# Forum Other Languages Germanic languages Dutch  Crash course [a link]

## MasterAdmin

http://www.learndutch.org/Dutch/Dutch.html

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## Pravit

@MasterAdmin: Great link! Exactly what I'd be looking for if I really wanted to learn Dutch. Of course...  
Err, Hallo, Ik ben Pravit. Ik spreeke Nederlands very bad.   ::

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## Jasper May

Ik spree*k* Nederlands heel slecht.  ::  
And by the way, Hans Brinker did *not* exist. He was invented by an American and eagerly embraced by Dutch entrepreneurs in order to sell crappy cards and souvenirs with his picture on it (complete with clogs, cows, mills and preferably a tulip on his hat). Gah.

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## Mihkkal

Who is Hans Brinker?

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## Jasper May

Every tourist knows five Dutch people: Johan Kruijff, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Anne Frank, Hans(je) Brinker. The last never existed.  ::  Follow the link Mastadmin gave.

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## nishtyak

call me greedy, but does anyone know of a similar thing for afrikaans? (the reason i'm asking here of all places, for those who don't know, is that it's very related to dutch)

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## Jasper May

What do you mean by 'a similar thing'? A forum? I haven't heard of one, but I'm sure if you search for it on google, you'll be able to find one. Besides, if you know Dutch, you can read Afrikaans fluently. It does sound very silly though. Ik nie weet nie! Plofstof!  ::

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## garmonistka

Yiiiiiiiiiiiihaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, nu hebben we enkel nog een Vlaamse lounge nodig   ::   ::   ::

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## bad manners

> Ik nie weet nie! Plofstof!

 Now, you must admit that double negation is cool. You do it Russian, anyway.  ::

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## garmonistka

[quote=bad manners] 

> Ik nie weet nie! Plofstof!

 Now, you must admit that double negation is cool. You do it Russian, anyway.  :: [/quote:2w5ywklb] 
Mijn lievelingswoord in het Zuidafrikaans is "moltrein". Een moltrein is een metro!!!!!

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## Jasper May

Voolstruis met slaai!
Peuselhappie!
Amperbroekie!
Kieliebakhaartjies!  :: 
Verskoon my, maar dit is gewoon watwonders snaaks!  ::   www.afrikaans.nu is 'n heel interessant site oor die oorspronk van die Afrikaans taal en oor hoekom hy nie so ver afstaa van die Nederlands taal nie. 
Het ek dit reg ges

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## garmonistka

lol Ok Jasper, ik probeer het niet eens je bij te houden. Kieliebakhaartjies  ::   ::  
Er is geen emoticon hier dat je moet huilen van het lachen.

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## Jasper May

Wat dacht je van  ::   ::   ::   ::  ?  ::

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## GijsNL

Ook leuk: "padvark". 
Wegpiraat   ::

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By the way, is there anyone here who is really trying to learn Dutch? If so, I would be glad to help. My Russian is not yet at a sufficient level to be really helpful to y'all.

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## translationsnmru

> Mijn lievelingswoord in het Zuidafrikaans is "moltrein". Een moltrein is een metro!!!!!

 Wow, I understand this perfectly without knowing a word of Dutch!
What a language! It seems to be a curiouse mixture of English and German.  
I saw a movie with Dutch subtitles once, and between my pretty decent English and very bad German, I was able to understand more than half of what was said.  
I can't help loving Dutch  ::  !!!

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## Jasper May

Well, but that was a very simple sentence.  ::  Maar kan je dit verstaan? Dit is wel eventjes wat moeilijker te begrijpen dan datgene wat Garmonistka net schreef, vooral omdat ik nu een heleboel woorden gebruik die niet in het Duits of Engels voorkomen.

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## garmonistka

> Wat dacht je van     ?

 perfect! genoteerd. Misschien hebben we nog een lounge nodig in efficient communiceren met emoticons.

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## garmonistka

> Ook leuk: "padvark". 
> Wegpiraat

   ::   ::   ::   ::    

> By the way, is there anyone here who is really trying to learn Dutch? If so, I would be glad to help. My Russian is not yet at a sufficient level to be really helpful to y'all.

 I think I need help with my Dutch   ::   ::  It saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaks - Ik heb hulp nodig met de spellingshervorming!!

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## bad manners

> Maar kan je dit verstaan?

 Aber (= maar, as Japser said) can ( = kan) you ( = je, sounds like it) dit ( = this ) verstehen ( = verstaan)? 
"But can you understand this?"   

