Hi. I’m Bilingual (IT and EN from childhood), and I’m using LanguageTool as a learner of the Dutch language, checking my mistakes (and there’s a lot of them). The problem I have is that LanguageTool says that the support for Dutch is incomplete and asks if I would like to help.
I have had a look at the rule editor, and I cannot make head or tail of it. I cannot see any instructions on what to do, or how to do it. The rule which I need to sort out is regarding the use of “de” and “het” as definite articles, which requires the gender to be identified, “de” for Masculine and Feminine, “het” for Neuter.
Can someone point me at how on earth to make this work please? Thanks!
No, I didn’t know about it, but I will sit and watch it now! I have used LanguageTool before, mainly to distinguish differences between US English and UK English, and always found it useful. I will get to that right away. Thanks
Ok, @Jan_Schreiber - I think I have the idea of how to operate this now. That video was very informative, even if it was short! While I’ve been using LanguageTool, I’ve noticed that one of the filter rules doesn’t work correctly. I tried to mend it, but I think I screwed up, so I didn’t submit it. My edit worked correctly, but matched more than 50 of the test edits from wikipedia, so I guess that was a failure.
There is a rule about not putting a comma before “dat”, which the tool already picks up, but it does not repair it correctly. It removes not only the comma, but also the space directly after it, which leaves “dat” rammed up against the word before it, with no leading space to separate the words.
I think it’ll take a little time for me to get used to the editor, so I’ll need help until then. Thanks for your assistance though. Could you suggest what I do with the faulty filter please?
Of course. This is a sample, and it’s a mistake that a lot of learners make.
“Hij kon het zien in de gezicht van Jarvis, de kleine knuffelpinguïn (zijn mascotte), dat Jeremy hem als geschenk gegeven heeft, wanneer de twee families samenwoonden.”
You are not meant to put a comma before “dat”, because there’s not supposed to be a pause there (like you would not use a comma before “und” in German).
The problem is that the filter is not only removing the comma, but also the space after it, so it looks like this:
“Hij kon het zien in de gezicht van Jarvis, de klein knuffelpinguïn (zijn mascotte)dat Jeremy hem als geschenk gegeven heeft, wanneer de twee families samenwoonden.”
There is supposed to be a leading space after the word before “dat”, to separate it. This is what I was trying to mend, to no avail
Und ich dachte, dass Sie wurden Niederländer, bitte entschuldige mich!
2 things:
A. The comma in the example is correct as it denotes a return to the base sentence from the clarification that Jarvis is a plushie.
B. ‘de gezicht’ should be ‘het gezicht’.
Thank you for that clarification, @SkyCharger001 - that proves to me that this filter is definitely broken, because it thinks that my sentence there, is incorrect, and removes both the comma and the space directly after it, as shown in my example. I’m definitely out of my depth now!
And also, thank you for the grammar pickup! That didn’t show up either
“Hij kon het zien in het gezicht van Jarvis, de kleine knuffelpinguïn (zijn mascotte) die Jeremy hem als geschenk gegeven heeft toen de twee families samenwoonden.”
It is ‘die’ instead of ‘dat’ because you are talking about ‘de kleine knuffelpinguïn’.
de -> die
het -> dat
It is ‘toen’ instead of ‘wanneer’ because you refer to a single action that happend only once. The comma in front of ‘wanneer/toen’ should not be there because all the information after the comma is explaining what/who Jarvis is.
the grammar issue you’re trying to correct was created by the erroneous removal of a comma.
the ‘dat’ is part of a ‘dat’-subject-action structure (where ‘die’ is never a valid substitute) not a subject-‘dat’-action structure.
and it fails as a rephrasing as it never tells what ‘Hij’ could see in ‘het gezicht van Jarvis’
a simple (and, to my knowledge, language independent) rule of thumb for one of the main issues: Can two consecutive commas be replaced with parentheses without changing the flow? Then treat them as parentheses.
