Language rating...?

Cro Magnon   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 21:45 GMT
I've always thought English was so easy a child could learn it. :) In contrast, though Spanish is phonetic, its verbs give me a headache.
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 22:20 GMT
I just bothered to look over some of the details of Spanish verb inflection, and, well, I have to say, they are scary... While some people say that German is "hard", German verb inflection is most definitely much simpler than such, especially if you disregard the inflected subjunctives (both past and present) for most words, which aren't used much in speech, outside of a relatively limited set of words, anyways. Furthermore, German verb usage's only real complexities, outside of "sein", "haben", "werden", and the modal verbs, are that you have to memorize the stem changes of strong and mixed verbs, memorize which verbs have a stem change in the second and third persons singular, and memorize which verbs use "sein" rather than "haben" to form their present and past perfects, which are not that hard, considering that those tend to be limited to specific sets of verbs, rather than being systematic throughout the entire verb system. Of course, such is probably no more difficult than memorizing genders and plurals for German nouns, and is nowhere near as scary as Spanish verb usage appears to be.
Someone   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 22:26 GMT
Spanish verbs have a pattern to them, so they become easier over time.
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 22:36 GMT
Ack, I meant to say "in the present tense second or third persons singular" in my previous post.
Kirk   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 22:55 GMT
Actually Spanish verbs (even with all the tenses and inflections) aren't that hard to master (at least I never thought so), because once you figure out the basic patterns they're pretty regular. Even "irregular" verbs are relatively few, as a lot of "irregular" verbs actually follow predictable regular patterns.

In my experience French verbs were somewhat more irregular than those in Spanish, but even they followed some pretty regular patterns. One thing I really appreciated about Spanish verbs (especially after learning French) was that they are often very intuitive to an English speaker. For example, perfect constructions always use "haber" (have), rather than certain verbs using "be" or "have" as in French and Italian (which isn't necessarily too hard once you get the hang of it, but it does require yet another level of mastery that is avoided in Spanish). Also, most dialects of Spanish use the present perfect and preterit in a very similar fashion to how English distinguishes the two, whereas in French it must be learned the preterit is literary and the present perfect must double for past tense as well as present perfect.
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 23:27 GMT
From looking over Spanish verb conjugation some more, it still seems like the Spanish verb system is significantly more complex than that of German, German's true irregular verbs ("sein", "haben", "werden", and the modal verbs) aside. German has only one set of verb conjugations, rather than three, lacks imperfect and future inflections, lacks a conditional mood inflection, and has two conditional moods (past and present), which for non-strong verbs is formed regularly, and which are not used much in speech for most verbs.

While German has "strong" and "mixed" verbs, besides just "weak" verbs, those comprise just slight differences in the formation of their preterites and past participles, besides the stem changes involved in such, which are specific to the verb in question, but which are usually paradigmatic in nature. For most "normal" verbs, the German past subjunctive is formed with an analytic construction using "würde" (the past subjunctive of "werden") and the verb in question's infinitive rather than a subjunctive inflection, the German passive is formed with (usually) "werden" and the verb's past participle, and the German future is formed with "werden" and the verb's infinitive. Furthermore, in speech the preterite inflection, for "normal" verbs, can be effectively regarded, as the past tense for such verbs is practically formed just with what is syntactically the present perfect, like in French. which also reduces the amount of actual inflection that one will encounter in German in practice.

Hence, it seems like German verb usage is in practice more analytic, and generally simpler, than that of Spanish, besides that German has "have"/"be" alternation, like that of French and Italian, even though the set of verbs which use "sein" rather than "haben" in German is rather limited and fixed. While German does have stem changes for some (well, many) verbs, Spanish also appears to have such, except that verbs which have such aren't actually denoted as "strong" and "mixed" verbs.
Lazar   Wednesday, April 13, 2005, 02:32 GMT
Sometimes you'll see "to be" used to form the perfect tense in archaic English, for example "Christ is risen" or "I am become death, destroyer of worlds."
american nic   Wednesday, April 13, 2005, 02:40 GMT
I saw a church with a huge sign out front this past weekend that said 'Christ is risen'...I was wondering if they were implying that he was a type of bread or what.
Travis   Wednesday, April 13, 2005, 02:55 GMT
Hell, I always interpreted "Christ is risen" as not being a present perfect form, but rather that "Christ" is in the /state/ of having risen; as for "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds", I just interpreted that as a highly irregular usage overall, and didn't think much else of it myself.
Lazar   Wednesday, April 13, 2005, 03:03 GMT
I just searched for "we are come" on Google, and got this, also from the Bible:

"We are come from a far country, desiring to make peace with you."

