My language…


Before you continue on reading about my rant about how I’d love an unified spelling for most western European languages amongst things and then some… I will explain to you my stance on language first!

First of all: I don’t know the precise statistics of course and frankly I do think that it would be utterly boring to be able to cite all percentages of people who have one, two or more profiles scattered about the on-line universe called the WWW amongst things.

Anyway since most profiles I have signed up for in the past, were originally intended for either native English speakers or perhaps people who have English as their second, third or fourth language? Point being that I am able to blog in Dutch for quite some time, also am I able to rewrite all my posts in Dutch. But I will not do such a thing!

Because to be honest. Although I like the fact that one can choose more often nowadays to write in his/her own native language on various services. Problem being that for me to understand his/her post/profile I’d have to actually learn more than one language! Oh gosh! :lol:

No it’s much simpler than that. I have made an effort in regards to understanding the English language. Better yet I have allocated a lot of time and attention to that endeavor, which is something I will not and can not part from. Why should I? If I made an effort than why should another person be set free from the same ‘obligation’? Sure you can write me an e-mail in Dutch and I’ll respond in Dutch, you can even write me in German, Polish or Russian, but I will probably only respond back in English (perhaps in the future I will not)

Point being that if one looks for any type of information, this usually has better coverage in English than if one would try to find the same info in his/her own language. Of course there are exceptions but it is something I just happen to notice while browsing around. Translated holes and gaps perhaps or even misinterpreted pieces of what (probably) was an English (or any other highly valued language) article to start with. :-(

Anyway the rest of the page starts here:
Hello there. Ever wondered what it would be like to understand the Dutch language? Maybe it could be out of sheer curiosity? Maybe you are actually writing a thesis about my country or are in any other way interested at a mere educational level. Or you simply want to know how seriously ‘rotten’ my native language sounds? Doesn’t matter to me much what your reason might be but don’t let that discourage you from contacting me?

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Text only. No markup allowed.

I’ve made available for you several audio files to help you better understand the pronunciation (of what some might consider to be either my demon tongue or spy language. :lol: ) for some of the Dutch words I’ve used here.

I’ve another recording of my voice whereas I try to speak in my best English. :lol: Its origin can be found here.

Anyway first things first:

I haven’t scared you off yet? Maybe this part will? The Dutch language is known for its use of compounds and derivations! 8O

Good! Let’s continue shall we. The main topic of this page is the pronunciation of the Dutch language not necessarily about its grammar and idiom. *

Allow me to show you some examples; we’ll talk more about the sounds later if the need arises?

What’s written in bold is the syllable that contains the stress. What is written in red is my (experimental) version of a phonetic description for the Dutch language. We don’t use the acute or grave ´ or ` much unless we want to emphasize a word or syllable. Furthermore ‘C’ stands for consonant and ‘V’ obviously for vowel. Tensed vowels I’ll mark with a - sign on top of the character.

For example:

The word “Banaan” has one free vowel (pronounced tensed) and one checked vowel (with a tensed ‘a’ vowel). Namely: “ba” (free) en “naan” (checked), this only explains the spelling of ba with one a vowel and naan with two a vowels.

Because the stress falls on “naan” in this case. I could write “banaan” as: ba.náán. But I’d rather choose for this format: /bá.nán/, because of the open endings in both syllables! This however gives me the problem of not being able to correctly display the stress in the (any) word.

I really do think it is important to discern in between the two types of syllables; the one bearing the stress and the other as just being a simple open syllable that is, therefore I might want to change this into: /bā.nán/ or use another symbol for ā. (hint: bå.nån, baa.náán or ‘germanized’ bah.nahn )

Other then this Germanic people have this tendency to over emphasize the stress. Therefore the other part(icle)s of any word may be affected by this. For example, to use my banana example again, the “a” in “ba” can loose all of its ‘voicing ‘(like the “e” does this in the German word katze)!

I probably would want to write this as: /bə.nán/ to represent this? But because I don’t want to endorse laziness of speech I won’t encourage this and will write banaan from now on as /bā.nán/ unless I find something better?

So how does the stress fall in Dutch anyway? As a first (a sort of definition?): The stress in words that don’t make any kind of sense once you break them apart on a syllable level are called ‘ongeleed’ in Dutch.

Examples:

  • Almanak /àl-mā-nack/ is a word with the single meaning for almanac.
  • Dienstplichtige /dínst-plykh-tə-khə/ is a Dutch compound word for conscript.

See the tables for an inventory of Dutch sounds:

(c)vc (c)vc (c)v or (c)vvc (c)v or (c)vvc
In Dutch Non tensed and without stress. Non tensed and with stress. In Dutch Tensed vowels without stress Tensed vowels with stress.
a a
but		 à a or aa ā
hawaii, wrath of Kahn		 á
e e
to bet		 è (æ) e or ee ē or ey
to make or
to say		 é or ey
i y
thick		 ỳ i or ie i
meat		 í
o o
pot		 ò o or oo ō
home		 ó
e ə
ago		 ö (œ)
earth, birch		 u or uu ü
voiture
French!

Try to pronounce the English ‘ee’ sound with rounded lips!

 ü

* For an overview of Dutch (and others) consonants go here.

The ā of Hawaii is hardly pronounced that long in its Dutch equivalent! As most Dutch vowels tend to be pronounced relatively short in comparison to English. But it should explain why one should widen his/her mouth a bit more to get the desired sound!

As for the ei and the ij those sound the same in standard Dutch with the exception that in some dialects the ij (the original diphthong was the ii) sounds like the English ‘ee’! An example would be: ‘Het nieuwe rijden’ (The new way of driving) could be pronounced as /ət nívə rêidən/ in standard Dutch and as /ət nêiyə rídən/ in other dialects! Just something to ponder about right.

