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FAQ-NL: Dutch | ||
Tags: The Netherlands | Dutch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5677 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 97 of 509 19 February 2010 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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FAQ-NL: Het olympisch dorp?
As I understand it, this phrase should be 'het olympische dorp' for the definite article and 'een olympisch dorp' for the indefinite article. But a check on Google and Wikipedia shows that the more common spelling is 'het olympisch dorp'. Other similar phrases like 'het oude huis' and 'het oud huis' seem to produce huge numbers of hits for each version. I can understand some situations like 'een witte huis' because of 'Witte Huis' being so widely heard. But in Washington, there are obviously both 'een Witte Huis' and 'een wit huis'. Clearly confusing to a learner. So my question is: Are large numbers of people writing in Dutch making an error with when to use and not use the 'e' for adjectives of 'het' words? To a learner of Dutch, the situation of 'het oude huis' and 'een oud huis' being the correct usage, is very disturbing and obviously difficult to get right, especially in conversation. And it appears that possibly a lot of native Dutch speakers have the same problem. Has there ever been discussion with respect to the recurring Dutch spelling reforms, that 'het' words should have a consistent spelling for adjectives, with both direct and indirect articles? In other words, standardise to 'het oud huis' and 'een oud huis', or 'het oude huis' and 'een oude huis', but not a mixture. All that being said, Dutch is Dutch, and learners need to learn it, not try to change it. Dutch is a whole lot more regular and consistent than English, or most languages I know about. But I do wonder if some many mistakes are being made (hits on Google) because this situation is somewhat illogical and hard to consistently get correct. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5280 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 98 of 509 19 February 2010 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Historically, adjectives with genderless nouns did not decline. When this started to change in the spoken Dutch in Holland, and adjectives used with definite genderless nouns began to be declined, this was adapted in the standard language to reflect the change.
Though this is the standard form, there are many dialects/languages which fall under Dutch, and not all have have gone through this change. In Flanders particularly, undeclined adjectives with definite nouns can be widely heard. There are exceptions however, just as proper nouns and set expressions, which don't decline, for example: -Het Verenigd Koninkrijk (the United Kingdom) -het openbaar vervoer (the public transport) -Het Olympisch Dorp (the Olympic village) Het Witte Huis is an exception to this however... I don't agree that Dutch is more regular than English though, and if you compare spoken languages (not dialects), then it is much more irregular and variable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5677 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 99 of 509 21 March 2010 at 2:38am | IP Logged | ||
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FAQ-NL: Quality of Google Translate in Pope's letter to Ireland?
Because I could not find a Dutch version of the Pope's letter on any Dutch-language website on 20 March, I put the English version into Google Translate. I thought that, due to the nature of the letter, Google Translate would have a lot of trouble translating it into readable Dutch. Was I surprised. It was perfectly readable. It is the best GT from English >> Dutch that I have seen. There were only a couple of words not translated, and everything was really well done, in terms of understandability. Even the prayer at the end seemed to be well done. Question: What is the opinion of native Dutch-speakers of this GT translation? It is much too long to put here. You can get it in English. Copy all of it directly into Google Translate and translate to Dutch. Here is the English version: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2010/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20100319_church-ireland_en.html 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5146 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 100 of 509 18 April 2010 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
I'm incredibly weary of these kind of translators that translate entire texts but this one is rather good. Some verbs and other words are translated incorrectly or left out and some sentences are a bit awkwardly structured but the overall text makes sense and is at times even elegantly phrased. If I had read it without knowing it was translated by a machine I don't think I'd have guessed it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| str0be Senior Member Korea, South Joined 5415 days ago 103 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, Korean | Message 101 of 509 18 April 2010 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
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You need to consider the way Google Translate works. It learns by comparing source and
translated text (websites, books) it finds on the Internet. Of course it would do well with the Pope's letter, since presumably that text has already been translated and placed on the Internet (on news sites, for example). Each sentence in that letter, and its translation, is already in Google Translate's database (though perhaps in a codified form). You might then wonder why it didn't translate it perfectly, by just remembering a translation it has already seen. Well, I suppose it works on a sentence-by-sentence basis, and so for any English sentence from the Pope's letter, there will be multiple example translations in the Google Translate database (from the various translations of the Pope's letter, and from other sources), which the Google Translate engine may have trouble choosing between. (Apologies if I have gotten some details of this wrong, but I believe it works something like this.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5677 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 102 of 509 18 April 2010 at 4:20am | IP Logged | ||
But it was not yet on the Internet. I searched for about an hour on all the major Dutch news sites. All, without exception, had no Dutch version. All had links to the Engish-only version. I have used GT for Dutch <> English for several years, and I have seen a remarkable improvement in its ability. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5677 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 103 of 509 18 April 2010 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for this comment. I waited quite a while to get a reply but it was worth the wait. I wish I was as good at Dutch as GT is. But 'we' are both improving. I normally use GT from original Dutch into English, so I can easily work around any mistakes in English. But increasingly, I am translating interesting English material, that is not available in Dutch, into Dutch with GT. I then read it with the understanding that it is not original Dutch, but it is very useful and very helpful. Thanks again for your comments. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5677 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 104 of 509 21 April 2010 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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FAQ-NL: Origin of 'grasduinen'?
If I understand correctly, grasduinen means to browse, as in to browse through a book, or browse the Internet. It seems to be 'grass' + 'dune', so I wonder if it has anything to do with looking through the grass in sandy dunes along the Dutch coast. Can it also be used as grasduiner' in place of 'browser' when referring to software browsers such as Firefox? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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