Dutch
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Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, Belgium (the Belgian dialect of Dutch is 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 resembles other related languages such as Low German and even English.
Dutch Nederlands | |
Spoken in: | Netherlands (Nederland) |
Conworld: | Real world |
Total speakers: | 23 million as 1st language |
Genealogical classification: | Indo-European
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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.
- s is the retracted /s̺/, rather than the English and German /s/ (This sound is also found in languages such as Modern Greek, Spanish and Finnish).
- 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
Monophthongs
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 speech (not to be confused with the word for the number one: één). 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
The informal form of said pronouns is shown in brackets.
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.
Prepositions
Conjunctions
Verbs
Present
Simple Past
Compound Past
Future
Passive
Modals and Auxiliaries
Word Order
Texts
Sources and external links
This article is one of quite a few pages about Natlangs. Indo-european natlangs:
Uralic Natlangs: Finnish * Khanty * Mansi * Mordvinic * Proto-Uralic
Isolate Natlangs: Basque * * |