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Archive for 'Dutch Grammar'

Back to Basics: Possession and Pronouns Posted by on Jan 24, 2018

One of the mistakes I’ve caught myself consistently making is to mix up all of the pronouns when it comes to talking about people’s things. If it isn’t using ik or je, I cannot seem to get them straight in my head. Ik heb hun auto gebruikt…zij auto….de auto van wie?!?!? What is a pronoun? The first question…

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Trema’s: ë, ï, ü, ö, ä Posted by on Dec 14, 2017

Dutch is a pretty straightforward language when it comes to letters available. There’s just the simple 26, no special letters such as å or æ. Easy from A to Z! But… There are instances where a trema (diaeresis, the famous Umlaut in German) appears in Dutch. Where and why, though? eu, oe, ui, au, ou First, there are the tweeklanken that you should know…

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Curious Words in Dutch: Opdat Posted by on Nov 20, 2017

There are many strange words in a language. Words that are just not used much, words that are pronounced in a weird way… Just words that have something curious about them! And those are the ones we look at in this series. Starting today with opdat. Voegwoorden Opdat is a voegwoord (conjunction). This means that its purpose is…

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Tweeklanken 2: ie, ieu(w), ij/ei Posted by on Aug 8, 2017

Hi there! Welcome to the second post on tweeklanken, or vowel combinations. Here’s last week’s post on ae, ai, aai, and au/ou. Today we have an exciting one, because we will discuss the ij, one very special letter in the Dutch alphabet and in the realm of tweeklanken. Apart from the ij, we will discuss the ie and ieu(w) today, because they also start with an i…

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Tweeklanken 1: ae, ai, aai, au/ou Posted by on Jul 31, 2017

Dutch is pretty straightforward with its alfabet (alphabet): It has 26 letters, there are no special ones. So, that’s pretty simple! However, there are some lettercombinaties (letter combinations) that create a different sound. There are 16 of them, and in the coming weeks, we will have a look at all of them. Today, we start of with those starting…

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Versterkende bijvoeglijke naamwoorden – pebbles and cats are super! Posted by on Dec 30, 2016

Last week, we looked at trappen van vergelijking (degrees of comparison). They allow you to show that a thing is nice, very nice or the nicest. But there is another way to differentiate between nice things and very nice things – with versterkende bijvoeglijke naamwoorden (“strengthening adjectives”). They do not have degrees of comparison, and so they only…

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Trappen van Vergelijking – What’s The Tallest Tower? Posted by on Dec 19, 2016

Big. Bigger. Biggest. Enthusiastic. More enthusiastic. Most enthusiastic. We all know these forms, these trappen van vergelijking (“stairs of comparison” – degrees of comparison). How do they look in Dutch? Find out here. The basics There are three degrees of comparison: positive (full, great, wide), comparative (fuller, greater, wider) and superlative (fullest, greatest, widest). Easy! This is…

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