{"id":6158,"date":"2019-07-15T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/?p=6158"},"modified":"2019-10-23T10:37:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T10:37:56","slug":"how-nouns-in-dutch-are-falling-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/how-nouns-in-dutch-are-falling-apart\/","title":{"rendered":"How Nouns In Dutch Are Falling Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samenstellingen\u00a0<\/em>(compounded nouns) are a fun thing in the Dutch language. There are some fun challenges I remember from my childhood where we would make very long samenstellingen\u00a0<\/em>that you could basically make endless, even if nonsensical: hottentottententententoonstelling\u00a0<\/em>(Hottentot hut exposition) or\u00a0fietsventieldopjesfabrikantenvereniging\u00a0<\/em>(bicycle valve cap factory association). But that is tame in comparison to some made up at this website<\/a>, such as Arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekeringsmaatschappij-medewerkersvergaderingsnotulen <\/em>(disability insurance employee meeting minutes). But this beautiful practice is disappearing. What is going on? And what are the rules for these\u00a0samenstellingen<\/em>?<\/p>\n

How to make your own samenstelling<\/em> in 3 steps<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Image by PoChun Yang at Unsplash.com<\/p><\/div>\n

It is very easy to jumble some Dutch vocabulary together to form a\u00a0samenstelling\u00a0<\/em>of your own!<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Choose two words, let’s say\u00a0albino\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0exodus<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  2. Paste them together:\u00a0albinoexodus\u00a0<\/em>– an exodus of albinos. Of course you could also write\u00a0de exodus van albino’s<\/em>, but where is the fun in that?<\/li>\n
  3. Check whether saying the\u00a0samenstelling\u00a0<\/em>does not make you wanna jumble the words together. In this example, you might say it wrong. Instead of\u00a0albinoexodus<\/strong> <\/em>as two separate words, you might say\u00a0albin<\/em>oe<\/strong><\/em>xodus<\/em>. This is because of\u00a0tweeklanken\u00a0<\/em>we have in Dutch.<\/a> And so you have to fix this to avoid that so-called klinkerbotsing <\/em>(vowel clashing)<\/a>. Here, you can simply put a streepje\u00a0<\/em>(dash) in between:\u00a0albino-exodus<\/em>. Done! You are always allowed to use\u00a0streepjes\u00a0<\/em>to make\u00a0samenstellingen\u00a0<\/em>easier to read. Fietsventieldopjes-fabrikantenvereniging\u00a0<\/em>is easier to read than if it were one long, uncut word.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some other notes on\u00a0samenstellingen<\/em>:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The hoofdklemtoon\u00a0<\/em>(main stress) is in the first word:\u00a0albi<\/strong>no-exodus<\/em>.<\/li>\n
    2. The\u00a0geslacht\u00a0<\/em>(gender) of the word, determining the article, is determined by the last word.\u00a0It’s\u00a0de exodus<\/em>, so also\u00a0de albino-exodus.\u00a0<\/em>To compare: het voorstel <\/em>(the proposal) – het albino-exodusvoorstel\u00a0<\/em>(the albino exodus proposal).<\/li>\n
    3. The\u00a0samenstelling\u00a0<\/em>has to be made up of\u00a0“real” words – zelfstandige naamwoorden\u00a0<\/em>(nouns). So they have to be able to stand on their own as nouns, too.<\/li>\n
    4. There are also\u00a0samenstellingen\u00a0<\/em>of werkwoorden\u00a0<\/em>(verbs) and\u00a0bijvoeglijke naamwoorden\u00a0<\/em>(adjectives). But we won’t go into that right now.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Oh, and writing\u00a0albino exodus\u00a0<\/em>as a\u00a0samenstelling\u00a0<\/em>is, well, not a\u00a0samenstelling<\/em>. You have to connect the two! Exceptions to this exist too, when a\u00a0eigennaam\u00a0<\/em>(own name) is written apart, like:\u00a0Tweede Kamerlid\u00a0<\/em>(member of the Second Chamber, the Dutch lower house of parliament). Even so,\u00a0Kamerlid\u00a0<\/em>is still a\u00a0samenstelling\u00a0<\/em>of\u00a0kamer\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0lid<\/em>.<\/p>\n

      But the fun practice of making\u00a0samenstellingen\u00a0<\/em>seems to scare people…<\/p>\n

      SOS!<\/strong><\/h2>\n
      \"\"<\/a>

      Don’t. Touch. The. Spatiebalk <\/em>(space bar)! (And yes, that’s NOT\u00a0spatie balk<\/em><\/a>) (Image by Erik Mclean at Unsplash.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

      Even though the rules above are pretty straightforward and simple and are one of the first thing taught at Dutch\u00a0scholen<\/em> (schools), the Dutch quite often seem to be scared to just push words together in a\u00a0samenstelling<\/em>. As if putting them together would make things unreadable, or it “just looks weird”.<\/p>\n

