Introduction
Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands and is the country’s national language. Besides the Netherlands, the language is spoken in Belgium, and it is called Flemish. The language has evolved from the early medieval ages, but its structure has remained intact as its fundamental principles remain unchanged. This paper describes the Dutch language and its structure for easier learning, especially for people from other backgrounds.
The Dutch language contains vowels and consonants, which are easy to understand, courtesy of its close relationship with the English language. Although the language shares features with German and English, it has special phonetics, making it a unique language. The language’s unique features can easily be elaborated by analyzing syntax, morphology, phonology, pragmatics, and semantics.
Language Status and Characteristics
Dutch is one of the fastest-growing languages globally, spoken in several countries. The Dutch language is similar to the English language in terms of the vowel and consonant features, making it challenging to teach (Kormos, 2020: 129-149). However, one of the most distinguishing features of the language is its diphthongs and vowels, which are structured to make it appealing and easy to learn and practice.
The wide range of vowels makes it easy to combine words and use any form of connotation for learning. As a result of its similarity to the English language, Dutch’s popularity is increasing as more people are enrolling due to the language’s ability to form instructional programs (Kormos, 2020: 129-143). The language constantly gains popularity because of the similarities in syntax to English.
Linguistic Features
Linguistic features are specialized categories that describe a language based on word choice, pronunciation, and sentence formation. The three features must be incorporated with etiquette to enhance acceptable and ethical communication. Both semantics and morphology in the Dutch language play a critical role in forming a sentence structure (Hendrikx et al., 2019: 63-103). It is imperative to note that understanding the unique linguistic features is the prerequisite for learning a new language. Linguistic teachers, therefore, leverage special features to ensure that learners understand the language and use it effectively by incorporating pragmatics.
Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics is the scientific study of the classification of sounds and their usage in a sentence. Phonology, conversely, is the comparative analysis of how speech sounds are related to form the fundamentals of language. The formation of L2 words in the Dutch language can be easily learned through television because their phonetics are easy to understand due to their similarity with the English language (Puimège & Peters, 2019: 424-438). The language is known to have long vowels, which are often combined to produce understandable language patterns.
Some contradictions with English are that the consonant j in Dutch is pronounced as y in English, while the v sound in Dutch is pronounced as the sound f in English. Dutch phonology offers unique attributes for the stress levels placed in syllables to differentiate the sounds from the others (Altinkamis & Simon, 2020: 931-951). It is important to note that although there are different dialects in Dutch, basic phonology rules govern all the combinations of parts of speech to form words. Some special rules in phonology include stress, vowel length, consonant clusters, diphthongs, and rhotic consonants.
Stress is present in almost all the first letters of words in the Dutch language, except for compound and loanwords. For example, television is a compound word, and the stress is on the second syllable instead of the first, as with common words in the language. The language further has diphthongs that control the maximum number of two vowel sounds that should be considered to form a single syllable. Some of the common diphthongs that are used in the Dutch language include [ei], used in the word [reis], which is pronounced as trip in English (Dielemans & Coppen, 2020: 182-206). Further, the sounds [ui] and [ou], which are used in [huis] and [goud], mean house and gold, respectively, in English.
The Dutch language uses unique rhotic consonants when the sound [r] is involved. The voiced uvular trill [ʀ] and fricative [ʁ] are the most common in the language. In the context of consonant clusters, the Dutch language allows complex clusters to be used at the start and end of the given words. When using the word school, the Dutch phonology allows the [sk] sounds at the beginning of the word [sko:] to be stressed.
Morphosyntax
Morphemes are minor units in a language that carry meaning and enable people to communicate with one another. Form, meaning, and recognition are the main parameters that give the Dutch language a special syntax that makes it easier to understand (Puimège & Peters, 2019: 424-438). An understanding of the morphosyntax is therefore paramount for a person to have a fundamental understanding of the words and their meaning. The Dutch morphosyntax may be analyzed through grammatical relationships, sentence structure, word order, derivational morphology, and inflectional morphology.
