Week VIII

[ReidSchluter]

This week I focused heavily on the first half of the pronoun/possessive unit. This portion entailed the basic forms of personal pronouns & possessives. Like last week, these are very useful tools in terms of my overall comprehension of Dutch. Obviously pronouns form an integral part of many sentences, while knowledge of possessives is also vital to my overall understanding of Dutch.In English, pronouns are me, you, him, her, etc.... In Dutch, the only complication is that there is an unemphatic form for most of the pronouns. This is a common theme in Dutch. For example, you would write 'mij' to represent 'me', but in reality you would say 'me' in conversation. The same is true of 'you' which is written 'jij', but pronounced 'je'.In addition to these basic pronouns, I also learned possessives during this week. These words are very similar to the pronouns, but instead reflect possession of an object. The breakdown is as follows: mijn, jouw, zijn, ons/onze, jullie, & hun. Therefore, one would say 'my mother' as 'mijn moeder' or 'his dog' as 'zijn hond' etc.... Obviously, these two groups of words are incredibly useful & occur very frequently through the Dutch language--or indeed any other.Next week, I will work with the second half of this unit, which includes demonstratives (this, that, these, those) & independent possessives (van mij). Presumably, these sets of words will round out my knowledge of this in tegral portion of the language.