Dutch diphtongues
In Dutch Ipa (sort off) My proposal English (mostly) approx. equivalent
au/ou /av/ āv or āo now
ei/ij /ey/ êi conseil French! or seis Spanish!
eu /ev/ ev or ø möbel German!
ui /œy/ āö feauteuil again in French!
ie /i:/ i bee
ieuw /i:v/ iv eew
eeuw /e:v/ ēv
oe /u/ u boots

In the Dutch language we use “checked vowels and free vowels, just like you do. If a vowel has either tense or it has the stress fall on the syllable we double the vowels if not than the vowel itself sounds pretty short! But unlike Czech, Eesti or Hungarian the Dutch language doesn’t have ‘quality’ in its vowels. In other words except for a few loan words the sound of tensed vowels either with a single or with a double notation is relatively short in comparison with their respective cousins! Some words with a considerable amount of tone are the following:

Other deviations caused by the r:

  • beer (bear) /bŷr/ - English sounding equivalent: peers
  • boor (drill) /bôr/ - English sounding equivalent:boar, four
  • boer the u is the least affected by the r! (farmer) /bur/ - English sounding equivalent: tour

So you see the Dutch language is quite sonorous and this obviously means that there is a big difference in writing for example: vandaag /ŵan. dákh/ (today) and ‘vaandag’ (banner day?) /ŵán.dakh/ so watch your spelling! For other possible difficulties in regards to spelling and pronunciation? Think about the ‘eu‘ /ev/ or the ‘ui‘ /āö/ which are part of our French heritage!

Other common mistakes are the differences in sound in between the vowels a and e. In American English the ‘ay’ sound (/ej/), sounds the ‘ay’ as in say or the ‘ain’ sound (/é/) as in main. Those are typically written as ‘e‘ or as ‘ee‘ in Dutch. Furthermore the ‘e‘ (sometimes depending on stress either is pronounced short like the ‘a’ in cat or as the ‘a’ in ago!) Complicated huh?

Some examples to clarify:

  • een /an/ is similar to the article a or an (without emphasis).
  • één /ain/ English equivalent: one. (both ‘één’ and ‘een’ are written as een in modern spelling!)
  • twee /tway/ English equivalent: two
  • teen /tain/ English equivalent: toe
  • tenen /tay-nen/ English equivalent: toes

Some examples of other words with a sense of ambiguousness:

  • When you write tap – tapping we would write this down as: tep – tepping
  • And as you write tape – taping we would write this down as: teep and teping
  • When we write ban – bannen you could probably write this as bun – “bunnen” because our a sounds (almost) like the u of the word fun!
  • When I write “Ik hou van jou” then I’ll most probably sound like “Ick how vun yow” /yk hāo ŵan yāo/ (Meaning: I love you)

Weird? I know. :-D

Another ‘nice’ feature of the Dutch language that is worth mentioning here. Is its use of a voiced kh usually written as ‘g’ and its unvoiced counterpart the kh usually written as ‘ch’. Disgusting right, like in there’s something stuck in your throat?

Anyway here is a set of words that don’t mean anything once you break them apart in syllables although for some particles it can be said that they fulfill other functions but let’s not get into that (yet)!

Final stress endings Last but one stress endings The one before that :lol:
vul-káan /ŵöl.kán/ kí-lo /kí.lō/ ál-fa-bet /àl.fā.bet/
le-di-kánt /ley.di.kànt/ át-las /àt.las/ ál-co-hol /àl.kō.hol/
pre-si-dént /prey.si.dènt/ a-gén-da /ā.khèn.dā/ lú-ci-fer /lü.si.fer/
vi-tri-óol /ŵi.tri.(y)ól/ ma-ca-ró-ni /mā.kā.ró.ni/ je-rú-za-lem /yə.rü.zā.lem/
lo-co-mo-tíef /lō.kō.mō.tíf/ ro-do-dén-dron /rō.dō.dèn.dron/ a-quá-ri-um /ā.kwá.ri. (y)öm/

>>> Some General rules to consider:

  • C stands for consonant.
  • V stands for vowel.
  1. Words that have a final syllable in the form of: -(C)VVC or -(C)VCC (consonant cluster) have final stress and are called “superzwaar /süpərzwār/” in Dutch.
  2. Words that end in a so called ‘open syllable’ usually have the stress on the last but one syllable.
  3. Words that end in a so called ‘closed syllable’ have
    • Stress fall on the last but one syllable if and when this one is closed. (rododendron)
    • Stress on the one before the last but one if the last but one syllable is an open syllable. (jeruzalem)
  4. Words that end on a diphthong often have stress placed upon them: Examples are: Kandij (candy), kabeljauw (cod fish)

As a last for now: There are words that end on a so called syllable which contains a ‘shwa‘ ə (Like in ago /əgó/ or noble /nóbəl/ ) in it. In regards to the rules applied for stress in Dutch (see previous table) this ‘vowel’ seems to act differently!

Stress on the last but one syllable
pa-pá-ver (poppy) /pā.pá.ŵər/
ta-ber-ná-kel (tabernacle) /tā.bər.ná.kəl/
ka-zér-ne (barrack) /kā.zèr.nə/
sa-la-mán-der (salamander) /sā.lā.màn.dər/
kla-ve-sím-bel (harpsichord) /klā.ŵə.sỳm.bəl/
re-pri-mán-de (reprimand) /rey.pri.màn.də/

Regardless of how all syllables are constructed. As soon as the final one contains a ‘shwa‘ the stress falls on the last but one syllable.

For next time (week?):

How stress falls in compound words like:

hottentottententententoonstelling

/hòtəntòtəntèntəntentónstèlyŋ/

(hottentot soldiers tents exhibition terrains) :lol:

>>>

More to come as I see fit.