Talk:Dutch language/Archive 6

Dutch Nation
Added a para for us, hope that is okay... (Niet veel links) :) Zarpboer (talk) 06:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately it's not really "okay". Following your edit, 2/5 paragraphs in the lead is about South Africa, and that would seem WP:UNDUE. I'm sure the information you added can be used in the article, but I don't think the lead is the right place for it.Jeppiz (talk) 09:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your POV, Jeppiz but your POV does not seem NPOV. The article is about Dutch Language? My contribution was about the Dutch Language? Yet there is a section dedicated to "Afrikaans" which is a recognised language of the world, by itself? is this not also POV? Can you please help me understand your POV better, so I can understand if it is NPOV or not? Zarpboer (talk) 10:28, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I think my point was pretty clear, did you read WP:UNDUE? I see no reason why 2/5 paragraphs in the lead should be about explicitly about Dutch in South Africa.Jeppiz (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * If your problem is with the 2/5 paragraphs why did you not simply remove the line breaks? And Jeppiz why did you not then relocate the contribution to the position, where in your POV, it is best suited? - As it stands now, you have simply removed it and although you have said: "I'm sure the information you added can be used in the article" you have not exactly acted in a decent way? - Can you maybe tell me why? Zarpboer (talk) 12:04, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I'll gladly tell you why. I found that the information is already extensively covered in the article, in this section Dutch language. Furthermore, the term "Dutch nation" does not seem encyclopedic and be your own invention.Jeppiz (talk) 12:38, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * In effect, you were not truthful? It is that you do not agree with the content and not about the 2/5 para. Okay, thank you Jeppiz for explaining your POV. But: Factually the Dutch language of the South African Republic, was NOT Afrikaans, please see my reference for that fact. So, you are in fact wrong by referring me to Dutch language - Can you please check your facts and then be big enough to admit that you were wrong? (Not about your POV, but about your FACTS) And, then in the same trend your edit seems to have been NPOV. Will you please undo your edit - and please, I do agree that the 2/5 para is too much, a single line will suffice? Zarpboer (talk) 14:27, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Just giving you my citation, again: Select_constitutional_documents_illustrating_South_African_history_1795-1910. pp. 481–482. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24129017M - Please note that historically, the South African Republic opposed the use of Cape Dutch / Afrikaans Language. - there are many more citations for that, please let me know if you think we need to write a paragraph, Then I can give you at least 12 citations from books published between 1880 and 1903. Thanking you kindly Jeppiz - just to fix an error - I meant your edit was NOT NEUTRAL, so Not NPOV, sorry about not adding the "not". - So this is what I wanted to add: If my sentence is not correct, can you please improve it? - The fact is that my edit IS about the Dutch Language, It IS about the history of the Dutch Language - and what I did add was: The African country of South African Republic spoke only Dutch and it was illegal to speak or write any other language under criminal penalty. - Any feedback? Zarpboer (talk) 15:09, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Jeppiz - how about placing the sentence under the section that deals with Africa and history of the Dutch Language? - That is the correct place for it, imho? - this is not personal, please - it also is not a point of view - it is a simple fact of history, which you are repressing - Please think about whether you are acting from a neutral point of view - as I have pointed out before - any feedback from you yet? Zarpboer (talk) 11:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Do you want to change the sentence? Or are you just completely opposed to adding the information? The sentence was: The African country of South African Republic spoke only Dutch and it was illegal to speak or write any other language under criminal penalty. - Please respond? Zarpboer (talk) 11:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposed Changes Removal and Additions - Discussion: Comments Requested
Please accept my intentions as good and neutral and for improving the page and not for the marketing/sales/promotion of any specific view or opinion.

The "Afrikaans" section of this page: I want to remove this completely: The earlier century-long isolation from the rest of the Dutch-speaking world made the Dutch as spoken in Southern Africa evolve into what is now Afrikaans."

