Talk:Dutch orthography

Orthography v spelling

Throughout this article the word "spelling" has been changed to "orthography". I've no problem with that, because "orthography" is a nicer word anyway, but is it always what we mean? Remember: orthography = spelling + punctuation. In SOME places, like when we're talking about phoneme:grapheme correspondences, isn't "spelling" what we want to say? At any rate, changing the name of the article only makes sense if punctuation is to be discussed here too. --Doric Loon 15:08, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps I was a little hasty in renaming. I thought it was more consistent with similar pages for other languages, but I had not seen the English one yet. Anyway, there is a redirect as well. But still I think it is an improvement. "Spelling" is related to single words. In my view when explaining reasons for the spelling, the system behind it, and relations between words, "orthography" is a better word. −Woodstone 19:49, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

OK --Doric Loon 05:12, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have rephrased the part on long/short vowels keeping both our viewpoints in. I also added some examples to show why it is really complex for non-natives. −Woodstone 20:42, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

Yeh, that seems a reasonable solution. I still can't see that the phrase "length is not phonemic" is meaningful. If two sounds are phonemes, meaning is carried by all the phonetic distinctions between them. To say that some of those distinctions are phonemic and others not seems arbitrary. But at the end of the day, that is not a problem that gives me sleepless nights. The important thing for me was that length remains as one way of looking at the problem, because without it, cross-language comparisons and especially the historical perspective are seriously hindered. We have no idea how the phonemes of PIE were realised phonetically, but we do know that quantitative distinctions are one of the keys to understanding the whole language family. Shalom, --Doric Loon 19:57, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Reform

The last para of the reform section is:

Starting from 9 October there was a new version of the green book, with some reformed rules, not everybody was happy with it.

It asks more questions than it answers: 9 October what year? (I'd assume 2005 based on when it was added, but seek confirmation.) What changes were made? Why are people unhappy with them? If someone knows the details, could they please elaborate on them? —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 03:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I reformed the sentence and added the year, and Woodstone has added some more information on what the changes actually were. FoekeNoppert 19:50, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

He emphasized the need for spelling to relate to pronunciation, therefore Mensch (person/human) and Nederlandsch ought to become mens and Nederlands, Russisch (Russian) he thought should be spelt Russies and moeilijk (difficult) moeilik.

It is interesting to note that these reformed spellings were adopted when the Afrikaans language was given a standardised spelling. Russian is Russies and no word ends in sch or contains that combination of letters. Difficult is moeilik and all -ijk spellings have become -ik. Also it should be noticed that latinate words have been germanised much more aggressively, for example konsekwent rather than consequent and aksie rather than actie. Booshank 15:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The reform of '46/'47 was a bit more sweeping than the article suggests because it did away with the rather artificial (at that point) -n of the masculin definite article in the accusative case thereby essentially ending the case system as well as the masc/fem gender distinction. Shouldn't there be at least some mention of that? nl:wikt:Gebruiker:Jcwf

Missing section?

We have a historical section that discusses Dutch spelling in the Middle Ages up to 1500 -- and another that discusses spelling reforms starting in 1804. What about the period 1500-1804, obviously a very notable one for the Netherlands? Shouldn't something at least be said about what Dutch spelling looked like before the 1804 reforms? RandomCritic 21:33, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Oe is not u

In the section Regularity, it is stated that oe is pronounced as u. Now I may not be a linguist, but dutch is my native language. And oe is not pronounced as u, they are quite different. This should be changed. -- Pepve 15:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

What is meant is that the sound represented by oe in boek is written as /u/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (see the section on vowels there, and this, with examples. Iblardi 15:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I misread that, I feel embarrassed now. Sorry. -- Pepve 19:41, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

O well, we all make silly mistakes from time to time, this user included. No need for embarrassment. Iblardi 19:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

short u

According to for example Vandale (the most popular dictionary), the short u is transcribed [Y], not [œ]. In the Standard language, I've never heard u pronounced like a short (undiphtongized) ui ([œ:]). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grytolle (talk • contribs) 19:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Logical?