      Ren\u00e9 Dings, founder of website SOS\u00a0<\/em>(Signalering Onjuist Spatiegebruik<\/em>)<\/a> (Detection of Incorrect Space Usage) wanted to make the point, and tongue-in-cheek, he invited people to submit\u00a0onjuist spatiegebruik\u00a0<\/em>if they found it. Well, it is not hard to find<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      So, for example, instead of\u00a0Kerst special<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(Christmas special), as the Dutch TV\u00a0omroep\u00a0<\/em>(channel) Avro wrote, it should be\u00a0kerstspecial<\/em>. There are even examples where there is less correct than incorrect\u00a0spatiegebruik<\/em>, such as the back of this truck<\/a> that describes\u00a0feest decoratie <\/em>instead of\u00a0feestdecoratie<\/em>. This actually shows another fun thing that is often done incorrectly: You can have a sentence with multiple\u00a0samenstellingen\u00a0<\/em>that have the same first or last word. So, for example:\u00a0ballonnen en feest decoratie\u00a0<\/em>(as can be read on the aforementioned truck) now reads “balloons and party decoration” instead of “balloon and party decoration”. To make that work in Dutch, you just use\u00a0streepjes<\/em>:\u00a0ballonnen- en feestdecoratie<\/em>. The same works in reverse:\u00a0mannenvoetbal, -tennis en -hockey\u00a0<\/em>reads a lot easier than\u00a0mannenvoetbal, mannentennis en mannenhockey\u00a0<\/em>(male football, tennis and hockey). It is a neat way to show exactly what you mean!<\/p>\n

      There are so many examples that Ren\u00e9 Dings even wrote a book about it, called\u00a0Weg Om Legging<\/em><\/a>. This in itself is a pun. A\u00a0wegomlegging\u00a0<\/em>is an “alternative route” due to road works, for example. However, weg om legging\u00a0<\/em>means “gone due to leggings”. Dings joked about this “some weddings have been broken up for less!”<\/p>\n

      But so why is this happening? There could be several reasons:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Autocorrect in Word or other programs don’t recognise the\u00a0samenstellingen\u00a0<\/em>people make.<\/strong> As we saw above, you can really make any\u00a0samenstelling<\/em>, so of course\u00a0 these programs don’t have all the different combinations registered. Even within this post,\u00a0feestdecoratie\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0mannenhockey\u00a0<\/em>were underlined with red, and the suggestion was\u00a0feest decoratie\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0mannen hockey\u00a0<\/em>– both incorrect. We don’t see this in German, even though they are similarly proficient at making extremely long words<\/a>. Maybe it really comes from software making us feel insecure making long compounded nouns?<\/li>\n
      2. English has a much larger influence in Dutch than in German.<\/strong> In English, compounded nouns are almost always written with spaces in between. And so it could seem less wrong to people to write words apart. It can look less cluttered and cleaner.<\/li>\n
      3. There may also just be general disinterest of people to get it right.<\/strong> Even though the meaning of a word or sentence can truly be confusing with a mistake in spatiegebruik<\/em>, context often easily clears up the intended meaning. One example from\u00a0Weg Om Legging<\/em>:\u00a0naakt model\u00a0tekenen\u00a0<\/em>(naked model drawing). Of course,\u00a0naaktmodel\u00a0<\/em>has to be one word (autocorrect even noticed that here!). But how to add\u00a0tekenen<\/em>? Just…\u00a0naaktmodeltekenen<\/em>?\u00a0<\/em>Yes, actually. It is much more cluttered, however. So what you would rather do is\u00a0Tekenen van naaktmodellen <\/em>(drawing of nude models). In this situation it is the name of a course, however, so naturally you would like it to be one word. And so people opt for the incorrect\u00a0naakt model tekenen<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        I personally think this is an inevitable thing in the Dutch language, and it may even lead to a change of grammar rules. The whole spatiegebruik <\/em>thing is not a big deal, because using spaces often even helps to clarify meaning. But nevertheless, it is\u00a0opmerkelijk\u00a0<\/em>(striking) how\u00a0samenstellingen <\/em>are falling apart in Dutch.<\/p>\n

        How are compounded nouns handled in your language? Is there any confusion? What do you think of this Dutch phenomenon? Let me know in the comments below!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

        Samenstellingen\u00a0(compounded nouns) are a fun thing in the Dutch language. There are some fun challenges I remember from my childhood where we would make very long samenstellingen\u00a0that you could basically make endless, even if nonsensical: hottentottententententoonstelling\u00a0(Hottentot hut exposition) or\u00a0fietsventieldopjesfabrikantenvereniging\u00a0(bicycle valve cap factory association). But that is tame in comparison to some made up at this…<\/p>\n

        Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":6166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[27710,3590,27711],"tags":[4751,33116,6,516187],"class_list":["post-6158","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dutch-grammar","category-dutch-language","category-dutch-vocabulary-2","tag-compound","tag-compounded-nouns","tag-grammar","tag-samenstellingen"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6158"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6335,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6158\/revisions\/6335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}