Reasons: The Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) attracted many many thousands of Dutch citizens as teachers, administrators, legal, etc. as the only language allowed was original high Dutch, as written and spoken in Holland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Proposal:  The addition of a new section, as it relates to the Dutch Language and the ZAR, simply the acceptable general historic view and expanding it later adding the well documented and researched struggles faced by thousands of high Dutch (not Cape Dutch) speakers to have the Dutch Language declared an official language of the British territory of the Union of South Africa. There are is academic research, respected published reference material and other resources to utilize. In fact some of the present citations may even contain some of the information already. If nobody comments in the next week or two can I assume that it is fine to proceed? Zarpboer (talk) 11:16, 11 September 2014 (UTC)


 * What is the text you propose and on which WP:RS sources do you base your request?Jeppiz (talk) 18:59, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
 * There are two issues, the first is the incorrect or inaccurate sentence, so may I remove that? - We can later replace it with citations to reflect the generally accepted academic view of language development, although it is outside the scope of this page?

The second issue is that which is directly related to this page: The struggle for the Dutch language in the ZAR, for which I may add, there does exist ample acceptable citations as citizens that became involved in the boer wars, did so among other reasons, because their religion, dutch language and culture came under threat. people fought wars and died for the right to speak, write and use the dutch language. This dutch language struggle against the Afrikaner and the British continued well into the new Union of South Africa. We can build this on the talk page for consensus, and do so over a period of some months, if this would be acceptable to other editors? - this would allow plenty time for everyone interested, to assess the citations for any acceptability disputes, to add, contribute and to resolve any POV/NPOV slanting. - Again, there is no agenda here, simply to reflect the events in Africa as they relate to the dutch language using extremely neutral citations, such as THEAL, EYBERS and acceptable general academic research, all as per WP:RS Zarpboer (talk) 08:29, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I asked two questions, would you please answer them
 * What is the text you propose?
 * Which WP:RS sources do you base your request?
 * Zarpboer, I know you're new here. Repeatedly, several users have tried to tell you the same thing, but I'll try again. What you think does not matter. What I think doesn't either. So whatever your opinion about Dutch in South Africa may be, it has no relevance for the article. Only what you can source is of relevance. And that does not taking a source and then providing your own interpretation of the source. This is the most basic principle of Wikipedia and it applies to everybody.Jeppiz (talk) 11:12, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Jeppiz Thank you for pointing out that what we think does not matter. I am similarly aware of WP:SYN, but when discussing improvements on the talk page, it does assist with consensus and improvement of general quality, avoids general disputes, etc. You have previously reverted a simple single sentence edit of mine, simply stating POV, whereas I have added an acceptable source for that neutral and full acceptable edit. You have not reverted that edit, instead pushing your own POV that my edit, is a fringe POV and that your edit in "Afrikaans" already covers my edit - which it patently does not, it is simply your very own POV. Anyway, your actions has reduced me to discussing my edits, on the talk page, in order to avoid edit warring and frankly I am not convinced of your neutrality. Regarding to only answering your two questions, I will formulate the text on this talk page, together with references, as per my previous post. Zarpboer (talk) 11:30, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Map is hard for colour-blind people to understand
The map of the language situation in the Dunkirk district (File:FlemishinDunkirkdistrict.PNG) is difficult for colour-blind people to understand. There are helpful tips on how to make accessible graphics on the page for Category:Articles with images not understandable by color blind users --Frans Fowler (talk) 19:35, 27 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Good point. Sadly I don't have software that allows me to edit the current graphs. Arnoutf (talk) 20:27, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Netherlands etymology
The origin of "Nether" hints to Roman origins here, while Netherlands (toponymy) seems to attribute it relative to Burgundy. Suggest harmonisation. 88.159.78.61 (talk) 16:47, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Mutual Intelligibility between Dutch and German
The current text states "the view of mutual intelligibility between Dutch and German varies" I however do not think the first source can be used to contradict Dutch and German are not mutual intelligible. While the first source merely uses observations and doesn't quote any research, the second one is original research and is preferable. Which one is better to use Gati123 (talk) 13:29, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Rewrite of this article