> Dit is wel eventjes wat moeilijker te begrijpen dan datgene wat Garmonistka net schreef, vooral omdat ik nu een heleboel woorden gebruik die niet in het Duits of Engels voorkomen.

 This ( = dit) is ( = is ) well ( = wel ) eventuell ( = eventjes ) (et)was ( = wat ) ??? ( = moeilijker ) to ( = te ) begreifen ( = begrijpen ) dann/then/than ( = dan ) thatwhat?? ( = dat + gene (jener) ) what ( = wat ) Garmonistka net ( = net ) schreiben ( = schreef ) 
"This is well possible somewhat ... to understand than what Garmonistka precisely (?) wrote", which perhaps means 
"This may be somewhat harder to understand than what Garmonistka precisely (?) wrote"; so "moeilijk" is apparently "harder", taking away the comparative ending "er", we obtain "moeilijk" = "hard". Correct?That "net/precisely" thing escapes me, though. 
The rest is even easier, "above all ... I now use a ... words that appear neither in English or German"; "above all because I now use a (lot of) words that appear neither in English or German". Which is not true, because I could not identify only these: "moeilijk", "omdat", "heleboel" (hard, because, lot of). "Heleboel", when I think about it, seem composed of "hele" + "boel", the first being "whole"/"heil", and the second, e.g., "bowl".

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## Jasper May

Chapeau, bad manners! I thought you would have some difficulties with 'wel eventjes wat' and 'moeilijk' (difficult). Like in Russian, we also use a lot of words which have long since lost their original meaning and are now used practically as Russians use their particles.
I ga naar het station.
Nou dan, dan zal ik dus maar weer eens eventjes naar het station toe gaan, of niet soms?
The literal translation would be (only 'well then' makes sense even in English):
Well then, then I shall therefore but again once for a short while go to the station, or not sometimes?  ::

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## bad manners

BTW, do you guys confirm that Dutch is OK with simple past/imperfect where German would use present perfect almost exclusively? Is it like English in this regard, where "perfect" does communicate a perfective aspect, or are there yet more twists? Can you use temporal specifications (except "just" or "already" or some such) with present perfect in Dutch? 
English: I slept well yesterday.
German: Ich habe gestern gut geschlafen.
Dutch: ?

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## VendingMachine

What I like about _Afrikaans_ is how they can add diminutive suffixes to almost everything - nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, numerals, the lot. Who said Russian was a powerful language in terms of diminutives? Well, here's its rival, Afrikaans. What's the situation in Dutch? I know you can add diminutive suffixes to nouns, what about other parts of speech? 
- Pa'tjie, ek wil net enetjie he^.
- Slaapies maar, my skatjie, Klaas Vakie is aan kommetjies, men soentjies eers vir pappie. 
Is this cool or what.

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## Jasper May

@bad manners: I heb goed geslapen. 'Ik sliep goed' can be used in some contexts, but I can't think of any right now.

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## bad manners

> @bad manners: I heb goed geslapen. 'Ik sliep goed' can be used in some contexts, but I can't think of any right now.

 That does not answer my question. The "yesterday/gestern" part was important (temporal specification as I said). Anyway, in your original "difficult" Dutch example, you used simple past/imperfect, correct? "Garmonistka wrote".

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## bad manners

> What I like about _Afrikaans_ is how they can add diminutive suffixes to almost everything - nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, numerals, the lot. Who said Russian was a powerful language in terms of diminutives? Well, here's its rival, Afrikaans.

 Spanish, and, above all, Hungarian. Agglutinations galore.

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## VendingMachine

> Originally Posted by VendingMachine  What I like about _Afrikaans_ is how they can add diminutive suffixes to almost everything - nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, numerals, the lot. Who said Russian was a powerful language in terms of diminutives? Well, here's its rival, Afrikaans.   Spanish, and, above all, Hungarian. Agglutinations galore.

 No, *bad manners*, I'm afraid you didn't understand me. I didn't mean agglutinations which denote position, direction, etc. as in, say, Finnish - katu (street), kadulta (from the stree), kadulla (in the street), perhe (family), perheesta:ni (about my family), etc., I was talking about diminutives, which show the speaker's attitude towards things/actions/qualities he's talking about. What makes Afrikaans distinct from quite many a language is that one can actually add such suffixes to almost any part of speech, not just nouns and adjectives. For example, you can add such suffixes to verbs (sleep - slaap - in a neutral kind of way, but you can sleep in a cute and cuddly kind of way by adding a suffix - 'slaapies').  
I asked the Dutch people on this forum if Dutch had a mechanism like that too, minding that Afrikaans and Dutch are related more than closely. I don't get it how Spanish and Hungarian enter into this.