"Dutch orthography has the reputation of being particularly logical. For the foreign learner it is relatively easy as, once one knows the system, one can almost always deduce pronunciation from spelling, if proper names and foreign loan-words are discounted." Sorry, folks, but that's a little silly. Spanish is particularly logical. Portuguese, even, is particularly logical. Dutch? No. I think another word is necessary. InFairness (talk) 22:07, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

"Fairly logical" is subjective, and vague in this place. Once you know the system and ignore loan-words and proper nouns you're as regular as English, and if you're irregular in your core vocabulary you no longer function as an alphabet. I've tagged this with {{clarify-section}}, perhaps there's a better choice. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 08:20, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the "fairly logical" was looking at it from an English perspective? But yeah, as a Dutchman I would agree that when you look at it from the perspective of a Spaniard or a Portuguese, the spelling system seems insane. There are letters that influence how other letters are pronounced (although Romance languages often have this problem as well, particularly with the c) and some sounds have multiple spellings, like au/ou and ei/ij. Compare it to Latin and weep. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 02:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

The system might be a bit more complex then in Spanish or Portuguese. But one A4 sheet paper is still enough to explain the spelling to pronunciation system for 99% of the words. The only difficulties are loan words (like in any language) and few composed words (such as bom-melding<->bommel-ding). I have to agree though that pronunciation to spelling is much more complicated and irregular.Nico (talk) 11:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

99% is a bit of an overestimate. The unstressed e introduces a lot of ambiguity. Without knowing the words beforehand there is no way to know that vergaderen is pronounced like vergadurren, not vergadeeren and gezellig is guzzellig not geezellig. In fact, even for words without an e, without knowing where the stress lies you cannot pronounce words correctly. In Spanish and Portuguese stress can always be derived from the spelling. Also you often need to know how to decompose words in syllables (kli-maat but klim-op). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.247.68 (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation of v

Is it accurate when the article describes the pronunciation of v as IPA [v]? I thought it was more like [f], as in German? /129.142.71.166 (talk) 11:14, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

In some dialects v leans very close to f, but in standard Dutch /f/ and /v/ are distinct phonemes, as shown by the minimal pair vee /veː/ (cattle) and fee /feː/ (fairy). −Woodstone (talk) 16:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I have to disagree. As a native speaker, I have always pronounced the v in Anlaut as an f (i.e. /feː/ for both fee and vee), but from some grammar books I understand that this should rightfully be regarded a provincialism, albeit a well-accepted one. Yet, if you want to be on the safe side, you should probably not pronounce initial v as in this sample, because it will easily be confounded with Dutch w, as in wee, which is perceived to be distinctly different from fee and vee by Dutch ears, much more so than fee and vee from each other. Instead you should keep as close to f as possible. (For comparison, you could listen to this speech by Queen Beatrix, in which -to my ears at least- initial v sounds indistinguishable from initial f.) Iblardi (talk) 17:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

It is part of a dialect/accent. Initial devoicing is found in a lot of dialects/accents around the Amsterdam/North Holland area. It seems to be creeping into other dialects/accents as well. Most likely due to media influences, where initial devoicing seems prevalent. What also might occur is that the initial onset to voicing is lengthened, thus giving the impression it is unvoiced. However, in standard Dutch, they are distinct phonemes. Furthermore, in some dialects/accents initial devoicing can be frowned upon.

The reason why the difference between <w> and <v> is more noticeable than the difference in <f> and <v> is probably due to a difference in articulation. The <f> and <v> are both labiodental fricatives, where the only difference is voicing. The <w> is a labiodental approximant (in Dutch at least). And do not always trust your ears when it comes to phonetic sounds, what you hear is not always what is being said. The brain seems to interpret sounds according to your own phonetic library. Hence, for native English speakers, the Dutch digraph <ui> and <ou> can sound the same; whilst for native Dutch speakers they differ considerably.Breiz (talk) 19:48, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I have lived in South Holland and North Drenthe and at least in those two areas the v and f are distinct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 02:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, be that as it may, several sources indicate that devoicing of /v/ is very common in contemporary speech, and that if there is a regional distinction to be made, it would primarily be one of northern vs. southern speakers:

"For most Dutch speakers, there is (particularly initially) no consistent opposition of /f/ and /f/ in connected speech."[1];

