Re: NATLANG: Dutch (jara: Has anyone made a real conlang?)

 --- Herman Miller skrzypszy:

> Dank! Helaas, het meeste van wat ik weet zijn dingen zoals "steek de fakkel
> aan en ga de deur door". (Those separable prefixes can be tricky!)
:)) Waar heb je DIE zin vandaan? Is dit soms the "Ocarina of Time"?

> Hmm... I wouldn't have thought to use "wanneer". I guess you _could_ use
> "when" in English in situations like this, but it's not the first word that
> comes to mind. I'll have to watch out for this word.
Oh well, it was not a real error. These things are hard to explain, since they
are a mostly a matter of idiom. Anyway, whether you write "als" or "wanneer",
you will be perfectly understandable.

> I guess that's the downside of knowing a little German; I need to unlearn a
> few things.
Yes, that's the trouble if you start with German. My fiancée, who was born in
Ukraine, first spent a few years in Germany before she came to the Netherlands.
Although her Dutch at the moment is really much much better than her German, it
is still full of germanisms.

Same thing applies here, BTW: those germanisms are not exactly big mistakes.
They won't disrupt your understandability. It's just a thing that we would say
differently, that's all.

> The hazards of using a dictionary. I didn't know how to say "at least", so
> I looked it up. Both "tenminste" and "minstens" were glossed "at least",
> without further explanation. So I chose the one that sounded more familiar.
That's understandable. Such dictionaries serve their purpose well when you are
reading a Dutch text, but they are definitely not suited for writing. The only
existing Polish-Dutch/Dutch-Polish dictionary is exactly like that.

> What I should have done is look it up in the Ocarina of Time walkthrough to
> get a better context!
No idea what that is. In general, it helps to read a lot.

> >BTW a possibly better choice would have been "althans" instead of
> "tenminste".
>
> And that one's also glossed "at least", with no clarification.
To simplify it a bit:
"althans" = "tenminste"
"minstens" = "ten minste"

In most cases "althans" and "tenminste" are mutually exchangeable synonyms.
Then, it is really a matter of taste. Let's say that "althans" sounds slightly
more educated than "tenminste", but that's all. There are definitely cases when
one word is definitely preferable over the other (maybe there are even cases
when one of them is impossible), but for the time being, you shouldn't worry
about such subtleties.

Here are some examples:
"De rit van Amsterdam naar Düsseldorf duurt minstens twee uur."
"De rit van Amsterdam naar Düsseldorf duurt ten minste twee uur."
"Jantje heeft een peer gestolen bij de groentenboer. Dat beweert die kerel
tenminste."
"Jantje heeft ook nog een handvol druiven gestolen. Althans, dat vermoed ik."

But as I wrote earlier, I dare to say that a majority of the Dutch are not
aware of the different spelling; they always write "tenminste", even when they
mean "ten minste". Same thing with "tenslotte" vs. "ten slotte".

> Wouldn't it be nice if dictionaries had sample sentences for each word?
Ha, that would be a good idea! I should think about that when I finally decide
to convert my Wenedyk Access database into a document.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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