54 Comments
Dutch and German share about 75% of their vocabulary. They're very closely related.
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On the grammar side you will soon see the difference. And be carefull with some words, they all of a sudden mean something different.
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The lists of false friends in Dutch with German is even longer than the one for Dutch with English. Speaking all three you're bound to occasionally draw from the wrong box now and then, probably with amusing results. "Hij is kind." "Ja, zeer erg."
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Native Dutch and English speaker here and bess these words are really similar my advice is to listen to the pronounce these Dutch and German both sound different. : )
I'm a little hard on hearing, just to make sure - is 'kind' pronounced 'kint'?
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Yes, the letter 'd' will usually make a 't' sound at the end of words.
This is so much like Afrikaans. I'm lucky I can understand this =) this is gonna be a breeze.
Afrikaans developed from dutch. The dutch colonized part of Africa during the early trade days
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I'm Afrikaans but also fluent in English and this is basically a mixture between the two, I love this.
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I am struggling with the "een"- sometimes it means a, and sometimes it means the.
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een usually means "a" or "an" But, depending on context, it can also mean "one" (the number). In the case of it meaning "one" it is usually written with an accent mark over both "e"s.
"The" is restricted to "het" and "de."
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I find it really similar to Danish gosh this is going to be hard. At least I have somethign similar to work off of, though!
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I assume you mean the past tense form for 'is'?
The full verb is 'zijn' as in 'wij zijn mannen' (we are men). The past tense of 'zijn' is 'was' and 'waren' (singular and plural respectively). The present perfect is 'geweest', but you'll get to these things later :)
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I'm so glad that it is pretty similar to German and that is sounds a little like English!!!
Wait, I typed in "The boy is a child." and I got it wrong? It said the translation was "One boy is a child."
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It's because Een jongen means A boy, not the boy. The boy would be De jongen. Hope that makes sense.
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Can you use "is" for "has" and "has been"? For example, would it be correct to say: "De jongen is een kat"? I'm guessing that would be incorrect, but I'm wondering because hovering over "is" in the sentence, suggests it could be translated for "is", "has", and "has been"? Bedankt!
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Well, 'de jongen is een kat' is grammatically correct if you want to say 'the boy is a cat'. However, 'is' can only be used for 'hij/zij/het is' (he/she/it is) in the present time, the other versions of that verb look different.
The full verb is 'zijn' as in 'wij zijn mannen' (we are men). The past tense of 'zijn' is 'was' and 'waren' (singular and plural respectively). The present perfect is 'geweest'.
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German native speaker with good english skills learning dutch with an english course. Yes, I am already starting to be confused. Half of the time they ask me to write in English I start writing in German before I correct myself. In German the sentence is "Ein Junge ist ein Kind" btw. So nearly the same as in Dutch.
I had the exact same problem when I tried the German course! xD
After a while I stopped, because I could literally not come up with the English translation. ^^
Just starting out so I'm not an expert with this by any means, but from what I understand:
"een" = "a"
and
"één" = "one"
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I can confirm this. Most of the time this has more to do with the spoken Dutch. Colloquially, you often forget the accents when writing. When speaking, however, the two e's in "één" is pronounced like the "ay" in "hay", whereas the unaccented e's tend to sound like "uh" for the article "een".
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If you say "Jongen een" does it still mean "a boy" or do you need to say "een" before the noun?
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I think that you'd need to have the "een" before the noun, because otherwise it doesn't make sense, or in some cases, it might mean something completely different.
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Think Sean Connery :). The English "s" is what's called a "laminate" consonant, that is, it's made with the blade of the tongue right behind the tip making friction against the alveolar ridge (the gums above and behind the top teeth). The Dutch "s" (I believe) is more of an "apical", that is, the very tip of the tongue is used to make the friction with the alveolar ridge. Northern Spain's "s" has the same "thick" sound.
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a boy is not always a child, it can be a teenager a baby an adult and old man a corpse and, of course, a pre-teen!
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BeanJam - Funny how I have never met an old man that was still a boy, maybe at heart, but not physically.
This Dutch sentence does not show off the great writing skills of whoever created it.
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I don't think there is a particular pattern or way to know when to use "het" or "de" before a noun. You just have to memorize the objects which use "het" and the objects which use "de". My mom used to speak Dutch fluently, and she and others on Duolingo say that you just have to memorize which words use "het" or "de". It's hard, I know, but practice makes perfect :P
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Last exercise I translated "Ik ben een jongen" as "I am a boy" and I was wrong. The right answer was I am a young man. This time with "Een jongen is een kind." I translated it to "the young man is a kid." and I was obviously wrong again.
When is "een jongen" refer to a young man vs a boy?
Een and een is spelt the same but one is one and the other is a, how do you tell the difference?
Two questions on pronunciation. 1: How do you say "is"? 2: Does "kind" have sort of a t sound on the end?
I'm a spanish speaker, I do speak english and a few months ago I decided to learn german because of the accent similitudes from my perspective, now this... Is so funny kind of easy way...