Hello, in the coming couple of weeks I will try to rewrite large sections of this article. As of now and before, it was quite messy. A lot of information has very little to do with the Dutch language and isn't that relevant here. Also, a lot of the grammar seems to focus on comparing it to German for some reason, even in the article lead. I've already rewritten the lead and the geographical distribution section and will work on this more in the coming days. Wouter Maes (talk) 13:45, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Please if you do, adjust the current statement that standard Dutch only has two grammatical genders. While it allows liberty to use the masculine gender for many (if one takes a conservative approach) feminine words, words with recognizable feminine endings (like -heid, -teit, etc.) are always feminine in the standard language, even though the implications of this are limited. The standard language also allows for conservative usage, hence historically feminine words can be considered feminine by users, and are deemed as such by many users esp. in the South, hence this is also indicative of a three-gender structure. Morgengave (talk) 19:20, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The statement that Dutch has two grammatical genders and three natural genders covers this nearly perfectly. It is simply incorrect to say that Dutch has 3 grammatical genders. Wouter Maes (talk) 12:11, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * No, it does not. The standard language has three genders, though the consequences are limited, but present in referring, and pronouns like der, wier, diens, etc. Morgengave (talk) 14:58, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Dear Wouter, it's always a welcome thing for a fresh mind to take a critical look, and I do not doubt your good intentions. However, as for the lead, I do not believe your edits came down to a general improvement. Contrary to other literature, at Wikipedia the lead is not supposed to be an introduction. Most people only read the first section, and as they come from very different strands, the point is to convey the information in such a way that it is understandable, correct and complete, without entangling ourselves in too much detail, which belongs further down in the article. Improvements are always possible, but do be careful not state anything not covered by the reference that follows it. As for the comparison of the grammar to other languages, it compares it both to German and English, pointing to the respective differences and similarities, elaborating in a more professional fashion on the statement preceeding it, namely that Dutch is very closely related to both languages and sits somewhat in the middle. --Hooiwind (talk) 09:37, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The statement that Dutch is 'in between' German or English is a useless one. To begin with, this article is about the Dutch language, not a comparison between Dutch, English and German. Secondly, the majority of readers of this article will have a non-existing grasp of German, meaning that it is an essentially worthless remark. Thirdly, linguistically speaking it is not at all useful nor true as languages aren't comprised to percentages of neighboring languages. It's linguistics, not legos. Wouter Maes (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The lead I've rewritten is void of such useless statements and gives the general characteristics, distribution of the Dutch language. Wouter Maes (talk) 09:52, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Wouter, relax, no need for strong vocabulary. I've reverted back to the original lead (as it's been for years, not the lead written by you in a jiffy a couple of days ago). The existence of 600 varieties does not belong in the lead, Botswana and Zimbabwe only have very little pockets of Afrikaans-speakers and their mention in the lead on the Dutch language is therefore quite random, "extent" is spelt with an "e", the comment on natural gender and grammatical gender does not belong in the lead either, nor that some southern dialects are more conservative, a word-count is not of much interest, as every language claims to have to largest vocabulary and some languages may be more analytical while others use compound words, and Surinam is usually spelt with an -e at the end in modern literature. As for the comparison between Dutch, English and German, it simply shows the features of the Dutch language and puts them into context; the statement of Dutch being "midway" between English and German is backed up by multiple references and corresponds to the general conception by most people (and the lead is written to that public, while more specific information should be offered further down). The mentioning of the Scandinavian languages as related languages is correct, but makes it a bit crowdy. I've tried to incorporate or retain most of your edits, at times moving them further down the article, so you can't accuse me of not being open to improvements. I would suggest you concentrate your attention at those sections on grammar, vocabulary and dialects that you seem to know quite a bit about. Translating the names of dialects to Dutch (... "Limburgish" (Limburgs)...) is superfluous however, just as the use of bullet points is to be avoided. Please take these comments to heart. --Hooiwind (talk) 11:44, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I do agree though that it would be a good idea to avoid the "in between" phrase; the fact is however that Dutch shares many features with German that German does not share with English, and many with English that English doesn't share with German. Hence the talk of a "midway position". How to wrap this up in three words? --Hooiwind (talk) 11:59, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * A minor spelling mistake in a 4000 word rewrite is not a reason to revert to a previous version which is demonstrably more incorrect, vague and random. The lead as I've written is it, and the information it contains, is based (in terms of structure) on the articles on English, French, Italian and German. If 'your' version of this articles lead has been here for years (which, I've checked, isn't the case) that would be nothing to be proud of as it's a mess in both its content as well as the way it references what it claims.