"In Present Day Northern Standard Dutch (ie after 1950) a number of characteristic novelties appear: a very distinct devoicing of /v/ and /z/ in word initial position"[2];

"Dutch /w/ is a labio-dental and therefore resembles English /v/ rather closely. Also, Dutch /v/ is very often devoiced and therefore identical to /f/."[3];

"Dutch v is pronounced somewhere between English v and ƒ and is a sound that can cause the English speaker some difficulty. North of the rivers, however, initial v has been largely devoiced and can be safely pronounced as an ƒ;"[4];

"Many speakers of Standard Dutch, apart from those from the Southern part of the Netherlands, neutralize the voiced and voiceless distinction for labiodental fricatives (as for all fricatives) word-initially, see [2] p.74." [5];

"Gewoonlijk wordt de verstemlozing van v, z en ɣ (vooral aan het begin van een woord) toegeschreven aan het Nederlands van Amsterdammers, inmiddels is dat proces echter bijna in het gehele noorden van het Nederlandse taalgebied aan te treffen. Bij Vlaamse sprekers van het Nederlands is de kans waarschijnlijk nog het grootst dat ze een consequent onderscheid maken tussen stemloze en stemhebbende fricatieven: in het Vlaams Nederlands is het verschil tussen fel en vel vaak nog duidelijk te horen; ook wordt soep met een andere beginklank gesproken dan zoen. Ook voor het Vlaams Nederlands werd echter een aanzet tot verstemlozing vastgesteld (vgl. Van der Velde, Gerritsen/Van Hout, 1995)".[6]

Iblardi (talk) 16:51, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

ʊ

The article uses ʊ but Wikipedia's article on ʊ is crappy.

And it suggests that ʊ is the Latin Upsilon, which suggests a completely different sound than what it must have to be appropriate here. (But I think the assertion that ʊ is the Latin Upsilon may be wrong.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 02:32, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

If File:IPA chart 2005 png.svg is right, then the article is wrong. the oo in ‘koor’ is much closer to a long version of the o in ‘kok’ than to ‘kook’. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 02:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I pronounce it as [kʊəʁ] myself, not as [kɔːʁ], it sounds very different to me from the vowel in English core. CodeCat (talk) 12:17, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I pronouce it with ɔː as do most people I know. I live in Leiden. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard your ʊə pronunciation, at least not in general non-dialectical Dutch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 22:35, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Marechaussee

How would the Dutch word marechaussee (borrowed from French and keeping its French spelling) be spelled if it were spelled according to native Dutch spelling conventions? mareesjossee? Hope there are Dutch speakers around. Contact Basemetal here 00:54, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I think maresjosee or maresjossee would come close. Phonemically it's /ˌmaːrəʃoːˈseː/ but long vowels are often allophonically shortened when unstressed, especially in the syllable right before the stressed one. CodeCat (talk) 01:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Bedankt voor je hulp, vriend. Does 'sj' count as a double letter or as a single letter? Or, to say the same thing, can 'sj' be doubled to 'ssj' or it never needs to be? For example if I wanted to render in Dutch spelling the female name [ˈmaːʃaː] would it have to be Masja or Maasja? Or, again to say the same thing, if the name was [ˈmɑʃaː] would it have to be spelled Massja or Masja? Contact Basemetal here 02:25, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

The written form is "Masja" is broken down as mas (closed syllable, short vowel) + ja (open syllable, long vowel), analogous to jasje or mastje (for the first syllable, ignoring the second). "Maasja" would be pronounced as haasje, with long a. Iblardi (talk) 06:56, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

That 'sj' is to be considered a double consonant for the purpose of Dutch orthography even though it represents the simple sound [ʃ] should be mentioned in the article. As far as I can tell it isn't. How about 'ch'. Is it a double consonant for the purpose of Dutch orthography even though it also represents the simple sound [x]? If yes, that also should be mentioned in the article and I don't think it is. Finally as far as I know 'oe' is always long both in pronunciation and from the point of view of the spelling rules. But the article doesn't mention that fact and even gives its pronunciation as being both long [uː] and short [u]. Can someone give an example of a Dutch word where 'oe' is pronounced short? Contact Basemetal here 10:46, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

"sj" isn't always a single sound. It can represent both the phoneme /ʃ/ and the sequence /sj/. These two merge for many speakers, but certainly not all of them. Since words with /(t)ʃ/ are all loanwords, they tend to not follow the orthographic rules very strictly. macho for example often has a long /aː/ (although short /ɑ/ also occurs; maybe a spelling pronunciation?).

