Talk:Dutch language

Dialect continuum doesn't mean historical minority

"while historical minorities remain in parts of France and Germany, and to a lesser extent, in Indonesia, ..."(first paragraph). The existence of a dialect continuum (footnote 1) doesn't mean that there's a "historical minority" in the neighbouring German region. The Low Franconian and Low Saxon dialects spoken in the adjacent parts of Germany are quite close to Dutch and have often been regarded as "Dutch dialects", but the regions have never been part of the Netherlands (with the exception of few villages). Germany isn't mentioned in the "Geographical Distribution" section at all; otherwise, every German region where a potential "Dutch" dialect is or has been spoken would have to be listed.Johnny2323 (talk) 03:41, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Dutch 'mother tongue' stat

The 'trots op het moedertaal' source, cited from 3 locations in the article, is not suitable for quoting here. It says that 96% *of survey respondents* say that Dutch is their mother tongue. Did they survey only Dutch speakers? It doesn't actually say one way or the other but my suspicion is yes.

Have some original research:

• Amsterdam: 800,000 people, around 40% likely to be non-native speakers based on nationality stats.
• The Hague: 500,000 people, around 40% non-native.
• Frisian languages: 'Most Frisian speakers live in the Netherlands, primarily in the province of Friesland, since 1997 officially using its West Frisian name of Fryslân, where the number of native speakers is about 350,000.'

That, right there, is more than 5% of the population being non-native speakers, and I've not remotely covered the whole population.--Froggienation (talk) 14:15, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree that 96% seems too high, but your reasoning is not correct either. You forget bilinguals, for example those 350'000 native speakers are almost all native Dutch speakers too. As for immigrants in the big cities: many of them are grown up in Netherlands, they speak native Dutch as well as the native language of their parents.Nico (talk) 18:58, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

realizations of /t/ + /j/ and of /k/ + /j/ as parts of the Dutch consonant system

Now that ʔ and ɡ feature in the table, and ʃ is mentioned as being a frequent realization of /s/ + /j/ sequences, I propose to add frequent realizations of /t/ + /j/ and /k/ + /j/ to the table showing parts of the Dutch consonant system as well. I am in doubt though about what IPA signs ought to be used. Maybe ȶ or ʨ, and c, respectively?Redav (talk) 13:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The purpose of the table is to show the phonology of the language. I don't think allophonic distinctions belong there. I think the various allophones that are already in the table should be removed. CodeCat (talk) 17:48, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Word order: interrogative

I think the word order of the interrogative main clause should be mentioned, as it (at least in its simplest form) constitutes an exception to both the SOV and V2 word orders as described. If this view is supported I could edit this myself but I'll gladly leave it to the original editor of 'Word order'; or, indeed, to anyone else who feels the need. Collideascope (talk) 18:07, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

History: remove 'Vorstermansbijbel'

I propose to remove the citation from the Vorstermansbijbel:

'want si waren onder veel teghen mi' means 'because they were amongst many against me'.

This is a different meaning from all other citations (which all read, essentially, 'because amongst many, he was with me'). Even if the Vorsterman translation (from the Vulgata) would in any way be arguably correct, it distracts from the linguistic comparison that is being made here.

Also, it looks like the Vorsterman citation has been inserted later and rather willy-nilly, without any consideration of context, as it spoils the flow of the surrounding text and obscures the point it is trying to make. Collideascope (talk) 19:56, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Writing system: diacritical marks

I move to strike the following passage:

'The characters 'Ç', 'ç', 'Ñ' or 'ñ' can also be found in the Dutch language but the words which contain one of these characters are loanwords too and these words are inherited from Spain and Portugal. They don't occur very often.'

...because 1) its message is implied by the previous sentence: 'Other diacritical marks such as the circumflex only occur in a few words, most of them loanwords from French', which rather says it all; 2) its 'wording' is rather clumsy ('words... loanwords... words'; 'inherited from Spain and Portugal' instead of 'borrowed from Portuguese and Spanish, respectively'); 3) it contains errors: there are certainly no loanwords in Dutch from Portuguese which contain capital Ç (in Portuguese itself, Ç and ç never occur word-initially); in the same vein, I am quite sure there are no loanwords in Dutch from Spanish containing Ñ (or beginning with ñ). The only use for capitals Ç and Ñ is in all-capital (e.g. newspaper) expression (CURAÇAO, EL NIÑO), which is a world-wide shouting rather than Dutch writing system. Collideascope (talk) 19:05, 2 August 2013 (UTC)