Orthography is a system of rules that can be used to convert spoken language into written form. The most important rule is that each phoneme is represented by a single character. This is the phonological principle. We also know the morphological principle and the etymological principle. These determine the spelling process of the Dutch language. What are the rules?
The phonological principle
The phonological principle means that each phoneme is always represented by the same characters (alphabet letters) and that each character corresponds to only one phoneme. A phoneme is a speech sound with a word distinguishing function. If a word is sound pure, it is spelled according to the phonological principle.
So the most important thing is that we write words as much as they sound.
Dutch has a number of exceptions to this:
Less letters than phonemes
The alphabet has fewer letters than there are phonemes. That is why we use digraphs: these are combinations of two letters that together indicate one phoneme. Examples of digraphs are for example ?? aa ??, ?? ie ?? or ?? ng ??.
Surrounding letters are not taken into account
We also sometimes use one letter with multiple phonemes, such as the ?? o ?? in ?? bombs ?? and ?? trees ??. Although we are one ?? o ?? the pronunciation is changed by the surrounding letters. In ?? bombs ?? does the ?? o ?? short while in ?? trees ?? the same ?? o ?? sounds long (more like ?? oo ??).
Connecting sounds are not written
We pronounce some words differently than we write them. An example of this is the word “work”. We pronounce this more as “wer-rack”. However, this connecting sound is not written as you would expect according to the phonological principle.
The sound group structure determines the spelling of phonemes
A sound group structure is the pronunciation of a syllable. For example, that applies to ?? room ?? the aa lang is pronounced by the long vowels (tense vocals). So if you hear a long sound in a closed syllable, you write a double vowel. However, if you hear a long sound with an open syllable, as with “za-len”, we write one vowel. This also means that with a short sound, such as with “bombs”, you write a double consonant. This makes the vowel (de ?? o ??) short. Finally, in digraving, like ?? ch ?? in ?? stove ?? no doubling applies.
Two rules emerge from this:
The long vowel rule
- In the syllable a long sound: hall (a double vowel ?? aa)
- End of syllable long sound: za-len (single vowel ?? a)
The double consonant rule
- Short sound in the syllable: slap-pe (a double consonant)
- Short sound in the syllable for a digraaf: stove (no doubling of the digraaf ?? ch).
The Morphological Principle
A morpheme is a meaningful element of a word. These must always be written in the same way. There are two types of morphemes:
- Free morphemes: meaning-bearing elements that can occur independently. An example is “rust”. This word can stand alone, but there can also be, for example, “stainless”. made of it.
- Bound morphemes: The cannot occur independently. Examples include ?? her ??, ?? on ?? or ?? ig ??.
In pronunciation, if words are joined, so that two identical consonants come after each other, one in the pronunciation disappears. This is the case, for example, with the combination of ?? color ?? and ?? rich ??. The word ?? colorful ?? is pronounced “color-rich”. ??Handshake?? is another such word; the ruling is more han-pressure.
The morphological principle has two rules.
Number 1: Rule of similarity
This rule means that words, but also a stem, prefix or suffix, must be written in the same way as much as possible. Because of this we write for example country by ?? countries ?? ?? based on the phonological principle, this would actually be ?? lant ?? must be. The same goes for the verb ?? have ?? And I have?? ?? in pronunciation that sounds more like ?? hep ??.
Exceptions
Yet there are also exceptions to this rule, namely in the event of a loss of vote in the [v] and [z]. So we write ?? home ?? instead of ?? house ?? of ?? houses ??. The same applies to ?? pigeon ?? of ?? pigeons ??.
Number 2: The rule of analogy
This rule states that we write words the same way we would write similar words. Therefore, for example, “you become” with a ??, because we also ?? you work ?? writes. We also write ?? autumn storm ?? based on ?? autumn clearance ??.
Exceptions
Still, here too, there are exceptions. For example, we write “you eat”. The same applies to the in-between-s: “declaration of war”, but also “belligerent”.
The general rules of the morphological principle
- We write words equally as possible.
- The morphological principle takes precedence over the phonological principle, but the long vowel rule and double consonant rule take precedence over the morphological principle.
The Etymological Principle
The etymological principle limits the phonological principle. It stipulates that when choosing between two writing options, the previous spelling decides the form of the word. This means that equal-sounding phonemes have different spellings, for example ?? dew ?? and ?? rope ?? or ?? price ?? and ?? travel ??. This also applies to loan words: words that come from another language. These are spelled according to the orthographic system of the language of origin. We therefore write ?? hockey ?? instead of ?? hokkie ??. The same goes for ?? weekend ?? (?? wiekent ??) or ?? synthesis ?? (?? sinteze ??).