Plautdietsch course, Lesson I

Genders, Articles, Basic Word Order, Adjectives

1. Waut is daut? (What is that?) Woo es daut? (How is that?)

Daut es een Läpel (this is a spoon) De Läpel es runt (the spoon is round)
Daut es eene Gaufel (that is a fork) De Gaufel es hoat (the fork is hard)
Daut es een Massa (that is a knife) Daut Massa es schoap (the knife is sharp)

Some words even sound familiar, don't they?

2. GENDERS: Plautdietsch, like many other languages, has a system of genders. Each noun has one of three genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. Most nouns referring to human beings will have a gender according to the sex of the person, for instance:

de Maun (the man)
de Oomkje (the mister)
de Voda (the father)
de Brooda (the brother)
de Sän (the son)
de Onkel (the uncle)
de Jung (the boy)

are all masculine, whereas

de Fru (the woman)
de Mumkje (the mistress)
de Mutta (the mother)
de Sesta (the sister)
de Dochta (the daughter)
de Taunte (the aunt)
de Mejal (the girl)

are all feminine, but

daut Kjint (the child)
daut Bäbe (the baby)

are of the neuter gender, and are used for children and babies of both sexes. In the case if some animals, the same case:

de Boll (the bull, masc)
de Koo (the cow, fem)
daut Kaulf (the calf, neuter)
de Hon (the rooster, masc)
de Han (the hen, fem)
daut Kjikjel (the chicken, neuter)

but for many others , a single word is used to cover both sexes, sometimes a masculine word, sometimes feminine, but many times neuter, meaning: the gender of the word does not always indicate the sex of the animal:

de Hunt (the dog, masc)
de Kaut (the cat, fem)
daut Schop (the sheep, neuter)
daut Schwien (the pig, neuter)
daut Pieet (the horse, neuter)

The same happens with inanimate thing. They have one gender out of three assigned with not much logic, as seen in the examples at the beginning. But, they are amazingly well distributed, meaning there is 1/3 of the nouns approximately of each gender. For example, many terms for parts of the house are feminine and neuter, but words for weather conditions and seasons of the year are masculine:

masculine feminine neuter
de Goaden (garden) de Gaus (street) daut Hus (house)
de Somma (summer) de Waunt (wall) daut Dak (ceiling)
de Winta (winter) de Däa (door) daut Fensta (window)
de Desch (table) de Benkj (bench) daut Bad (bed)
de Stool (chair) de Flua (floor) daut Graus (grass)

3. ARTICLES: By now, you will have noticed that there are two different definite articles, i. e. words meaning "the": de and daut. Probably you will have noticed, too, that daut is used with neuter nouns, but de is used for both masculine and feminine nouns. Probably you wonder, what makes masculine and feminine nouns different, are you? Well, look again at the sentences at the very beginning. There you have two different words meaning "a" or "an": een and eene. As seen, now masculine and neuter share the same indefinite article, but the feminine is different. So, the combination of both articles makes clear of which gender a given noun is: de/een is masculine, de/eene feminine, and daut/een is neuter.

Why is this important? Learning a language is much more than just learning different words. Different languages have different grammar, meaning, they use, modify and arrange words in different ways. If you wanna speak a new language effectively, you have to learn the grammar principles in order to speak the language well. And the best way is, to learn vocabulary and grammar at the same time, in this case, learn the gender at the same time you learn the new words.

4. EXERCISE: One possible way of learning genders could be the following: make cards of any size you like, perhaps 2 3/4 x 4 1/4" (that way you can make 8 cards out of a letter size sheet). Use three different colors, each color for each gender. Chose 2 colors you automatically associate with male and female, and a third color for the neuter gender. Write the Plautdietsch words we have used this far on the cards, one word on each card, of the color according to the gender of the word. Or even better, draw the items, as spoon, knife, fork on the cards -or search on the Internet for drawings and print them on the cards, perhaps before cutting a sheet into cards. Then use the cards and the words on them to form sentences like the ones at the very beginning of this lesson: what is that? and how is that?

