Learn some simple tricks to learning Dutch grammar
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| Mies: Welcome to DutchPod101.com. All About Dutch lesson 3. Painless Dutch Grammar |
| Mies: Hey everyone, welcome back to DutchPod101.com. And congratulations to you for having the guts to click play on a grammar lesson! |
| Jacob: Yeah, the word "grammar" seems so foreboding. |
| Mies: Yeah, and lots of us have grammar anxiety…post-traumatic grammar disorder. |
| Jacob: Yes, I know I do - from learning English! |
| Mies: Fortunately, at DutchPod101.com, we have developed a therapy for this. |
| Jacob: Yes! A painless therapy! |
| Mies: Yes, we know the current practice is to use grammar book shock therapy, which involves something to the effect of ordering ten pounds worth of grammar textbooks you'll never open from Amazon. |
| Jacob: I've been there. |
| Mies: Sometimes I get nightmares and cold sweats…the grammar books sitting on the shelves laughing at me. |
| Jacob: Well, what we do is take all that grammar and make it easy for you. |
| Mies: Yep. We're going to prove it to you today with a grammar head start. |
| Jacob: Yes! Let’s do this. |
| Mies: So if you hate conjugating verbs, can't accept that words have gender, or can't really be bothered with the correct pronunciation, maybe Dutch isn't for you. |
| Jacob: However, we can promise a few things…one of them being a simplified grammar class that will be easy for everyone to understand! Second, your life will be a lot richer after this class as you will have gained knowledge of this beautiful Germanic language |
| Mies: We're about to tell you what you need to know right off the bat to give you a jump start on Dutch. |
| Jacob: Yes, and you will get the last laugh at the grammar books. |
| Mies: Okay, first of all, we need to let you know the good news, which is that Dutch is just like English. That is, it is an SVO language…Subject - Verb - Object. So if you know this basic structure, you should be okay. |
| Jacob: Yeah, nothing is that easy! |
| Mies: In a normal Dutch declarative sentence, the word order is the same as what we use in a normal English declarative sentence…Subject - Verb - Object. |
| Jacob: So, for example…"Ik studeer Nederlands” |
| Mies: "I study Dutch" is precisely the same as English. "Ik" is "I," "studeer" is "study," and "Nederlands" is the word for "Dutch." |
| Jacob: So, "Ik studeer Nederlands." |
| Mies: When we want to turn this into a question we simply change the word order. |
| Jacob: you just shuffle them around. |
| Mies: Yeah you could say that. The order will become VSO , Studeer ik Nederlands? |
| Jacob: So that literally would translate to “Study I Dutch?” |
| Mies: It is actually easier than English here, where you would say; “Do I study Dutch?” |
| Jacob: Let's have some more! |
| Mies: How about "Hij drinkt koffie” |
| Jacob: “He drinks coffee” Again, the same as English. |
| Mies: Now can you make it into a question? |
| Jacob: “ Drinkt hij koffie ? |
| Mies: See how easy it is to make it into a question.! |
| But now, I'm sorry, we are going to get negative. |
| Jacob: What? How can we go from all that awesomeness to that? |
| Mies: Negating verbs! |
| Jacob: Ah yes, making sentences negative. Okay, this is easy too. |
| Mies: Yes! Throw that grammar book out the window! There is another great thing about Dutch…making sentences negative. How do we do it? |
| Jacob: Negation occurs before the object and any prepositional phrase. And all we have to do is add our negation word there. |
| Mies: So in the example we just had, to make it negative, you just add a negation word, in this case "geen” in front of the object |
| Jacob: "Ik studeer geen Nederlands” |
| Mies: Which means "I don't study Dutch” |
| Jacob: Okay, but we are studying Dutch, so let's talk about something else. |
| Mies: Sounds good |
| Jacob: Now let's have a closer look at the gender. |