Dutch grammatical rules agree with both pronouns and numbers to show meaning. The sentence [Je loopt naar huis] means “you are walking home” in English. The sentence structure shows that [you] and [walking] agree between the pronoun and the action. In using phrases, the Dutch language creates an agreement between a verb and a noun to make the message more transparent (Altinkamis & Simon, 2020: 931-951). The sentence [Ik reis naar de gemeente] means “I am traveling to the township” in English and draws the relationship between the noun phrase and the verb.
Learners with specific learning difficulties are given special consideration in Dutch, allowing them to construct inclusive sentences in the discourse (Kormos, 2020: 129-143). The simplified Dutch sentence formation follows a basic Subject-Verb-Object structure where the first part of the subject, the second is the verb, and the last part is the object. An example of a sentence is [Mercy is een boek aan het lezen], which means “Mercy is reading a book”, and the structure is given in the S-V-O. Learners intending to construct sentences in Dutch must understand and use the order to make the sentences understandable.
Derivational morphology creates new words by adding prefixes and suffixes to an existing word. An example of a derived word is from read to a reader, [lezen] to [lezer]. One can, therefore, use existing words to formulate new words by adding the relevant suffix or prefix. Besides deriving new words, inflectional morphology converts words from singular to plural (Dielemans & Coppen, 2020; 182-206). For example, the plural of a word may be developed by adding the suffix [s] in a word; for example, [hond], which means dog in English, is converted into a plural by adding a [en] to [honden], which means dogs.
Pragmatics
Language pragmatics considers the social and cultural context to ensure that the language used and the sentences created are acceptable to the culture. The Dutch language has robust pragmatics, ensuring that speakers follow it for cohesion (Altinkamis & Simon, 2020: 931-951). The language enhances politeness and encourages people to use polite language. For example, if a person wants to use a book that belongs to someone else, the asking should employ the correct pragmatics.
For example, [Mag ik alstublieft uw boek lenen] shows that the person borrowing the book is polite and requests it from the owner. The English translation of the sentence is, “Please may I borrow your book?”. Further, unique speech acts call for particular words; when a person has succeeded in something, congratulations [cefeliciteerd] is required to connect the speaker to the occasion (Dielemans & Coppen, 2020: 182-206). Pragmatics generally places the words and sentences constructed in the correct context and enhances communication.
Conclusion
Dutch is one of the most spoken languages in the Netherlands, and people use it as the primary dialect. The language may share syntax with English and other languages such as German or French. However, particular features make it unique, and learners must understand the structure to enhance learning and communication. Phonetics and phonology show how different sounds and words are formed.
Phonology shares rules that guide the user in pronouncing words correctly. Once the words are correctly established and understood, the next important aspect is the morphosyntax, which enables the user to understand the different rules of constructing sentences, such as the word order and the grammatical concerns. Finally, pragmatics places the language in the correct ethical and cultural context to align the language with the cultural norms.
References
Altinkamis, F., & Simon, E. (2020). Language abilities in bilingual children: The effect of family background and language exposure on the development of Turkish and Dutch. International Journal of Bilingualism, 24(5-6), 931-951. Web.
Dielemans, R., & Coppen, P. A. (2020). Defining linguistic reasoning: Transposing and grounding a model for historical reasoning to the linguistic domain. Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 9(1-2), 182-206. Web.
Hendrikx, I., Van Goethem, K., & Wulff, S. (2019). Intensifying constructions in French-speaking L2 learners of English and Dutch: Cross-linguistic influence and exposure effects. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 5(1), 63-103. Web.
Kormos, J. (2020). Specific learning difficulties in second language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 53(2), 129-143. Web.
Puimège, E., & Peters, E. (2019). Learning L2 vocabulary from audiovisual input: an exploratory study into incidental learning of single words and formulaic sequences. The Language Learning Journal, 47(4), 424-438. Web.