Dutch
Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, Belgium (called Flemish), Netherlands Antilles, Indonesia, and parts of France and Germany. It did not go through the High German Consonant Shift so many of the vocabulary in it still resemble other related languages such as Low German and even English.
| Dutch Nederlands | |
| Spoken in: | Netherlands (Nederland) |
| Conworld: | Real world |
| Total speakers: | 23 million native. |
| Genealogical classification: | Indo-European
|
| Basic word order: | SVO, OVS/V2 |
| Morphological type: | Inflecting |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | nominative-accusative |
| Writing system: | |
| Created by: | |
| unknown | 16th century C.E, |
History
Dutch Phonology and Orthography
Consonants
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Labiod. | Alveolar | Post-alv. | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | g | ||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ç | x | (ɣ) | h | |||||||
| Approximants | ʋ | j | ||||||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||||||
| Lateral Approximant | l | |||||||||||||||
- Most Dutch consonants are pronounced the same way as their IPA equivalents: b, p, j, f, k, z, m, n, h, s, t, d, l and r.
- sj is pronounced /ʃ/.
- g and ch is pronounced /x/. g can sometimes be realised as /ɣ/.
- sch is pronouced /sx/ and not /ʃ/ as in German.
- w is pronounced as /ʋ/.
- v is sometimes pronounced /f/.
- Dutch has final devoicing. This means that all voiced consonants with voiceless forms become those voiceless forms, at the end of the word.
Vowels
Monothongs
| Vowels | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||||
| Unround | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |||||||
| High | i - ɪ | yː - ʏ | u | |||||||
| Mid | eː - ɛ | øː - | ə | oː - ɔ | ||||||
| Low | aː - a | |||||||||
| All entries save low are: Tense - Lax | ||||||||||
- Vowels are formed based on the ideas of Closed vs. Open syllables. In closed syllable, the vowel is lax and/or short. In an open syllable or a closed syllable written with a geminated vowel, the vowel is tense and/or long.
Diphthongs
Open vs. Closed Syllables
Grammar
Nouns
Gender
Dutch historically had three genders, much the way High German still does. However, most of the Masculine and Feminine nouns merged into a Common gender. This leaves Common and Neuter, which are the two genders of Dutch today.
Number
There are two numbers in Dutch Grammar: singular and plural. Because Dutch orthography follows the Open vs. Closed syllable structure very strictly, vowel spelling often changes to accommodate the vowel's pronunciation. For example the long vowel boom, meaning tree, is still pronounced the same, but spelt bomen in the plural trees. For short vowels, which
Articles
There are two types of articles in Dutch, Definite and Indefinite. The definite article has two forms, de and het. The definite article de is used for the common gender, and het is used for the neuter gender. The plural for both is de.
The indefinite article is een for all genders and is reduced to 'n in informal sense. The negative geen is used for both numbers and all genders to indicate "not" (comparative to High German Kein).
Adjectives and Adverbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Pronouns
| Case | First Person | Second Person | Third Person | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sing. | Plur. | Sing. | Plur. | Sing. & Plur. | Sing. Masc. | Sing. Fem. | Sing. Neut. | Plur. | |
| Subjective | ik ('k) | wij (we) | jij (je) | jullie (je) | u | hij (ie) | zij (ze) | het ('t) | zij (ze) |
| Objective | mij (me) | ons | jou (je) | jullie (je) | u | hem ('m) | haar ('r) | het ('t) | hen* (ze) |
| Possessive | mijn (m'n) | ons/onze | jouw (je) | jullie (je) | uw | zijn (z'n) | haar (d'r) | zijn (z'n) | hun (d'r) |
- The indirect object or dative form is hun.