 * No other language-article I've checked here on Wikipedia compares the subject language to other language to such an extent as this article does. Nor do the languages to which Dutch is compared (English, German) reciprocate these comparison. i.e. in the article on German, there is virtually no reference to Dutch, further strengthening my position that this kind of content is uncommon.
 * If you want to improve the text, then go again, but do not revert my edits to that mess of a previous version. Or, if you do, explain on talk why you think that version is better prior to reverting. Thank you. Wouter Maes (talk) 12:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Just for the record, you're the one bluntly reverting, deleting, starting an edit war and not actually replying to comments, instead using an utterly childish and rude way of communicating. Let me remind you this is a collaborative project... --Hooiwind (talk) 12:59, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe insert edit by edit, rather than changing the whole lot at once, that makes it much easier to integrate both versions into one. A major point of objection for me is that you write that Dutch is "the" official language of Belgium, whereas that country has 3. You only mention the Netherlands in 3rd position, whereas it's the most got the largest Dutch-speaking population. You also deleted any mention of the relative weight of the Dutch-speaking population in any of the mentioned countries... I simply don't understand your insistence on the subject. --Hooiwind (talk) 13:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * My revision was a major overhauling of part of this article. If your "major point of objection" is that I write that Dutch is "the" official language of Belgium, whereas that country has 3, the simply change "the" to "an" and be done with it. Same with the position of the Netherlands within the list of countries were it's spoken. If you prefer size over alphabet, then please, change those things. But do not revert my hard work because of two minor things. Surely you must understand this? Wouter Maes (talk) 15:11, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Wouter, surely you must also understand that if you get reverted, you should come to an agreement before putting it back? What you're doing now is edit warring. CodeCat (talk) 15:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Wouter, you're the one doing the big changes here, so it's up to you to motivate why you find it necessary to not merely edit, but "overhaul" the lead which has existed in more or less its current form since 2010 and also resulted from "hard work" by others. I'm still presuming good faith, but to me your edits come down to this: relevant information is deleted, and replaced by less relevant stuff, thus the whole thing is not getting any shorter or more readable; and also, by the way things are being put forward, the reader is left with inaccurate assumptions. Examples of this include the replacement of the weight of Dutch-speakers in the general population (that is why it currently reads "most of the population of the Netherlands and sixty percent of that of Belgium") by a mere list of countries or territories in random order (Belgium, Suriname, Netherlands; neither alphabetical nor logical), while leaving out the nuance on the Dutch Carribean (where it is an official, but not a common native language—also, the islands are more commonly known under their individual names), adding an overly obvious statement that Dutch is an "immigrant language" in the States, while deleting an estimation of the number of speakers, removing the nuance on Indonesia ("to a lesser extent"), while adding Zimbabwe and Botswana (which are pretty irrelevant), and so on. Futhermore, the statement that Dutch is one of the closest relatives to English and German alike (avoiding having to mention minor languages such as Low German, Scots or Frisian) is replaced by a list of Germanic languages, and ends with the comment that Dutch is (after Frisian) the closest relative of English (leaving the reader to presume it weren't the closest relative of German, which it is). An after all brief list of grammatical features—indeed summing a few up, then saying these are shared with English, then a few others, and saying these are shared with German (now where's the harm in that?)—is being replaced by a quite randomly chosen and frankly too technical claim on grammatical gender (of all things in grammar...), a claim on the existence of 600 dialects and the conservatism of the southern ones (which may be true, but does not "identify" the Dutch language as a whole, and therefore belongs further down the article), and a word count, which is of little added value. What I do think could be of added value, when fitted in properly, is a brief mention of the Dutch Language Union as its regulatory body, its use of compound words in vocabulary, and frequent use of the diminutive, and maybe also a reformulation of "between them"—which from what I understand bothers you a lot—to a better reading phrase, always, of course, backing it up with good quality references. --Hooiwind (talk) 19:54, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Restructuring headings and reducing overlap
I would like to suggest to restructure the article by moving and combining headings in a more logical order. Not only for a better understanding of the article, but mainly to reduce the overlap; A lot is mentioned twice or three times under different sections.

