Technology & Media
Technology & Media
Dutch borrows English technology words wholesale and then conjugates them as if they had always been Dutch. downloaden gives ik download, hij downloadt, ik heb gedownload — English roots wearing Dutch endings and Dutch spelling rules.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Borrowed verbs take full Dutch conjugation
downloaden → ik download, hij downloadt, gedownload
to download → I download, he downloads, downloaded
An English verb entering Dutch gets -en added to make an infinitive and then behaves normally: appen, mailen, chatten, googelen, updaten. The third person adds -t even when the stem already ends in a consonant cluster (hij downloadt), and the participle takes ge-. Where the English stem ends in -e, Dutch drops it and doubles consonants by its own rules: chatten gives gechat, not 'gechatted'.
The 't kofschip rule applies to loanwords by sound, not spelling
gefaxt, gemaild, geappt
faxed, emailed, texted
The choice of -t or -d follows the final sound of the stem as a Dutch speaker pronounces it. faxen ends in an s-sound, so gefaxt. mailen ends in l, so gemaild. appen ends in p, so geappt with the p doubled to keep the vowel short. This means you have to hear the loanword in its Dutch pronunciation before you can spell its participle.
Separable prefixes attach to loan verbs too
inloggen → ik log in; uitloggen → ik log uit; opslaan → ik sla op
to log in → I log in; to log out → I log out; to save → I save
Dutch takes English phrasal verbs and re-forms them as separable compounds, which then split exactly like native ones: inloggen becomes ik log in, participle ingelogd. Native equivalents behave the same way — opslaan ('to save'), doorsturen ('to forward'), bijwerken ('to update'). So software instructions are full of clauses that end in a stray prefix.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- to download
- English
- to log in
- English
- to save
- English
- to delete
- English
- the attachment
- English
- the message
- English
- to share
- English
- the password
- English
- the channel / broadcaster
- English
- the news
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