Originally Posted by janvanderbrugge View Post
Quote:
True. But who said it had to be? Anyway, what language is? Show me a language with no "irregular verbs"....
Farnboro John
Hey, John, please mind your linguistic remarks
^). Afrikaans, the beautiful language of South Africa, which developed parallelously to our own Dutch - and which some of my compatriots still qualify as "such a funny speech" - has dropped all irregular verbs which the Dutch language still contains. There is even no imperfect past tense, as in "I was, I did, he came", in Dutch :"ik was, ik deed, hij kwam"; such phrases have turned into "ek het gewees" (Dutch: ik ben geweest), "ek het gedoen" (Dutch: doen, gedaan = to do, done), hy het gekom (Dutch: hij is gekomen).
By the way, the linguistic development did not take away all irregularities, example: in Dutch we have "nacht, nachten" (night, nights), in Afrikaans: nag, plural: nagte, and Dutch: "dag, dagen" (day, days) became: dag, daë, so South African children have to learn such things which are not logical for them. . .
Cheers, just a side-track (side track?) from a language freak, Jan (= John) van der Brugge
Very interesting. To Dutch ears, then, Afrikaans must sound like baby talk. That certainly would be the case in the English speaking world where young children typically pass through a stage where they “regularize” irregular verbs—“thinked” for ‘thought”, “goed” for “went”, etc., etc.
Last edited by fugl : Thursday 2nd April 2020 at 16:59.
Exception to irregularities . . .
Hello Fugl, as a co-member who obviously shares my fascination for languages, I take the liberty to add something to what we submitted off-topic some time ago. Speaking of irregularities in verbs: I discovered an exception to the rule for the Afrikaans language (mentioned above), although it is not given in my (little) dictionary. The Dutch equivalent to the English verb (to) drive = drijven; drijven = to float, to drift; to propel, to drive, to urge; drove = dreef; driven = gedreven. African verb: dryf, also: drywe. As there is no imperfect tense, the translation of "I drove" + "I have driven" = ek het gedryf". However, in a rather old Afrikaans song, title "Deur oër die bosveld" one of the lines is: "deur heimwee gedrewe daar wil ek lewe". To Dutch ears this is quite understandable: driven by homesickness I want to live there (by the way, heimwee is German in origin, "home-pain"), but is it irregular in Afrikaans, because of the general lack of perfect particles in the sense of verbs (they do exist as adjectives).
Well, I'd better stop before getting into "dryfsand" . . . or driven out (uitgedryf) by a stern admin (however, my gedagtes es soos voëls, my thoughts are like birds).
Groete uit Holland, geniet (= enjoy).
Jan van der Brugge