Combining and moving headings:
 * Combining "1. Name" with "10. Popular misconceptions" (10.1, 10.3, 10.5 and 10.6)
 * Combining "2. Classification" (the classification part) with "10. Popular misconceptions" (10.2 and 10.4)
 * Moving "2. Classification" (the dialect part) to "5. Dialects"
 * Combining "3. Geographic distribution" and "9. Dutch as a foreign language"
 * There is also overlap between (the rather technical examples) mentioned in "2. Classification" with "6. Phonology", "7. Grammar" and "8. Vocabulary". I would suggest to mention only some notable examples under "Classification", move some to "Grammar", "Phonology" and "Vocabulary", and maybe omit a few aswel, since they reduce the readability of the article.

Reordering headings: --Watisfictie (talk) 05:27, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Starting of with "Name" and "History"...
 * ...out of which the "Classification" follows..
 * ...and the difficulty some of the "Dialects" pose,
 * leading to the "Geographical Distribution" from Dutch across the language borders in Europe, to the world at large.
 * Finishing of with the phonology, grammar and vocabulary.

Names of languages and dialects
Since I am going to revered the names of the headings, I have moved the discussion between User talk:Watisfictie and User talk:Ogress here:

Mainly for reasons of unity in the headings, I used in the History section Old Frankish as subheading, in line with the subheadings in that section Old Dutch, Middle Dutch etc. Do you have a reason to change this in The Frankish language (including even the article the)? Old Frankish is a very common name for the language. If you do have good reasons, in that case I would suggest to use in all subheadings the article the and the word language after the language in question. But it doesn't have my preference, since it feels redundant: it is pretty obvious that we are dealing with languages/dialects here (and not with the Frankish culture for example). Also, using articles in headings is not very common (for the same reasons of economy).

The same question with regard to the Middle Dutch dialects (article 'the' not used consequently, adding dialect/language after the dialect in question). Watisfictie (talk) 15:27, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


 * The languages are so named on Wikipedia. It's not "Old Frankish", it's Frankish language (because there was no Middle or New/Modern Frankish). I added "the" in that header because tbh it seemed really weird without it, but that's a style point I'm totally willing to adjust if you disagree. Same with the other edits, where they are called "X dialect". The exception is, of course, Limburgish, which is Limburgish language as it is referred to as a language. I also changed a term to "varieties" at one point, I believe, because it was neutral to the question of whether the following were dialects or languages. Ogress 23:43, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Old Frankish is an entry in Wikipedia, and it leads to the same page as Frankish language. Sometimes entries are known by more than one name (the United States for example, or trees and their fruit). This is the case also for Frankish (as the Wikipedia entry of Frankish points out in the first sentence of the lead where all the alternative names for the language are mentioned). This is the reason Wikipedia has a system of redirects. Nevertheless I have no problem dropping the "Old" in Old Frankish, even though it is the same language as Frankish.


 * But I am not in favour of using the formula "X + language" or "X + dialect" in headings or enumerations. Because they should be quickly readable, and in the case of enumerations it's too much repetition of the same word. The context of the subheadings under history, and the enumeration of Middle Dutch dialects is clear enough to understand the meaning. (And in the 5/6th century the different languages (Saxon, Frisian etc) where still mutually intelligible, so language and dialects  in that respect didn't differ anyway. We refer now to them as languages, because they have lead to different languages in later periods).


 * Modern day Limburgish is a language or a dialect depending of one's perspective. The Dutch government recognises it as a minority language. In Belgium however, where the same Limburgish is spoken, it is not recognised as a language and regarded as a dialect of Dutch. That is not to say that the modern day Limburgish dialect/language is one of the most distant dialects/languages from the standard Dutch language. Apart from this, when linguists talk about Middle Dutch, they mean the Hollandic, Brabantic, Flemish and Limburgish dialects. (See also how it is used in the entry Middle Dutch. Watisfictie (talk) 05:44, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Dutch Low Saxon
The Dutch Low Saxon had a tagged sentence, "In other words, this group is Dutch synchronically but not diachronically." I have removed this as it neither makes sense nor is, I suspect, the original intent of the writer, and additionally (and crucially) has no cite support.