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## bad manners

> No, *bad manners*, I'm afraid you didn't understand me. I didn't mean agglutinations which denote position, direction, [...] I was talking about diminutives, which show the speaker's attitude towards things/actions/qualities he's talking about.

 I understood you perfectly well. For Spanish, have a look here: http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa061202a.htm 
You can't add a diminutive to a Spanish verb, though.   

> I don't get it how Spanish and Hungarian enter into this.

 It was a remark on your "Who said Russian was a powerful language in terms of diminutives? Well, here's its rival, Afrikaans." There are too many rivals and Afrikaans is not really special. And I think Russian is more powerful in this regard, for it has both prefixes and suffixes. C.f. подъебнуть. The very intensive stem is transformed into something almost infinitesimal. Now make a noun out of it: подъёбка. And, finally, the diminutive suffix: подъёбочка. Or подъебончик. That's the power of diminution for you!

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## VendingMachine

First of all, *bad manners*, may I suggest you wash out your mouth with some Кря-Кря shampoo? Since when is that kind of language OK on this forum? 
You see, I was thinking about English/Dutch/Afrikaans/Russian all along although I admit I did not express myself clearly enough. I apologise for that.  
Afrikaans beats many other languages not because it has diminutive suffixes as such for quite many languages have them as you have rightly pointed out, but by the fact that it allows its speakers to add diminutives to verbs which is sooooo cool and I bet it gives its speakers a dimension totally unknown in many other languages. And I'd like to know what the situation is in Dutch, its forefather.

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## VendingMachine

First of all, *bad manners*, may I suggest you wash out your mouth with some Кря-Кря shampoo? Since when is that kind of language OK on this forum? 
You see, I was thinking about English/Dutch/Afrikaans/Russian all along although I admit I did not express myself clearly enough. I apologise for that.  
Afrikaans beats many other languages not because it has diminutive suffixes as such for quite many languages have them as you have rightly pointed out, but by the fact that it allows its speakers to add diminutives to verbs which is sooooo cool and I bet it gives its speakers a dimension totally unknown in many other languages. And I'd like to know what the situation is in Dutch, its forefather.

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## bad manners

> First of all, *bad manners*, may I suggest you wash out your mouth with some Кря-Кря shampoo? Since when is that kind of language OK on this forum?

 What language, really? Those words are completely innocent. I think them a lot less offensive than your everlasting "shite".   

> Afrikaans beats many other languages not because it has diminutive suffixes as such for quite many languages have them as you have rightly pointed out, but by the fact that it allows its speakers to add diminutives to verbs which is sooooo cool and I bet it gives its speakers a dimension totally unknown in many other languages.

 Like I said, Russian has that and lots more. Стукнуть - пристукнуть - стукануть. Выспаться - соснуть. I agree, though, that among the Germanic languages, with their very limited means of word transformation, Afrikaans must indeed stand out.

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## Jasper May

@bad manners: I don't know what you mean. Gisteren sliep ik/gisteren heb ik geslapen. I don't know the grammatical difference, because I use them without thinking. 
@VendingMachine: no, we can't diminutivize verbs in Dutch. Maybe it sounds cool to you, but to Dutch ears it just sounds incredibly stupid and childish.

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## VendingMachine

> @VendingMachine: no, we can't diminutivize verbs in Dutch. Maybe it sounds cool to you, but to Dutch ears it just sounds incredibly stupid and childish.

 Well, was the question phrased as "How does it sound to the Dutch..."? All I asked was if the Dutch used diminutives with verbs or not. A simple 'no' would have sufficed. Your love-hate relationship with the South Africans is of no interest to me. Obviously, they don't give a toss about how such verbs sound to you. I said that I found it cool the way they added diminutives to verbs in Afrikaans, I never suggested I'd find it equally cool in Dutch.

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## bad manners

> @bad manners: I don't know what you mean. Gisteren sliep ik/gisteren heb ik geslapen. I don't know the grammatical difference, because I use them without thinking.

 So you can specify time with perfect, like in German. Would it be correct to say that the imperfect form is "too literate" in modern Dutch and most of the times you would use the perfect form? Are there situations when you can only use imperfect (other than of "to be" and "to have")?

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## carperdiem

Why the hell is Carperdiem on some angling web-site based in Holland? Is that Dutch for Carp Angler or something?  ::

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## Jasper May

Nope, it's just as awful a pun as your nick: 'karper' means carp.

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## Blizzard

Hi, a question about the crash course  ::  - are there any useful materials in the net except Integral Dutch Course and Goed zo! ?

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