/x/ acts phonologically as a double consonant because of historical "accident". It was originally an allophone of /h/ that occurred before another consonant (which would therefore always create a closed syllable) or when geminated between vowels during the West Germanic gemination. So originally it was [h] initially and between vowels, [x] before a consonant or word-finally, and [xː] when geminated between vowels. [h] was then lost between vowels in Old Dutch, and in Middle Dutch all consonants were degeminated, leaving [x] as a separate sound. But because it was originally long, it prevented lengthening of vowels in open syllables. That's why lachen has a short vowel; it was still /laxːən/ in early Middle Dutch when the lengthening took place.

As for /u/, its length is explained more at Dutch phonology. It's normally short [u], but allophonically lengthened or diphthongised before /r/. There's also a true /uː/ phoneme, but that occurs only in recent loanwords like cruise (which is distinct from kroes). CodeCat (talk) 15:02, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, ch is also considered making the preceding syllable closed. As a matter of fact ng as well. The length of Dutch vowels is not an independent property. It is combined with a shift of quality /ɑ/-/aː/, /ɛ/-/eː/, /ɪ/-/iː/, /ɔ/-/oː/, for /u/, /y/, and /ʏ/ there is no such paring. The actual pronounced length depends on the closing consonant. Before /p,t,k/ short, before /m,n,ng/ longer, before /r, l, w/ still longer. So moet would have a short /u/ and moer a long one. −Woodstone (talk) 13:57, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

That's not quite accurate. /ɑ/ is the "short a" phoneme, but there is also an [a] that results from shortening /aː/ in unstressed (typically pre-tonic) syllables, although this is allophonic. The other long vowels have similar shortened allophones. Many speakers tend to merge these shortened allophones with the regular short vowels, but not all of them do. For plateau, you can hear both the merged [plɑˈtoː] and the unmerged [plaˈtoː].

Also, there aren't always strict pairings. Aside from cruise mentioned above, there's also crème with /ɛː/, zone with /ɔː/, distinct from both /eː/, /oː/ and /ɛ/, /ɔ/. /ɪ/-/iː/ is also not a valid pairing, even if they are often mistaken as such, because they have widely different origins and never alternate (/ɪ/ actually alternates with /eː/, like in schip ~ schepen, weten ~ wisten and some others). /i/, /u/ and /y/ are really parallel to each other and share similar properties with respect to length and allophones. The article Dutch phonology explains this better. CodeCat (talk) 15:02, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Better example?

Double Vowels and Consonants — Instead of 'Luuk', how about 'huur' (hire) and 'huurde' (hired)? SP1R1TM4N (talk) 19:21, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Why is it a better example? CodeCat (talk) 19:42, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Confusing example

• The letter immediately following a word-initial apostrophe is never capitalized: "'s Avonds is zij nooit thuis." (She is never at home in the evening.)

Why is Avonds capitalized, and how is this an example of the rule that such words are "never capitalized"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:26, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

The letter immediatley following the apostrophe is the 's', which is clearly not capitalized. The 'A' is capitalized instead, serving as the starting letter of the sentence (though it strictly is not). Should the sentence be phrased 'Zij is 's avonds nooit thuis' (which has the exact same meaning), the 'a' is not capitalized either. Richard 08:25, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

ij digraph versus separate letters

Stressed ij

The single digraph character ij is deprecated by Unicode; there is no technical or notional difference between the combined character and the separate letters i and j. Dutch treats i and j as separate letters, and they are always typed that way. So I don't think that such a distinction should be made in the picture that shows variants of ij and y. The joining of the i and j is a font issue, and is not a separate character. CodeCat (talk) 19:59, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

