Grammatica - loco

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30111
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41111
All other nouns are better used with a van construction:
de auto van mijn oom ‘my uncle’s car’, de hoofdstad van
Duitsland ‘Germany’s capital city/the capital city of Germany’
Note: Een vriend van mijn broer ‘a friend of my brother’. The above is
a safe guide to correct spoken and written forms, but in practice the s
forms are often heard in instances not recommended here.
The apostrophe is only used to denote possession when the proper noun
ends in a vowel, s or z:
Otto’s boek, Rubens’ schilderijen, Liz’ fiets
Colloquially one will often hear Hans z’n vriend, mijn oom z’n auto, Anneke
d’r vriend, de buren d’r/hun hond (see 8.2.2).
Note: The official names of phenomena derived from people’s names as in
the following examples employ a van construction rather than using a genitive
s as is the case in English: de komeet van Halley ‘Halley’s comet’, de
wet van Grimm ‘Grimm’s law’, de ziekte van Parkinson ‘Parkinson’s disease’.
7.5
Diminutives
Verkleinwoorden
The diminutive is used extensively in Dutch with various connotations of
meaning. The mechanics of diminutizing a noun are dealt with here first
and then the semantic implications of the diminutive. The various ways
of forming the diminutive are generally speaking a question of phonetics,
i.e. assimilation of the ending to the sound at the end of the root noun.
7.5.1
7.5.1.1
Formation
-je
The basic form is the addition of -je to the end of the noun:
aap – aapje huis – huisje
boek – boekje oog – oogje
fornuis – fornuisje24 pet – petje
hand – handje zak – zakje
Note: The diminutive of de sms ‘text message’ is het sms’je.
24 Sj is pronounced [ʃ] i.e. like English ‘sh’.
Diminutives
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