Ellipsis & Condensation
Ellipsis & Condensation
Fluent Dutch leaves words out. Ik wil wel, maar kan niet drops both the subject and the verb of the second clause, and administrative Dutch compresses whole conditions into indien nodig or waar mogelijk.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Shared elements are dropped in coordinated clauses
Ik wil wel, maar kan niet. Hij heeft het gezien en zij ook.
I'd like to, but I can't. He saw it and so did she.
When two coordinated clauses share a subject, the second can omit it: maar kan niet. Dutch goes further than English here — English needs a pronoun ('but I can't') and often a substitute auxiliary ('so did she'). Dutch simply leaves the gap, using ook to signal the parallel. The omitted material must be identical, so the construction fails if the person or tense changes.
Condensed conditions: indien nodig, waar mogelijk, zo ja
indien nodig, waar mogelijk, zo ja / zo nee
if necessary, where possible, if so / if not
Formal Dutch compresses a whole conditional clause into a conjunction plus a single word: indien nodig for indien dat nodig is, waar mogelijk for waar dat mogelijk is. The pair zo ja / zo nee is the standard way forms and letters branch on an answer. All of these are frozen and cannot be expanded arbitrarily — zo ja works, but 'zo misschien' does not.
en zo, en dergelijke, enzovoort close an open list
boeken, tijdschriften en dergelijke / en zo verder
books, magazines and the like / and so on
Dutch has a graded set of list-closers: informal en zo, neutral enzovoort (abbreviated enz.), and formal en dergelijke (e.d.) or en meer ('and more'). Each signals a different register, and mixing them into the wrong context is one of the subtler register errors — en zo in a report reads as careless, en dergelijke in conversation as stiff.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- if necessary
- English
- where possible
- English
- if so
- English
- if not
- English
- and the like
- English
- and so on
- English
- and stuff
- English
- at least / that is
- English
- insofar as
- English
- if need be
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