[Course Forum] Business Dutch ♫ Audio

:heavy_check_mark: done

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Opps :face_with_diagonal_mouth: My mistake. :white_check_mark: Done

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Checked this issue again. Searched for both teruggeven and refund. Seems OK. Checked to repay though. That needed some clarification. Not sure if that’s what you noticed. Send me a screenshot if that issue comes up again. Now, afbetalen and terugbetalen and aflossen and teruggeven all have clarifiying [brackets].

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Well, it’s complicated I guess.

But for the sake of simplicity, you should think about this as an item in a financial statement. You wouldn’t label this THE accounts payable. You probably wouldn’t label add a de in Dutch either. I removed the from the English entry. Confuses more than it helps. I realize this know.

Nerd stuff:

Rekeningen is a plural noun. Sure. Adding de (:arrow_right: de rekeningen), it becomes its definite sibling. Just like accounts is an indefinite plural noun, while the accounts is a definite plural.

If I remember this correctly (based on my knowledge of LATIN grammar): te betalen in te betalen rekeningen is a gerundive. It’s a unique form and like here it’s often used to turn an infinitive into something that resembles an adjective. In other phrases - at least in German - it can turn into a noun when it’s the isolated subject. Not sure if the latter is also true in Dutch but if that’s true, it’s probably something like het te betalende is een enorme belasting (neuter het! German: ~das zu Bezahlende ist eine enorme Belastung ← in German it’s “easy to see” that Bezahlende is a noun since in German all nouns are capitalized :slight_smile: ). Now, if you wanted to add an de to rekeningen te betalen also needs an -e like when it turns into a neuter noun: de betalende rekeningen. For the same reason: it’s preceded by a definite article and it emulates how adjectives are declined. So it probably becomes de te betalende rekeningen zijn enorm. [An analogy from the :de: language of love: :point_right:t5: zu bezahlende Rechnungen likewise emulates an adjective declension and turns into die zu bezahlenden Rechnungen] I guess you can do this. Perhaps @duaal can confirm this (or make me look stupid). As I said: best thing is to think about this is as a line on a balance sheet and just get rid of de or the, hereby referring to an unspecified lump sum instead of describing individual and defined bills.

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I edited this entry.

(de) veertien dagen :arrow_right: (the) fourteen days, (the) fortnight ([the] period of 14 days)

I realize that you probably wouldn’t translate this to either “fourteen days” or “the fourteen days” but that’s what it literally means. I guess there’s just no good exact single word like fortnight in Dutch. Anyways, I hope that now the (de) and (the) correspond in a way that the use (or non-use) of the definite article now makes sense. Afaik, in Dutch, it’s either veertien dagen w/o an article or it’s (only sometimes) de veertien dagen. Een can’t be used and thus there’s no direct translation of a in a fortnight.

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It certainly mustn’t be translated to the last time. It now reads:

de laatste tijd :arrow_right: the last period of time ~ lately, recently, these days

That’s maybe the best attempt to emulate the Dutch idiom. Of course, nobody would say the last period of time in such phrases. I hope it helps learners to understand the Dutch expression though.

As to whether you can drop the de in de laatste tijd I’m unsure. Maybe there are instances when that’s possible. I surmise though that in 99% of all cases, you want to add the de becuase it refers to a definite period of time. If that’s indefinite and you want to drop the article de it’s probably laatst tijd though (without the -e). I’m not Dutch, but laatst tijd sounds strange. As I said, virtually always, it’s supposed to be de laatste tijd.

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That’s an accurate assessment I guess. See my two comments above though. Although both changes add some awkward English, I hope this helps to mitigate issues learners might have.

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I can’t think of any instance and you can’t drop the “e” from laatste.

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de te betalen rekening” is correct.

U ontvangt van ons een factuur met het te betalen bedrag. - You’ll receive an invoice from us with the amount payable.

No, that would mean that the bills are paying.

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Of course.

I meant to say de te betalene rekeningen I don’t know why I added the ds and lost the te. As you just confirmed , that’s also wrong but pointing out that this was a typing error and oversight makes me feel less stupid. Thanks duaal.

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That must be it. Thanks for looking into this. Sorry for the confusion on which word was causing the ambiguity. :slight_smile:

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Thanks @duaal for following up on this and helping clarify things!

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Hi @Robert-Alexander,

Happy Thursday! I found two minor things but neither is pressing:

  • there is a repeated entry of het beleggingsfonds in Level 7
  • the audio for factuur is a bit wonky. it is not wrong, just a bit wonky/ low quality. (is it possible to swap it for another?)

cheers

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Found three (1) decent recordings. Removed the weirdly scrambled audio.

Strange indeed. I wonder how that could happen. Deleted one entry & improved audio.

Thanks for reporting. Your feedback is very much appreciated. :sunflower:

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Hi @Robert-Alexander, in one of the levels the word levensmiddel (the food, foodstuffs) is assigned the article de. However, the site ‘levensmiddel Nederlands woordenboek - Woorden.org’ has het. Thoughts?

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Sure. Het levensmiddel. I edited this.

:arrow_double_down: Don’t read if you don’t like excuses :slight_smile:: :arrow_double_down:

I can only assume that English (and German) got in the way. Often, in both English and German this word is used in plural (die Lebensmittel, foodstuffs, groceries, …). (Not sure whether Dutchmen also use the plural that often when talking about groceries but in German the use of singular das Lebensmittel is actually kind of rare) Btw. in German, das Lebensmittel is neuter too. And since die Lebensmittel (which is the appropriate plural in German) looks so similar to de levensmiddel, I might have deduced that de levensmiddel is the appropriate plural in Dutch. It is not. That’s plural de levensmiddelen while het levensmiddel is the correct singular indeed.

More excuses: I guess it’s just one of these words of which Germans always assume that’s the correct plural when browsing endless vocab lists. I could read this one hundred times, but would have never found this error. Thus, it’s awesome that you found this and told me. Thanks.

The entry now reads singular het levensmiddel, singular the food, foodstuff (before it was foodstuffs), singular das Lebensmittel and noun (before it was noun [pl] (sic!))

het levensmiddel :arrow_right: the food, foodstuff :arrow_right: das Lebensmittel :arrow_right: noun

PS: :sound: Sound file changed from levensmiddelen to levensmiddel

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The plural levensmiddelen is indeed far more common.

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hi @Robert-Alexander,

That totally makes sense. i only caught this because I know that middel has the article het.

Unrelated to this, There seems to be an ambiguity with klant and klandizie. I think (though maybe I am mixing this up) that the ‘‘extra’’ text for klant, i.e., no[t] de klandizie (see below), should be shifted to the translation.

cheers

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Hi @Robert-Alexander,

It seems like the audio for the word teleurstellend is actually a second audio file for teleurgesteld. However, maybe I just do not hear the difference (I hope I do! :upside_down_face:)

cheers

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Yep. That’s a very reliable rule. The gender of the last part of composite nouns determines virtually always the gender of the composite noun. (That’s also how German composite nouns’ gender works.)

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