That's a better example of "to be" used to form the perfect tense.
Travis   Wednesday, April 13, 2005, 03:15 GMT
That translated into Deutsch, which happens to use "sein" in this very case, like that passage in English uses "to be" rather than "to have":

Wir sind nach fernem Land gekommen, und begehren Frieden mit Ihnen zu schließen.
Travis   Wednesday, April 13, 2005, 03:17 GMT
Ack, that should be "Wir sind aus fernem Land gekommen, und begehren Frieden mit Ihnen zu schließen."
Sander   Thursday, April 14, 2005, 16:16 GMT
=>Hmm...I'm a native English speaker and I find Dutch spelling to be easier than English or German.<=

Really?! No offence but could you explain dutch grammer to me ?!
Sander   Thursday, April 14, 2005, 16:19 GMT
Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a rather complicated word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for Anglophones learning Dutch. Dutch, like German and Norwegian, is also known for its ability to glue words together to form very long words. Examples of this are de randjongerenhangplekkenbeleidsambtenarensalarisbesprekingsafspraken (the agreements for the negotiations concerning the salary of public servants who decide on the policy for areas where unemployed youth is allowed to hang out), hottentottententententoonstellingsmakersopleidingsprogramma (the curriculum of an education teaching the makers of exhibitions about the tents of the Hottentots), and a number with dozens of digits can be written out as one word. Though grammatically correct, it is never done to this extent; at most two or three words are glued together.

The Dutch written grammar has simplified a lot over the past 100 years: cases are now only used for the pronouns (for example: ik = I, me = me, mij = me, mijn = my, wie = who, wiens = whose, wier = whose). Nouns and adjectives are not case inflected (except for the genitive of nouns: -(')s or -'). In the spoken language cases and case inflections had already gradually disappeared from a much earlier date on (probably the 15th century) as in all continental West Germanic dialects.

Inflection of adjectives is a little more complicated: nothing with indefinite (een "a", "an"...), neuter nouns in singular and -e in all other cases.

een mooi huis (a beautiful house)
het mooie huis (the beautiful house)
mooie huizen (beautiful houses)
de mooie huizen (the beautiful houses)
een mooie vrouw (a beautiful woman)
More complex inflection is still used in certain expressions like de heer des huizes (litt.: the man of the house), ter hulp komen (to come to help), etc. These are usually remnants of cases and other inflections no longer in general use today.

Dutch nouns are, however, inflected for size: -je for singular diminuitive and -jes for plural diminuitive. Between these suffixes and the radical can come extra letters depending on the ending of the word:

boom (tree) - boompje
ring (ring) - ringetje
koning (king) - koninkje
tien (ten) - tientje
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Vocabulary
See the list of Dutch words and list of words of Dutch origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project
Dutch has more French loanwords than German, but fewer than English. The number of English loanwords in Dutch is quite large, and is growing rapidly. In fact, when a speaker uses too many words or expressions of English origin, he is said to be suffering from the 'English disease' (Engelse ziekte). New loanwords are almost never pronounced as the original English word, or are spelled differently. Dutch also has a lot of Greek and Latin loanwords. There are also some German loanwords, like überhaupt and sowieso. Even though few true loanwords are present, German has had a profound effect upon the lexicon of the language, done mainly by taking German words and just changing them into words that seem Dutch (so called germanisme), a process probably to be ascribed to the likeness of the two languages. Some of these forms have become so integral to Dutch that few Dutch notice it; they include words like opname (from German Aufname), aanstalten (Anstalten) and many more.

