Earlier quoted context omitted.
I only speak English (and a few foreign fightin' words) and yet, I understood (I think) the meaning of "vorfeld, mittelfeld, and nachfeld" way easier than "the V2 and verb cluster positions". Maybe I should just learn Dutch and dump English?
Vorfeld, Mittelfeld and Nachfeld look more like German.
Tegelwippen
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Tegelwippen
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
In relation to English, sure. But above compares Dutch to German, and they are both Germanic languages, and I think utilize compound words heavily. Looking at sibling comments, maybe those numbers are exaggerated.
It's not like English doesn't have compound words. It's generally "patient data" and not "patients' data" because the words form a compound noun in the same way that "patientendaten" in German and "patientendata" in Dutch form a compound noun. What's more, English also does togetherwriting. Are "web site" and "website" counted as two words when doing an English word count? Or are words like "web site" simply not incl…
"As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that even simple compounds made since the 18th century tend to be written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as [...] German, and Dutch. However, this is merely an orthographic convention."
And this also:
" In Dutch and the Scandinavian languages there is an unofficial trend toward splitting compound words, known in Norwegian as særskriving, in Swedish as särskrivning (literally "separate writing"), and in Dutch as Engelse ziekte (the "English disease"). Because the Dutch language and the Scandinavian languages rely heavily on the distinction between the compound word and the sequence of the separate words it consists of, this has serious implications. In Dutch, compounds written with spaces may also be confused, but can also be interpreted as a sequence of a noun and a genitive (which is unmarked in Dutch) in formal abbreviated writing. This may lead to, for example, commissie vergadering ("commission meeting") being read as "commission of the meeting" rather than "meeting of the commission" (normally spelled commissievergadering). "
Re: Tegelwippen
#53Re: Tegelwippen
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vorfeld, Mittelfeld and Nachfeld look more like German.
Point stands though. Voorveld, middenveld, achterveld works in Dutch. Don't know what these German words technically mean and so they might have a different translation, but you can / it is common to make this type of compound.
Re: Tegelwippen
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not like English doesn't have compound words. It's generally "patient data" and not "patients' data" because the words form a compound noun in the same way that "patientendaten" in German and "patientendata" in Dutch form a compound noun. What's more, English also does togetherwriting. Are "web site" and "website" counted as two words when doing an English word count? Or are words like "web site" simply not incl…
I see, you're right. I found this tidbit on Wikipedia (and the article itself)[1] quite interesting: "As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that even simple compounds made since the 18th century tend to be written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as [...] German, and Dutch. However, this is merely an orthographic convention." And this also: "…
I'm not sure Wikipedia is right here. It's not necessarily an error to write a space in between two words: it just changes the meaning, and it's an error if the meaning doesn't exist (just like in English: "ahorse" doesn't form a meaning like "alike" does, and so is likely a typo for "a horse"). It's also not "merely an orthographic convention" the way that, e.g., starting sentences with uppercase is a convention that could easily be changed because the sentence separator "." is already there.
The space separates two words. Having no space means it's one word. Adding the space means that what came before must be a different word, like an adjective or a preposition.
Take something like "patient data": is this data patiently waiting, or is it about data belonging to patients? In Dutch/German, "patientdaten" is unambiguously one thing and "patient daten" is unambiguously another (when pretending that "patient" exists as an adjective in Dutch/German, which it actually does not; but examples where it also exists as adjective are plentiful, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40399141>).
Re: Tegelwippen
#56For those who aren't gifted with the dutch language (its easy to learn for enlgish speakers. Its like german but with english syntax. logical spelling and grammar thats really not that hard) Anyway, Tegelwippen is where you "flip tiles" and replace them with plants. The basic play is that it reduces flooding, and regulates temperature. Plus its pretty. https://interlace-hub.com/national-dutch-championship-%E2%80... T…
My experience was it isn't particularly easier or harder than any other language to learn.
The grammar and word ordering is different enough that you really have to study and practice a lot how to structure sentences. Pronunciation of some sounds (like 'ui') can be pretty hard if you've never had to make those sounds before in your life.
But indeed the spelling is much more consistent than English, which definitely helps a ton with reading and writing.
I moved to the NL 14 years ago, took the Staatsexamen for naturalisation after Brexit, have had a couple of jobs where Dutch was the first language, but my Dutch still isn't perfect and I regularly make mistakes.
That being said, I am now finally at the stage where I can go on a day trip to Amsterdam and the locals don't speak English back to me when I speak Dutch. :)
Re: Tegelwippen
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very interesting. If you could elaborate, are there linguistical/historical reasons for that ? Does Dutch use more "fine-grained" concepts on average ?
I suspect compound words are a major component of it. In English "car factory" are two words. In Dutch an "autofabriek" is one word. A dictionary might choose to list the most common compound words which quickly adds up.
Re: Tegelwippen
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Point stands though. Voorveld, middenveld, achterveld works in Dutch. Don't know what these German words technically mean and so they might have a different translation, but you can / it is common to make this type of compound.
Achterveld works in some German dialects !
Re: Tegelwippen
#59For those who aren't gifted with the dutch language (its easy to learn for enlgish speakers. Its like german but with english syntax. logical spelling and grammar thats really not that hard) Anyway, Tegelwippen is where you "flip tiles" and replace them with plants. The basic play is that it reduces flooding, and regulates temperature. Plus its pretty. https://interlace-hub.com/national-dutch-championship-%E2%80... T…
English speaker who moved to the Netherlands here. My experience was it isn't particularly easier or harder than any other language to learn. The grammar and word ordering is different enough that you really have to study and practice a lot how to structure sentences. Pronunciation of some sounds (like 'ui') can be pretty hard if you've never had to make those sounds before in your life. But indeed the spelling is mu…
Then I suspect you've never tried to learn languages that are very different from English like Mandarin, Hungarian, or Tamil.
Re: Tegelwippen
#60For those who aren't gifted with the dutch language (its easy to learn for enlgish speakers. Its like german but with english syntax. logical spelling and grammar thats really not that hard) Anyway, Tegelwippen is where you "flip tiles" and replace them with plants. The basic play is that it reduces flooding, and regulates temperature. Plus its pretty. https://interlace-hub.com/national-dutch-championship-%E2%80... T…
Its like german but with english syntax I don't want to be too pedantic, but it's not. Dutch syntax is very similar to German, both are typically analyzed as an SOV (subject-object-verb) language with movement of the finite verb to the V2 position in declarative main clauses, unlike English. Word order of Dutch and German clauses (+ some other Germanic languages) are typically described in terms of topological fields…
Do you have recommended references about these grammatical constructs ?