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Lesson Transcript

Mies: Welcome to DutchPod101.com. All About Dutch lesson 3. Painless Dutch Grammar
Mies: Hey everyone, welcome back to DutchPod101.com. And congratulations to you for having the guts to click play on a grammar lesson!
Jacob: Yeah, the word "grammar" seems so foreboding.
Mies: Yeah, and lots of us have grammar anxiety…post-traumatic grammar disorder.
Jacob: Yes, I know I do - from learning English!
Mies: Fortunately, at DutchPod101.com, we have developed a therapy for this.
Jacob: Yes! A painless therapy!
Mies: Yes, we know the current practice is to use grammar book shock therapy, which involves something to the effect of ordering ten pounds worth of grammar textbooks you'll never open from Amazon.
Jacob: I've been there.
Mies: Sometimes I get nightmares and cold sweats…the grammar books sitting on the shelves laughing at me.
Jacob: Well, what we do is take all that grammar and make it easy for you.
Mies: Yep. We're going to prove it to you today with a grammar head start.
Jacob: Yes! Let’s do this.
Mies: So if you hate conjugating verbs, can't accept that words have gender, or can't really be bothered with the correct pronunciation, maybe Dutch isn't for you.
Jacob: However, we can promise a few things…one of them being a simplified grammar class that will be easy for everyone to understand! Second, your life will be a lot richer after this class as you will have gained knowledge of this beautiful Germanic language
Mies: We're about to tell you what you need to know right off the bat to give you a jump start on Dutch.
Jacob: Yes, and you will get the last laugh at the grammar books.
Mies: Okay, first of all, we need to let you know the good news, which is that Dutch is just like English. That is, it is an SVO language…Subject - Verb - Object. So if you know this basic structure, you should be okay.
Jacob: Yeah, nothing is that easy!
Mies: In a normal Dutch declarative sentence, the word order is the same as what we use in a normal English declarative sentence…Subject - Verb - Object.
Jacob: So, for example…"Ik studeer Nederlands”
Mies: "I study Dutch" is precisely the same as English. "Ik" is "I," "studeer" is "study," and "Nederlands" is the word for "Dutch."
Jacob: So, "Ik studeer Nederlands."
Mies: When we want to turn this into a question we simply change the word order.
Jacob: you just shuffle them around.
Mies: Yeah you could say that. The order will become VSO , Studeer ik Nederlands?
Jacob: So that literally would translate to “Study I Dutch?”
Mies: It is actually easier than English here, where you would say; “Do I study Dutch?”
Jacob: Let's have some more!
Mies: How about "Hij drinkt koffie”
Jacob: “He drinks coffee” Again, the same as English.
Mies: Now can you make it into a question?
Jacob: “ Drinkt hij koffie ?
Mies: See how easy it is to make it into a question.!
But now, I'm sorry, we are going to get negative.
Jacob: What? How can we go from all that awesomeness to that?
Mies: Negating verbs!
Jacob: Ah yes, making sentences negative. Okay, this is easy too.
Mies: Yes! Throw that grammar book out the window! There is another great thing about Dutch…making sentences negative. How do we do it?
Jacob: Negation occurs before the object and any prepositional phrase. And all we have to do is add our negation word there.
Mies: So in the example we just had, to make it negative, you just add a negation word, in this case "geen” in front of the object
Jacob: "Ik studeer geen Nederlands”
Mies: Which means "I don't study Dutch”
Jacob: Okay, but we are studying Dutch, so let's talk about something else.
Mies: Sounds good
Jacob: Now let's have a closer look at the gender.
Mies: We use 3 different genders for nouns in Dutch: masculine, feminine and neuter. These genders determine the articles used with the nouns and the pronouns referring to it.
Jacob: Can we get some examples here of these gendered nouns?
Mies: Sure lets start with some Masculine ones.
Jacob: Bring it on.
Mies: “father”
Jacob: “vader”, and another one?
Mies: “liar”
Jacob “leugenaar”
Mies: And now some feminine nouns.
“Mother”
Jacob: "moeder" and
Mies: “science"
Jabob: wetenschap
Mies: And the last Neuter
Jacob: "little book"
Mies "boekje" , and
Mies: "girl"
Jacob: “meisje”
Mies: As you'll notice, there are some surprises, too. Would you have guessed that the word for "girl" is neuter?
Jacob: The question then becomes how you determine a noun's gender.
Mies So to determine what gender the word is you can have a look at the ending of the word.
Jacob: If a noun ends in "-aar,-er, erd,” it's probably masculine.
If it ends with “heid,-nis, -schap” it's probably feminine.
And finally, if it ends with “-je,” it's neuter.
.
Mies: Now let's have a look at articles. English has three articles, "a," "an," and "the," right? "The" is the definite article in English. Well, the Dutch definite articles are actually gendered.
Jacob : Yeah, we sure love gender!
Mies: Ha ha… Yeah! So the articles are as follows…
Jacob: Masculine - "de" and "een"
Feminine - "de" and "een"
Neuter – "het" and "een"
Mies : Do some extra examples come with that order?
Jacobs : Sure! I'll throw them all in there! But let's make them easy.
Masculine - "de vader" meaning "the father"
Feminine - "de moeder" meaning "the woman"
Neuter - "het potlood", meaning "the pencil"
Mies : That's not too difficult I guess… So what's next?
Jacobs : Plurals!
Mies : Oooh, of course, we don't just talk about one book or a book. Sometimes we have to talk about books, two books, or many books. To make an English noun plural, we usually add "T-s" or "-es" to the end. "Book" becomes "books," "fox" becomes "foxes," and so forth.
Jacob : Making a noun plural in Dutch requires in most cases just adding the letters “en”
Mies : That sounds pretty simple:
Jacob : Yeah so it would be “1fiets, 2 fietsen” , 1 bicycle 2 bicycles.
Mies: Well How about “1 krant, 2…….” “ 1 newspaper, 2 newspapers”
Jacob: 1 krant, 2 kranten.
Jacob : OK. Then, I will give you another one to test this genius. “ 1 vriend, 3 ……” “ one friend, 3 friends”
Mies : I vriend, 3 vrienden……… see I am a real genius.
Jacob : Ha ha you wish. Well of course there are always exceptions. If the singular ends in. -e, -é, -el, -em, -en, -er, the plural is formed by adding -s to the singular
Mies : Give me an example please.
Jacob : Lets see; “winkel” “shop” becomes, “winkels” and “ nummer” “number” becomes nummers and……..
Jacob: Ok ok, enough of that, let’s conjugate
Jacob : Conjugate and then celebrate? Sounds good to me.
Mies: Let’s start with the easy ones, same as in English, “he, she, it, is” in Dutch is “hij is”, “zij is” and “het is”.
Jacob: Easy as pie.
Mies: In Dutch we say “zijn” instead of “are” , so “ we, you (plural)” and they are” would be “ wij zijn”, “ jullie zijn”, “ zij zijn”.
Jacob: Sounds like we are almost there.
Mies: Yeah indeed, “ I am “ in Dutch would be….
Jacob: Do you remember the sentence “I am Dutch“ in the third Basic Dutch lesson?
Mies : I do !!! Ik ben nederlander
. Jacob Well that leaves us only “you are”, “Jij bent” in Dutch.
Mies : Wow. That was an enlightening shot of grammar indeed!
Jacob : We promised painless, and I think we delivered!
Mies : Remember that this is your head start on Dutch grammar. Keep up with DutchPod101.com for more lessons that will teach you Dutch in the way you want to learn…without pain!
MIES: Thanks for listening!
Jacob: Bye!
MIES: Dag!

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