It is my suspicion that the reason DLS is considered Dutch is because of either 1. convergence and assimilation under Written Dutch influence or 2. confusion due to its closeness to Dutch due to convergence and assimilation. Either way, linguistically, the sentence is currently nonsensical. Ogress 19:16, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

The map
I have some objections to the map depicting the entire North Rhineland as the home of Dutch dialects. I suppose that in the vicinity of the Niers river some are spoken, but, though some of these Frankish dialects may not be Upper-Franconian, they can't be regarded as Dutch. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 15:02, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

7 de middag
Does "7 de middag" mean 7 AM or 7 PM. I think it's 7 PM. 112.215.64.134 (talk) 02:10, 16 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I have never seen this combination. It would be something like "3 uur 's middags" (literally 3 o clock in the afternoon, which is 3 PM). If you would encounter 7 it would probably 7 's avonds (7 in the evening) or 7 's ochtend (7 in the morning). Arnoutf (talk) 12:32, 16 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I've never seen that one either, but it could also be "7de middag" or "7de middag", meaning "seventh afternoon" (or "seventh noon" in the south). PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:48, 16 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Ok, how about "7 uur's middags"? 7 AM or 7 PM? 111.94.161.176 (talk) 04:34, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * "7 de middag" resembles the common expression 7 uur in de middag. But 7 o clock is not in the afternoon, the middag ends at 6, I would say.--Watisfictie (talk) 08:16, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * 7 uur's middags would be very rarely used (as indeed the afternoon ends at 6, so it would be 7 in the evening). But if 7 s middags would be used it would be definitely afternoon and thus PM. But let's not continue this much further as this is a highly speculative, possibly fully fictitious case that does not feature in the article; and it is not clear where this threat is going to for article improvement. Arnoutf (talk) 10:35, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

My take is very simple: "7 de middag" refers to the seventh hour after noon ("middag") ie 7pm. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.77.61.28 (talk) 19:34, 14 June 2016 (UTC)


 * But middag transliterates to Mid Day (ie Noon) not AFTER noon. So that does not fly. And let's be fair, neither would in English the term 11.59 afternoon work (for 23.59). But again, the issue remains, is the phrase ever used. Otherwise this is all moot. Arnoutf (talk) 19:57, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

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Germanic umlaut does occur in the Netherlandish ("Dutch") language
In spite of what is told here, the Germanic umlaut does also somehow occur in the Netherlandish language and most certainly in Netherlandish dialects. (I do not like the word Dutch, since it is associated with the incorrect geographical name Holland for the Netherlands.) The most obvious example of Germanic umlaut is the plural of 'stad' (town, city), which is 'steden'. In Netherlandish dialects, especially along the German border, the Germanic umlaut used to be even more common, actually like in German: plurals, diminutives as well as the third person singular of strong verbs tend to have an umlauted vowel. Under the influence of the official Netherlandish language the Germanic umlaut is rapidly disappearing. Nevertheless, the plurals of some nouns with the short vowels contain a long vowels instead: bad/baden (bath/baths), pad/paden (path/paths), gat/gaten (hole/holes), hol/holen (hole/holes), schip/schepen (ship/ships). This vowel change phenomenon is actually related to the Germanic umlaut: the long vowels have a slightly umlauted sound compared to the short vowels, so the Germanic umlaut remains dormant in the Netherlandish language. Amand Keultjes (talk) 18:18, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The vowel lengthening has absolutely nothing to do with umlaut. It's caused by open syllable lengthening, which applied in the plural but not in the singular, which caused the alternation. It originally applied to many more words, but those were regularised later.
 * In any case, umlaut definitely occurs in Dutch, as it does in all surviving Germanic languages. However, it only applied to historically short vowels, not vowels which were long/diphthongs in Old Dutch. Thus, there is the unumlauted voelen compared to English feel, German fühlen which have umlaut. steden is a rare example of umlaut in grammatical function remaining in Dutch, in all other cases the umlaut has been undone in the plural if the singular has it. Such levelling has also occurred in other cases, such as gouden which replaced the older gulden to make it agree with goud. CodeCat (talk) 19:15, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090325104245/http://www.knaw.nl/publicaties/pdf/971136.pdf to http://www.knaw.nl/publicaties/pdf/971136.pdf
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/language/about/afrikaans.html
 * Added tag to http://www.statssa.gov.za/Census2011/Products/Census_2011_Key_results.pdf
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110503201606/http://cs.engr.uky.edu/~gstump/periphrasispapers/Progressive.pdf to http://cs.engr.uky.edu/~gstump/periphrasispapers/Progressive.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110429011940/http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/prasa08.pdf to http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/dialectology/papers/prasa08.pdf

