Grammar Notes

Note: need to revise and correct parts of this text.

In Dutch a noun (名詞) is known as a zelfstandig naamwoord. Zelfstandig means 'on its own', which is quite logical since such words stand on their own. And naamwoord consists of naam (名前; name) and woord (単語; word). Bijvoegelijk means so much as 'adding it to something'. So in that sense bijvoegelijk naamwoord is still related to adjective (形容詞).

In Nederlands (ネーデルランド語・オランダ語) the common rule is that you take a word, stick -e (the sound) at the end, and you have a bijvoegelijk naamwoord.

langzaam (遅い) ⇒ langzame
snel (早い) ⇒ snelle
klein (小さい) ⇒ kleine
groot (大きい) ⇒ grote
mooi (きれい) ⇒ mooie
lelijk (醜い) ⇒ lelijke
lief (優しい) ⇒ lieve

You will have noticed that in some cases more than just the -e got added. This is due to a few things, although it generally boils down to pronunciation.

Perhaps you remember I told you about our sounds. Like Japanese we have short and long sounds. Generally when a lettergreep (音節; syllable) ends in a klinker (母音; vowel: a, e, i, o, u) the lettergreep (or rather the klinker) will sound long (長母音): lelijk -> lee - lijk. If it ends in a medeklinker (子音; consonant: all the other 21 letters) the klinker will sound short (短母音): pot, kat (猫; cat), kip (chicken).

If you take, for example, snel and you want to make it a bijvoegelijk naamwoord to indicate an auto (車; car) is fast you would think "snel+e = snele", right? Well, only partially. Think back to the klinker part, snel has a short e sound. If you add an e to snel to make it snele you wind up with two lettergrepen, to know: sne, le - which would sound like: snee luh, which is wrong. So you need to duplicate the l: snel -> snelle. Rot (rotten) -> rotte, kapot (broken) kapotte, and so on. The reverse actually happens with groot, a double o sounds long when surrounded by medeklinkers, so in the case of a bijvoegelijk naamwoord we make it grote, which sounds like groo tuh. There exists also a grootte, but that's a zelfstandig naamwoord, as in the size of something. The same applies for langzaam, de double a is long, so you shorten zaam + e to zame, which is za me.

The case of lief is one where the stemloze medeklinker f (無声音; a voiceless consonant) turns into a stemhebbende medeklinker v (有声子音; voiced consonant), both are wrijfklanken (摩擦音; frictatives).