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Writing system
Dutch is written using the Latin alphabet, see Dutch alphabet. The diaeresis is used to mark vowels that are pronounced separately, and called trema. In the most recent spelling reform, a hyphen has replaced the trema in a few words where it had been previously used: zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend. The acute accent (accent aigu) occurs mainly on loanwords like café, but can also be used for emphasis or to differentiate between two forms. Its most common use is to differentiate between the indefinite article 'een' (a, an) and the numeral 'één' (one). The grave accent (accent grave), when used for emphasis and differentiation between two forms, has been completely dropped in the recent spelling reform, so that Hè? must according to new spelling rules be spelled Hé?. This is, however, not noticeable in pronunciation. Other diacritical marks such as the circumflex only occur on a few words, most of them loanwords from French.

The most important dictionary of the modern Dutch language is the Van Dale groot woordenboek der Nederlandse taal[1] (http://www.vandale.nl), more commonly referred to as the Dikke van Dale ("dik" is Dutch for "fat" or "thick"), or as linguists nicknamed it: De Vandaal (the vandal). However, it is dwarfed by the "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal", a scholarly endeavour that took 147 years from initial idea to first edition, resulting in over 45,000 pages.

The semi-official spelling is given by the Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, more commonly known as "het groene boekje" (i.e. "the green booklet", because of its colour.)

Structurally, Dutch is an SOV language, meaning that the unmarked word order is subject - object - verb. Furthermore, Dutch main clauses show V2 (Verb Second) language, which means that the inflected verb is raised to the second position in the clause.

Jan vertelde dat hij zijn moeder wilde gaan helpen
John told that he his mother wanted go help
John said that he wanted to go help his mother.
Inversion of the subject and verb is used in interrogative sentences:

Jij ging naar de winkel
You went to the store.
Ging jij naar de winkel?
Did you go to the store?
It also occurs when the first phrase in a sentence is not its subject.

Here are some rules about where to place the words in a Dutch sentence:

Adjectives always come before the noun to which they belong.
Rode appels - red apples
In statements, the subject always comes first or third and the auxiliary verb comes second. If there is no auxiliary verb, the main verb comes second. If there is a separable prefix, the prefix goes on the end of the sentence, as does the main verb (with separable prefix on the beginning of the verb) if there is an auxiliary verb.
In yes/no questions, the verb usually comes first and the subject comes second. If there is an auxiliary verb or separable prefix, it follows the same rules as the previous one outlined for putting parts on the end. If the subject comes before the verb, this often implies disbelief, like in English: "The prisoner escaped?" vs. "Did the prisoner escape?".
In a command, the verb comes first, followed by 'we' if taking to a group with the speaker included, followed by the modifiers and the rest of the sentence.
The time aspect usually comes before the place aspect.
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Nouns
In Dutch, nouns generally describe persons, places, things, and abstract ideas, and are treated as grammatically distinct from verbs.

In Dutch there originally were three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter: masculine and feminine nouns are often also called de-words, and neuter nouns are often called het-words, as a result of the definite article these nouns are accompanied with. For all practical purposes, at least in the Netherlands, the masculine and feminine gender have merged into one common gender. Few native speakers in the Netherlands are aware which nouns are masculine and which are feminine, and even in the newer editions of the Van Dale dictionary a large number of nouns are only classified as a de-word, without any statement whether the noun is masculine or feminine. In Belgium, however, awareness of the distinction between feminine and masculine nouns is much stronger, and still plays a (slight) grammatical role. Nouns are also marked for number, size and definiteness.

For the vast majority of all nouns, the plural is formed by addition of -en. Several other rule-based changes in the word may take place at the same time: if a double vowel occurs in the final syllable of a word, it will become a single vowel as a result of the closed syllable becoming open (boom -> bomen); final consonants are often duplicated to preserve the short vowel sound (bed -> bedden), and final -s and -f sounds are generally changed into -z- and -v- (huis -> huizen, hoef -> hoeven). For a minority of nouns, the plural is formed by addition of -s or -'s, and for a number of nouns of Latin origins, the Latin plural may be used (museum -> musea, catalogus -> catalogi).

For proper nouns (names), possessive forms can be formed by addition of -s, or if the name ends on a vowel other than a mute e (schwa), by addition of -'s.

Genitive noun forms are essentially archaic and not part of common usage anymore. The only common exceptions of this are certain fixed expressions (e.g. "De dag des oordeels", "Judgement day"), and sometimes plural genitives in combination with the genitive form of the definite article, "der". In common usage of language, genitive forms are formed by usage of the word "van", in essentially the same way as "of" is used in English.