'Dutch treats i and j as separate letters' might be simplified; among other things, capitalization (IJssel) and stressmarks come to mind. Furthermore, Dutch is not always typed - there is such a thing as writing. In writing, ij is often written as one symbol, even if the rest of the letters are not joined. Even though the Unicode character is deprecated and in computers, 'ij' is the coding of choice, it remains a (one) digraph and not two letters. Richard 08:46, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't know enough to have an opinion on whether "ij" should be listed as its own letter, but I think the name for "y" and "ij" be different in the alphabet. The wikipedia article on the "ij" digraph mentions that it is often called "Griekse ij". I think either the name for "y" should be changed or the article should mention something about how and why the names of "y" and "ij" are the same. As it is now, it looks like a typo, with two consecutive letters having the exact same name. Emmy571 (talk) 20:59, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "e"

We are told "The letter E is the most frequently used letter in the Dutch alphabet, usually representing a schwa sound". It may well represent a schwa sound more often than anything else, but that isn't the same thing as "usually". Take the following sentences, from the Dutch version of this article: "Hoewel de vastgelegde spelling in zowel Nederland als Vlaanderen alleen verplicht is voor overheid en onderwijs, geven veel taalgebruikers er de voorkeur aan haar eveneens te volgen. De richtlijn die hierbij in de regel als uitgangspunt wordt genomen is de Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, beter bekend als het Groene Boekje." In the quoted sentences the letter "e" occurs a total of 53 times: 7 times as part of a diphthong such as "oe", "ie" or "eu", 8 times as a short, open sound similar to "e" in English "bed", 9 times as a long, closed sound similar to "ay" in English "say", and 29 times as a "schwa" (the second vowel in English "father") - just under 55% of the total. Even if we disregard the diphthongs (in which the letter "e" is not pronounced separately), we get a total of 46 times, of which 29 are a "schwa" - just over 63% of the total. Certainly the most common sound in both cases, but "usually" suggests a much clearer majority - not just something between half and two-thirds, but something more like 80 or 90%. Question: is it even relevant in this context to mention how often Dutch "e" represents a schwa sound? 213.127.210.95 (talk) 17:16, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Not at all. That remark is (was, as I've just removed it) dubious at best. Richard 12:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Diacritics in loanwords

‘Hè’ is an erfwoord. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 22:30, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

• Corrected. Burzuchius (talk) 16:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Order of IJ and Y

IJ comes before Y, not after 188.206.74.47 (talk) 18:07, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Strange, I'd thought it came after I and J! Looking around, any source for the alphabet that I find that does list them as separate letters does put IJ before Y, so, as you've requested, I changed the order. Largoplazo (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

How special are ⟨v⟩ and ⟨z⟩ really?

The current article text contains:

”⟨v⟩ and ⟨z⟩ are somewhat special:

• They are permitted only at the start of a syllable in native words, not at the end.
• For historic reasons, they are never preceded by a short/lax vowel and so never occur doubled.”

The second statement seems accurate provided the restriction to native words is extended to it. Otherwise, there are such NL words as:

• onthiv - onthivven
• davvenen
• savvy
• blizzard
• fez - fezzen
• quiz - quizzen
• buzz - buzzen
• dizzy
• fuzzy
• jacuzzi
• jazz - jazzy
• mazzel
• nozzle
• puzzel
• pizzly
• razzia
• saz - sazzen

as confirmed by www.woordenlijst.org. All of them are preceded by a lax vowel and have a voiced pronunciation of ⟨vv⟩ and ⟨zz⟩, except in any varieties that generally devoice written <v> and/or <z> when pronounced.

That they represent underlyingly voiced phonemes is demonstrated at least for the verbs, whose past tense forms read:

• onthivde(n) [rather than onthivte(n)]
• buzzde(n) [rather than buzzte(n)]

showing that the past tense morpheme “-de(n)” aligns with the underlying voicedness, as it does in e.g.:

• laven - laafde(n)
• razen - raasde(n)

even if the current standard orthography requires changing ⟨v⟩ to ⟨f⟩ and ⟨z⟩ and ⟨s⟩.

One might wonder if the article could do with an update with respect to the supposed specialness of ⟨v⟩ and ⟨z⟩.Redav (talk) 15:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

• Corrected. Burzuchius (talk) 16:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)