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Change of a misleading example
In the subsection on Consonants, the last sentence of the first paragraph had a misleading German example. The t of Brot is the result of the High German sound shift and has nothing to do with final-obstruent devoicing, as proved by the plural ''Brote. Brot has underlying final t''. I have replaced the example by one that does not have this problem, but not being familiar with the conventions involving braces, I haven’t used them. Feel free to change the notation if this is desirable. Polla ta deina (talk) 14:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

letter frequency


This picture is incomplete and misleading: -84.161.33.192 (talk) 06:50, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Which English is considered? Real English (with -re and -ise), US English (with -er and -ize), another type, all types? Obviously US English has z more often than real English.
 * German has more letters, namely ä, ö, ü, ß. Due to technical limitations ä can be replaced by ae etc. But is ä simply misleadingly omitted, is it missleadingly treated as ae, is it incorrectly treated as a?
 * What time is considered? Before ca. 1900 German often used th instead of t. So obviously h was more common before 1900 than after 1900.
 * What's the source? Picture description page only has "Source: Own work", does that mean it's original research?


 * Agree without source this picture is not acceptable. Especially in the context of which English (if it were British English the U frequency seems somewhat low - colour etc), if it is American English the z frequency is impossibly low. Also how do we count diphones (e.g. Dutch has a lot of "double" vowels (ee, ie, ou) where German uses umlauts - and what happens with those? For now I do not think the figure should be in until it is clear what data is used to create it. Arnoutf (talk) 11:09, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Van Dale, headwords
There is a contradiction between this page giving more than 200 000 headwords to the Van Dale and the Van Dale page giving 90 000. --Dominique Meeùs (talk) 04:55, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Germanic dialects map
This map needs to be removed because it peddles the same myths about the Germanic peoples that were circulated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For one, how can you draw such clear borders between supposed ancient "Germanic" dialects if no written record of them exists?! Also, archeological evidence show a different picture all together, with many inhabited areas referred to as "cultures' because they can't be linked with certainty to any specific group of peoples. --E-960 (talk) 10:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Help needed with an ancient dutch book
It's some months now I've been working on the XVII century "Euclides Danicus" book, by Gerog Mohr. For some reasons, I build a new PDF file, 40 text pages + 8 drawing pages. The problem is to do the OCR, since ancient Dutch uses some "strange" characters I don't know which unicode to replace with. Here are some examples:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aldoaldoz/38799385520/


 * The yellow background are related to a char similar to an F (beFtaende, eerFte) which in modern dutch should py replaced by an S;
 * pink background: "ct";
 * green background: the "long S", which is no more used in modern dutch.

I'd like to do the OCR the best way possible, so that the ancient language is preserved at best (actually I don't want to translate it into modern Dutch). So the questions are: which unicode chars should I use? Is there someone can help me, or can tell me someone to ask? Once ready, the file will be uploaded to wiki commons, both pdf and djvu. Thanks in advance! --Aldoaldoz (talk) 10:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

U+0283, this is suposed to work for the long s. You could also try Unicode 383. I hope it works! Falco iron (talk) 11:55, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Diminutives
A (more) helpful account is given on http://wrvzoektochten.be/onewebmedia/Verkleinwoordjes.htm, as well as on https://onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/verkleinvormen-algemene-regels/ (with at least one internal contradiction on 2018:0709, for "leerlingetje", and several confusing or debatable wordings).Redav (talk) 00:02, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Dialect boundaries vs political border
In the article I read: "However, the national border has given way to dialect boundaries coinciding with a political border, because the traditional dialects are strongly influenced by the national standard varieties." "To give way" means: "to yield / collapse / be followed". I suppose the author did not mean the national border yielded to dialect boudndaries.

