The Language of News
The Language of News
Dutch headlines have a grammar of their own: articles vanish, the present tense reports the past, and a bare infinitive at the end carries the main claim. Kabinet wil regels aanscherpen packs a whole sentence into four words.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Headlines drop articles and use the present tense
Kabinet wil regels aanscherpen. Trein ontspoort bij Utrecht.
Cabinet wants to tighten rules. Train derails near Utrecht.
Headline Dutch omits de and het, and reports completed events in the present tense — Trein ontspoort for an accident that has already happened. English headlines do both of these things too, so the conventions align; what differs is that the Dutch verb still obeys second position, and any infinitive still lands at the end, which is why headlines so often finish on a verb.
zou marks every unverified claim
De verdachte zou het geld hebben aangenomen.
The suspect allegedly accepted the money.
Journalistic Dutch is legally obliged to attribute, and zou is the instrument: it turns a statement into a reported allegation without naming a source in the sentence itself. Combined with the perfect infinitive — zou hebben aangenomen — it reports a past allegation. Reading this as a conditional produces a completely wrong understanding of the article.
Passives and nominalizations compress the reporting
Er wordt onderzoek gedaan naar de toedracht van het ongeval.
An investigation is being carried out into the circumstances of the accident.
News prose combines the impersonal passive with heavy nominalization: onderzoek doen naar, de toedracht van, de aanleiding tot. This keeps agents unnamed and packs information densely. The vocabulary is largely formed from the suffixes you already know, so a long noun like de bekendmaking decomposes predictably into bekend + maken + -ing.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- the cabinet
- English
- to tighten
- English
- the suspect
- English
- the investigation
- English
- the circumstances
- English
- the spokesperson
- English
- the measure
- English
- to announce
- English
- the reporting
- English
- reportedly
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