this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
137 points (96.6% liked)

Asklemmy

43975 readers
814 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

For example, English speakers commonly mix up your/you're or there/their/they're. I'm curious about similar mistakes in other languages.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That English natives have so much trouble distinguishing effect from affect keeps surprising me.

As for Dutch, the dt-issue is presented as if it is this hugely complicated set of rules. While in reality it is dead simple. Third person in the present time is ALWAYS conjugated as stem+t for regular verbs, except in ONE case: when the stem already ends in t. Dt isn't special, it's just the rule applied to all stems.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think the main issue with that one is that they've become homophones in a lot of regional accents, a secondary part of it is that they are semi-related concepts, and the third part of it is that there are also technically noun and verb versions of each.

X affects Y, X has an effect on Y.

The affected happiness effect effected a positive affect.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My school taught this whole convoluted system that was meant to help students with multiple tenses, but I just learned to apply the "ik loop" mnemonic which is so effortless (to native speakers at least.)

Sometimes I have to think once or twice about soft ketchup/'t Kofschip for the past participle, but that's about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the main errors happen with "voltooide deelwoorden" (past participle). Then you need mnemonic devices like "'t kofschip" to know whether it's t or d (or determine it using what you would say in the past time of the verb). It doesn't help that e.g., "gebeurt" and "gebeurd" both are correct depending on the tense used.

Also the fact that the t drops when the verb is inversed in the 2nd person singular present tense, and not e.g., past tense ("Je wordt" but "Word je") is a weird rule.

It's not thΓ‘t complicated and if you pay attention, you should be able to get it all right. That's why I think such mistakes are more a sign of carelessness and not of stupidity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The second person during a question is still no special rule for dt. It's still very regular. For all regular verbs it's just stem (without the +t).

Examples:

Praten -> stem = praat -> praat jij? Worden -> stem = word -> word jij? Surfen -> stem = surf -> surf jij?

No irregularity for stems ending in d.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's an easy rule, yes. It's also an easy one to overlook if you're not paying attention.

"Word je blij?", but also "wordt je moeder blij?".

It's not like people don't understand the rule. No native Dutch speaker would say "Loopt jij?"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Third person in the present time is ALWAYS conjugated as stem+t for regular verbs

It gets more complicated in the second person though, with the inversion exception.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

But again, there is no special exception for dt. Again it's the regular rule applied: second person conjugation in questions is just the stem for regular verbs.