Peter is een student medicijnen. Hij gaat naar de universiteit. Hij wil Elly uitnodigen voor een etentje, maar hij heeft te weinig geld. Hij kan er niks aan doen; studeren is duur.
Peter is a medical student. He goes to college. He wants to invite Elly for a dinner date, but does not have the money. He cannot help it; studying is expensive.
Pa, ik heb geld nodig!
- Dad, I need money!
Alweer?
- Again?
Ja, sorry hoor, maar ik heb echt wat stoelen en een tafel nodig!
- Yes, well sorry, but I really need some chairs and a table!
Ja,ja, tafels en stoelen zeker. Feesten zul je bedoelen.
- Tables and chairs, yeah right. Partying, more likely.
He Pa, toe nou..
- Ow, Dad, come on..
Nou, vooruit dan maar weer..
- Alright, there we go again..
Grammatica 4-1 ~ Possessive and demonstrative pronouns
Recall the following from Gesprek 3-1:
Peter: Ja. En daarna breng je me op je motor naar huis.
Which translates:
'Yes. And after that take home me on your motorcycle'.
The sentence demonstrates one of the possessive pronouns. These are (singular) 'my', 'your', and 'his/her/its' in English and mijn, jouw or je, and zijn/haar/(zijn) in Dutch.
The pronoun je is a weak form of jouw and it is used when the emphasis is on something else, such as the motorcycle in this case.
Dutch does not have a possessive case as English does. In English one could say this house of mine, where mine (and yours, hers, his, ours, yours, theirs) is possessive case. Dutch uses objective case for this: dit huis van mij as if 'van' (of) is a preposition.
See Dutch: Appendix 3 for a table of the possessive pronouns.
In English, this is used as demonstrative pronoun to indicate something in proximity. That indicates greater distance. In Dutch, gender plays a role:
de trein => deze trein - this train
het huis => dit huis - this house
So, one replaces 'de' by deze and 'het' by dit.
At a greater distance:
* de trein => die trein
* het huis => dat huis
Notice that often when English has th, Dutch will have d:
the - de
that - dat
think - denk
A third, even more distant pronoun exists (gene, gindse), but it is about as common as its English equivalent yon, yonder.
Again, the two languages betray their kinship. In some words, a g in Dutch corresponds to a y in English.. Compare:
gisteren - yesterday
de gist - yeast
geel - yellow
Grammatica 4-2 ~ Indefinite articles
In the previous lesson you were introduced to the definite articles â 'the' in English and het or de in Dutch. Indefinite articles preceed nouns in the same way that definite articles do, but convey a general or indefinite sense. These are 'a' or 'an' in English. Thus, 'the book' or het boek refers to a definite or specific book, whereas 'a book' or een boek is indefinite about which book is referred to. Indefinite articles only come in one form (een), so they don't display gender.
een de
masculine/feminine
de tafel - een tafel (the table - a table)
een
het
neuter
het raam - een raam (the window - a window)
Please note (see also previous lesson) that the indefinite article has the same form as the numeral one (één). To denote the difference, one could place accents on the numeral. Also, there is a difference in pronunciation. The numeral één (one) is pronounced /e:n/, the article een (a) with a much weaker /ən/.
Grammatica 4-3 Plural of nouns
The plural definite article is always de and the corresponding demonstratives are deze and die.
Dutch has two main ways to form a plural: by adding -s and by adding -en. The latter is pronounced /-ən/, /-ə/ or even as a syllabic /-n/ depending on the region.
Which plural applies is best learned case by case.
de tafel - de tafels
de familie - de families
de stoel - de stoelen
het raam - de ramen
In the latter case one of the a's is dropped in the spelling of the plural. This difficulty is related to the fact that most Dutch vowels occur in two varieties, a closed one and an open one. Dutch spelling has a rather ingenious and systematic way of denoting which one is intended. It involves the doubling of either vowels or consonants. Compare:
het bot /bɔt/ (the bone) has an open vowel /ɔ/ like British pot.
de boot /bot/ (the boat) sounds much like British boat.
In this case the vowels remain the same in the plural, but notice the doubling:
het bot - de botten /'bɔtəno/ (bot-ten)
de boot - de boten /'botəno/ (bo-ten)
It is customary to call the first sound a 'short o' and the second a 'long o', but this terminology can be rather confusing. There are languages like Czech where vowels are indeed distinguished purely on their length. In Dutch, however, the difference in length is actually pretty negligible, but the difference in vowel sound is not. This presents a problem for speakers of the many languages with a five-vowel system, like Italian, Russian, Arabic or isiXhosa whose ears are not accustomed to this kind of difference. Anglophones usually do quite well.
The Dutch spelling rule is that an 'open' syllable that ends in a vowel such as bo- sounds like boat /o/, a 'closed' one bot- like pot (/ɔ/). If the opposite is desired, either the vowel is doubled ( -> boot) or the consonant (botten).
For non-native speakers a complication arises in those cases where the actual vowel changes in the plural, compare:
die pad /pɑt/ - die padden /'pɑdən/ (no vowel change) (that toad - those toads)
dat pad /pɑt/- die paden /'padən/ (vowel change!) (that path - those paths)
The vowel /ɑ/ in pad and padden is approximately as in father. Paden has a vowel /a/ like in broad American 'Oh, my God' (In Dutch the spelling would be: Gaad). Also, notice the gender difference of the two words.
This change is systematic in in the plural of the past of many strong verbs (see 6)
ik zat /zɑt/ - wij zaten /zatən/ (I sat - we sat)
There are a few plurals in Dutch that end in -eren:
het kind - de kinderen (child - children)
het lam - de lammeren (lamb)
A few words show vowel changes
de stad - de steden (city).
Woordenschat 4
de tafel table
de stoel chair
het geld money
de student student (university)
de universiteit university
het medicijn the medication, the drug
kan er niks aan doen cannot help it
nodig necessary
ik heb nodig I need
bezoeken attend (as a student)
verkopen sell
wat some
niks nothing
nog still
duur expensive
weer again
vooruit ahead, 'let's go'
te weinig too little
Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License Source: Wikibooks