Re: CHAT: Dutch dictionary recommendations?

En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

>
> Is that somehow in English influence? Does it represent a now-dead
> sound? Is it just a random apostrophe that they shoved in because they
> had access to it and no better use for it? Where all inflexions once
> marked by it and it just fell out of favor?
>
I think it's because most of the words ending in another vowel than e are felt
as borrowings (auto and taxi are two of them, bureau, cadeau - formerly written
buro and kado, but new spelling asked them to be written back in the French
way :)) It's called the rule "Vreemd blijft vreemd": foreign stays foreign) and
are thus applied a plural according to rules that may not be the original ones
(indeed, the French plural of "bureau" is "bureaux" without change of
pronunciation, while the Dutch plural is pronounced "bureau's"). It's maybe a
way to indicate a native Dutch ending added to an originally foreign word (It's
used also with the diminutive ending -je. A small car is an "auto'tje" while a
small cow is a "koetje". It's also valid for words ending in -y - baby ->
baby's - and -é - cliché -> cliché's - which are always of foreign origin
anyway).

>
> How can you have optionally one or the other?
Exactly as I said. Both are allowed and people use both.

 Is it a dialectal
> difference?
No.

 a class-based/social difference (like English /IN/ vs
> /@n/)?
No.

> Is one preferred in some words and the other in others?
Depends on the word. Some have preferences, others live happily with both. In
all cases both can be found with different proportions.

 Does context
> make one seem more likely than the other?
>
They are chosen according to what sounds better in context, but the same people
often use both, and there's no social difference that I know of. It only
depends on the word. Note for instance that "aardappel" as
indifferently "aardappels" and "aardappelen" (which can be used by the same
people at different moments in the same conversation, I heard that more than
once), but "appel" (apple) seem to have only "appels" as possible plural (just
checked on Internet, and it finds around 5000 "appelen", but 24000 "appels".
But it also finds 35000 "aardappelen" but 12000 "aardappels". A quick check at
the different sites cannot find any difference in dialect or anything - it even
find 3000 sites where both "aardappels" and "aardappelen" can be found on the
same page, and 700 where you find both "appels" and "appelen" on the same page,
in all cases the same person wrote the two different forms -). The choice is
really indifferent and people seem happy enough to switch if they feel like it
(maybe for rhythm).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.