You might need some more adjectives, i. e. words describing how persons or things are. So, here are some more, including words for colors:

5. ADJECTIVES

witt (white)
schwoat (black)
root (red)
bleiw (blue)
brun (brown)
jäl (yellow)
jreen (green)

groot (big, tall)
kjlien (small)
runt (round)
breet (wide)
schmaul (narrow)
lank (long)
kort (short)
oolt (old)
junk (young)
woam (warm)
kolt (cold)
heet (hot)

With these adjectives, and the nouns above (on the colored cards) we can form many sentences like this one:

Waut es daut? Woo es daut? (what is that; how is that?)
Dit es een Hus Daut Hus es bleiw (this is a house; the house is blue)

or form contrasts using both definite and indefinite articles:

Woo es de Winta? Woo es de Somma (how is the winter? how is the summer?)
een Winta es kolt, een Somma es woam (a winter is cold, a sumer is warm.)

6. DECLENSION OF ADJECTIVES. One important area where using the appropriate gender of the noun is when an adjective is placed before it, since an ending has to be attached to agree with the gender of the noun. Consider the following examples:

De Goaden es jreen; dit es een jreena Goaden, de jreena Goaden es groot
De Däa es bleiw; dit es eene bleiwe Däa; de bleiwe Däa es breet
Daut Hüs es jäl; dit es een jälet Hus; daut jäle Hus es kjlien

Note: when we put the adjective between the article and the noun, an ending is attached to the adjective according to the gender of the noun.

You might have noticed that in the neuter gender a different ending is used after daut or after een. The reason is very simple: daut already marks the noun as neuter and adding the -et ending would sound kind of redundant, so the t is dropped, whereas de could be masculine or feminine so the adjective makes the gender clear; een could be masculine or neuter so the -a the strong ending et makes the gender clear, while feminine always keeps the basic -e ending. So, we can conclude that the endings are:

masculine -a
feminine -e
neuter -e or -et, depending on the article used.

A few complications: when being declined, the adjective oolt drops the t: de oola Voda. All others marked with bold italics on the above list replace the final hard consonant for its soft equivalent: t becomes d, k becomes g: de runda Desch, de lange Gaus (de round table, de long street).

7. Little words:

oba (but); un (and); ooda (or); em (in the, with masculine nouns)
hia (here); doa (there, at a medium distance) dort (there, at a longer distance)
waut (what?); woo? (how?) wäa?; (who?) wua (where?)

daut
daut means, as we have seen the, with neuter nouns, also means it like in it is cold

8. READING: try if you are able to understand following sentences and understand the gender principles in the way articles and adjective endings are used:

De Somma es woam; de Winta es kolt. Daut es een woama Somma, oba een kolda Winta. Daut Graus es jreen. Daut jreene Graus es em Goaden. Daut Graus es jreen em Somma, oba nicht em Winta. Daut Hus es kjlien. Daut es een kjlienet Hus. De Däa es breet, oba daut Fensta es schmaul. De Desch es runt, daut es een runda Desch. De Voda es hia, de Sän es dort. Woo es de Voda? De Voda es oolt. Woo es de Sän? De Sän es junk. Wua es de Voda? De oola Voda es hia. Wua es de Sän? De junga Sän es dort.

9. PRONUNCIATION

Consonants
b as in boat
d as in dog
f as in fall
g as in goat at beginning of words and before consonants
softer, without closing the throat completely, between vowels and at the end
h as in heart
j as y in yet
k as c in cat, k in kid
l as in lamb
m as in moon
n as in noon
p as in pet
r similar as t in liter (before a vowel)
as in word (before a consonant)
s as z in zoo (at beginning, between vowels)
as in so (duplicated between vowels and at the end)
(at the end one s could be hard (s) or soft [s]
t as in tower
v as f in father
w as v in vain
z as s in soil (or ts in pets, Molotschna speakers)

Consonant clusters

ch as in schottish loch (spanish j in jefe) before a, o, u
as the h sound in humid before consonant, i, e, äa
jch as the h sound in humid before consonant, i, e, äa
kj as the c in cure
gj as g and y combined
sch as sh in share
zh as s in vision
sp, st as shp, sht

Vowels and diphthongs

a as in car
ä as a in play
e as in bed
e as in the
mute
ie as in relief
i as in hit
o as in pole
o as in hot
u as in boot (Molotscha dialect)
as e in theme, but pronounce with rounded lips
u as in put
ei as in ??
au as in ball, or british talk
ee as oi in boil
oo as o in ghost
äa as in there
ea as ee plus a
ia
iee as in here
oa as in roar
as äa
ua as u + a
or ü + a