is weak. See the article Germanic weak verb. Strong verbs show the vowel change associated with ablaut, but the vowel change in denken is umlaut, which is quite a different thing.--Doric Loon 05:16, 6 May 2005 (UTC)