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Articles
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Definite article
When you want to refer to one particular person or item, you use the definite article de for masculine and feminine words and het for neuter words. An alternative, more informal form for "het" is 't.

de man - the man
de vrouw - the woman
het huis - the house
In plural forms the article de is used for all genders.

de mannen - the men
de vrouwen - the women
de huizen - the houses
The forms of the genitive definite article are der for feminine and plural nouns, and des for masculine and neuter nouns. Nowadays the genitive forms are rarely used.

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Indefinite article
The indefinite article is een for all genders, which has a less formal alternative form, 'n. In plural, like in English, there is no indefinite article and the indefinite forms consist of nouns unaccompanied by any article.

een huis - a house
huizen - houses
The genitive forms of the indefinite article, now considered archaic, are eens for masculine and neuter nouns, and ener for feminine nouns. The phrase van een ("of a(n)") is used instead.

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Adjectives
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Verbs
Verbs in Dutch can be classified as weak, strong, and irregular.

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Strong Verbs
For strong verbs one needs to learn three forms: the infinitive, the past tense, and the past participle. Example:

denken, dacht, gedacht (to think)
The irregular verbs are hebben, kunnen, mogen, willen, zijn, and zullen.

zijn (to be)

Past participle: zijn geweest
Present: ben, bent, is, zijn
Past: was, waren
hebben (to have)

Past participle: hebben gehad
Present: heb, hebt, heeft, hebben
Past: had, hadden
zullen (will, would)

Past participle: -
Present:zal, zult, zal, zullen
Past:zou, zouden
kunnen (to be able)

Past participle: hebben gekund
Present:kan, kunt, kan, kunnen
Past:kon, konden
mogen (to be allowed)

Past participle: hebben gemogen
Present:mag, mag, mag, mogen
Past:mocht, mochten
willen (to want)

Past participle: hebben gewild
Present:wil, wilt, wil, willen
Past:wou (wilde), wilden
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Pronouns
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Personal and Possessive pronouns
Just like with nouns and adjectives, most aspects of the old Germanic noun case system have been lost in the personal pronouns in modern Dutch. Just like in English, the main remaining distinction is that between subject and object, and the old dative and accusative forms have merged into one object form. The only exception to this is the third person plural, which retains separate forms for direct objects and indirect objects.

On the other hand, Dutch preserves relics of the old Germanic noun case system in its pronouns. A full list of pronoun forms is listed below.

Personal and possessive pronouns
Person Subject Direct Object Indirect Object Possessive Pronoun
1 sing ik mij, me mij, me mijn
2 sing jij, je jou, je jou, je jouw, je
3 sing (masc) hij hem hem zijn
3 sing (fem) zij, ze haar haar haar
3 sing (neut) het het het zijn
1 plur wij, we ons ons ons/onze
2 plur jullie jullie jullie jullie
3 plur zij hen, ze hun, ze hun

Several of these forms also have alternatives that are used in informal language: mijn has the informal form m'n, hij has the informal form 'ie, hem has the informal form 'm, zijn has the informal form z'n, haar has the informal form d'r and het has the informal form 't.

In spoken language, the word hun is regularly used as the form for direct object, and sometimes even as subject form (e.g. "Hun zijn weggegaan." for "They have gone away.") Especially the latter is quite strongly disapproved of. The grammatical difference between hun and hen is artificial and has been created by Renaissance grammarians with a Latin bias.

The form onze is the inflected form of the possessive pronoun ons, which is inflected in the same way as the adjectives.

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Demonstrative pronouns
Like in English, Dutch has two kinds of demonstrative pronouns: one kind (dit, deze) corresponds to the English this or these, and is used for nearby objects; the other kind (die, dat) corresponds to the English that or those and is used for objects at a further distance. The exact forms to use can be derived from the following scheme.

Demonstrative pronouns
Singular Plural
masc/fem deze/die deze/die
neutral dit/dat deze/die

When the demonstrative pronoun is used as a part of speech of its own, the forms dit and dat are always used. E.g.: "Dit is een mooie auto" ("This is a beautiful car") vs. "Deze auto is mooi" ("This car is beautiful").


Simple not ?! :)
Sander   Thursday, April 14, 2005, 17:03 GMT
And this was only the "short" version.