I suppose the author meant to express that (some) former dialect boundaries have given way to (a) new dialect boundary/ies which run(s) along the national boundary; this would make sense. Can the author confirm this?Redav (talk) 22:24, 8 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I guess they meant, "has given rise". --Lambiam 19:19, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Dialects
How this section is structured is confusing. What is the different between a "dialect group" and a "regional language?" And why is Limburgish listed in both sub-sections? More than that, the map in the Dialects section show Dutch Low Saxon and Limburgish listed as dialects. I realize that there is some debate over this, but from the perspective of the article on the Dutch language, to make this less confusing, what I would do is to simply list them all as "dialects" and then make note of on the items for which those particular dialects are also granted regional language status. To have two subsections and include one in both is confusing from an outsiders perspective in particular. --Criticalthinker (talk) 02:23, 1 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Every regional language consists of a group of dialects. Some groups of dialects have been afforded the status of "regional language"; others have not been so lucky. How linguists group dialects together should, hopefully, be based on linguistic criteria and not be influenced by political expediency. But acquiring the status of "regional language" is a political process, and does not always result in the groupings that make the most linguistic sense. There is an unavoidable amount of arbitrariness and subjectivity in defining dialect boundaries and groupings, just as when partitioning the colour spectrum into main colours (red, orange, yellow, ...) or defining the concept of "earth tone". --Lambiam 19:46, 25 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm less interested in the why (which I understand) than the particular structure of the items in the article. I don't think we need seperate "dialect group" and "regional language" subsections in the "dialect" section.  I'm proposing getting rid of the "regional language" subsection and simply making a note on the "dialect group" which of those has been designated regional languages. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:22, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I should clarify that what I'm taking issue with is Limburgerish being listed in both the dialect group and regional language subsections, which comes across as confusing. Despite what I said above, I'm not sure if there is an easy way to remedy this.  From my personal view, it readily appears that Dutch Low Saxon is, while it has had major influence from Dutch, is in fact another language.  But that isn't my call to make, here.  --Criticalthinker (talk) 01:42, 26 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it has become less confusing after my recent edit. --Lambiam 00:21, 30 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is a bit better. So, Limburgish is clearly a Dutch dialect given regional language status in the Netherlands.  And linguistically, Dutch Low Saxon is a whole other language (though influenced by Dutch on the Dutch side of the border) also recognized as a regional language in the Netherlands. --Criticalthinker (talk) 02:51, 30 September 2019 (UTC)


 * The classification on the second last page of the following page is quite comprehensive: https://www.academia.edu/3130916/De_analyse_van_taalvariatie_in_het_Nederlandse_dialectgebied_methoden_en_resultaten_op_basis_van_lexicon_en_uitspraak. However, it poses several questions. It does not include the German parts of Limburgish and South Guelderish. It has South Guelderish and Brabantian as Centraal zuidelijke dialecten.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384115000315 figures 8 and 9 as well as  https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-dendrogram-derived-from-the-distance-matrix-based-on-unweighted-Manhattan-distance_fig2_2546927 also exist. https://benjamins.com/catalog/avt.22.17spr/fulltext/avt.22.17spr.pdf, figure 5, is a map about syntax.Sarcelles (talk) 20:14, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The other issues concerning my first classification include, that it does not follow the Uerdingen and Benrath Lines, as well that it divides Limburgish. Sarcelles (talk) 12:13, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * There is also the question, whether tonality should be used as definition of Limburgish.Sarcelles (talk) 20:29, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It uses the umbrella term Friesland, which can't be used for this article. Other statistically founded sources have to be taken into account for the purpose of classification, too.Sarcelles (talk) 12:16, 6 March 2020 (UTC)