| Mies: We use 3 different genders for nouns in Dutch: masculine, feminine and neuter. These genders determine the articles used with the nouns and the pronouns referring to it. |
| Jacob: Can we get some examples here of these gendered nouns? |
| Mies: Sure lets start with some Masculine ones. |
| Jacob: Bring it on. |
| Mies: “father” |
| Jacob: “vader”, and another one? |
| Mies: “liar” |
| Jacob “leugenaar” |
| Mies: And now some feminine nouns. |
| “Mother” |
| Jacob: "moeder" and |
| Mies: “science" |
| Jabob: wetenschap |
| Mies: And the last Neuter |
| Jacob: "little book" |
| Mies "boekje" , and |
| Mies: "girl" |
| Jacob: “meisje” |
| Mies: As you'll notice, there are some surprises, too. Would you have guessed that the word for "girl" is neuter? |
| Jacob: The question then becomes how you determine a noun's gender. |
| Mies So to determine what gender the word is you can have a look at the ending of the word. |
| Jacob: If a noun ends in "-aar,-er, erd,” it's probably masculine. |
| If it ends with “heid,-nis, -schap” it's probably feminine. |
| And finally, if it ends with “-je,” it's neuter. |
| . |
| Mies: Now let's have a look at articles. English has three articles, "a," "an," and "the," right? "The" is the definite article in English. Well, the Dutch definite articles are actually gendered. |
| Jacob : Yeah, we sure love gender! |
| Mies: Ha ha… Yeah! So the articles are as follows… |
| Jacob: Masculine - "de" and "een" |
| Feminine - "de" and "een" |
| Neuter – "het" and "een" |
| Mies : Do some extra examples come with that order? |
| Jacobs : Sure! I'll throw them all in there! But let's make them easy. |
| Masculine - "de vader" meaning "the father" |
| Feminine - "de moeder" meaning "the woman" |
| Neuter - "het potlood", meaning "the pencil" |
| Mies : That's not too difficult I guess… So what's next? |
| Jacobs : Plurals! |
| Mies : Oooh, of course, we don't just talk about one book or a book. Sometimes we have to talk about books, two books, or many books. To make an English noun plural, we usually add "T-s" or "-es" to the end. "Book" becomes "books," "fox" becomes "foxes," and so forth. |
| Jacob : Making a noun plural in Dutch requires in most cases just adding the letters “en” |
| Mies : That sounds pretty simple: |
| Jacob : Yeah so it would be “1fiets, 2 fietsen” , 1 bicycle 2 bicycles. |
| Mies: Well How about “1 krant, 2…….” “ 1 newspaper, 2 newspapers” |
| Jacob: 1 krant, 2 kranten. |
| Jacob : OK. Then, I will give you another one to test this genius. “ 1 vriend, 3 ……” “ one friend, 3 friends” |
| Mies : I vriend, 3 vrienden……… see I am a real genius. |
| Jacob : Ha ha you wish. Well of course there are always exceptions. If the singular ends in. -e, -é, -el, -em, -en, -er, the plural is formed by adding -s to the singular |
| Mies : Give me an example please. |
| Jacob : Lets see; “winkel” “shop” becomes, “winkels” and “ nummer” “number” becomes nummers and…….. |
| Jacob: Ok ok, enough of that, let’s conjugate |
| Jacob : Conjugate and then celebrate? Sounds good to me. |
| Mies: Let’s start with the easy ones, same as in English, “he, she, it, is” in Dutch is “hij is”, “zij is” and “het is”. |
| Jacob: Easy as pie. |
| Mies: In Dutch we say “zijn” instead of “are” , so “ we, you (plural)” and they are” would be “ wij zijn”, “ jullie zijn”, “ zij zijn”. |
| Jacob: Sounds like we are almost there. |
| Mies: Yeah indeed, “ I am “ in Dutch would be…. |
| Jacob: Do you remember the sentence “I am Dutch“ in the third Basic Dutch lesson? |
| Mies : I do !!! Ik ben nederlander |
| . Jacob Well that leaves us only “you are”, “Jij bent” in Dutch. |
| Mies : Wow. That was an enlightening shot of grammar indeed! |
| Jacob : We promised painless, and I think we delivered! |
| Mies : Remember that this is your head start on Dutch grammar. Keep up with DutchPod101.com for more lessons that will teach you Dutch in the way you want to learn…without pain! |
| MIES: Thanks for listening! |
| Jacob: Bye! |
| MIES: Dag! |
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