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Lesson 6: Time - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Numbers 100-9999 - Time - Days, Months - This and That - Cognates

Numbers 100-9999		Time		This and That		Cognates

100
honderd

101
honderdéén

110
honderdtien

200
tweehonderd

732
zevenhonderd-
tweeëndertig

1000
duizend

1967
negentienzevenenzestig

2009
tweeduizendnegen

2012
tweeduizendtwaalf

9999
negenduizendnegenhonderd-
negenennegentig

<< - numbers, simple math and dimensions - >>

Time

Time Units		The Clock, Telling Time		The Day		The Days of The Week		The Months		Years		Dutch Thesaurus: Time

Time Units

(de) klok

(het) horloge
(a word from French)

60 (zestig) seconden in een minuut		('60 seconds in a minute')
(de) seconde		('second' - see note below)
60 (zestig) minuten in een uur		('60 minutes in an hour')
(de) minuut		('minute')
24 (vierentwintig) uren in een dag		('24 hours in a day')
(het) uur		('hour')
7 (zeven) dagen in een week		('7 days in a week')
(de) dag		('day')
52 (tweeënvijftig) weken in een jaar		('52 weeks in a year')
(de) week		('week')
28 (achtentwintig) tot 31 (éénendertig) dagen in een maand		('28 to 31 days in a month')
(de) maand		('month')
12 (twaalf) maanden in een jaar		('12 months in a year')
(het) jaar		('year')
365 (driehonderdvijfenzestig) dagen in een jaar		('365 days in a year')
100 (honderd) jaren in een eeuw		('100 years in a century')
(de) eeuw		('century')

The Z in zestig ('60') is often softened to an S.
The time units ending in -R kwartier

('quarter, 15 minutes') - uur

('hour') and jaar

('year') are often used as both singular and plural; the regular plurals are uren

2 and jaren

.
drie kwartier

('[3 quarters] 45 minutes') - vier uur

('4 hours') - vijf jaar

2 ('5 years') >>
Notice that the 'short A' of dag

('day') changes to 'long A' for the plural: dagen

- 2 ('days.')
Dutch seconde

('second') is only the time unit; English 'second' meaning 'number 2' is tweede

ordinal numbers.

(de) seconde
(de) minuut
(het) uur
(de) dag

- 2

(second)
(minute)
(hour)
(day)

(de) week
(de) maand
(het) jaar
(de) eeuw

- 2

(week)
(month)
(year)
(century)

(de) wekker

(de) wekradio

(de) keukenwekkers

(de) zonnewijzer

(de) dag

'day' - dagen

2 'days'
- note the plural vowel change
dagelijks

2 'daily' (every day)

(de) week

'week'
weken

2 'weeks'
wekelijks

2 'weekly'

(de) maand

'month'
maanden

'months'
maandelijks

2 'monthly'

(het) jaar

'year'
jaren

'years'
jaarlijks

2 'yearly'

Telling Time

De tijd

('time') - (de) klok

('clock') - Klok kijken

2 ('to tell time') - Hoe laat is het?

('what is the time?')

Drie uur

Half drie

Half vier

Kwart voor drie

Kwart over zes

Tien voor half drie /or/
Twintig over twee

Vijf voor drie

Vijf over drie

Twee voor twaalf

twee uur dertig (2:30)

(2:30)

Do note that in time, Dutch 'half ...' means 'half an hour before ...' and not 'half past ...' like (British?) English 'half ....'

vroeg 'early' - laat 'late' - op tijd 2 'in/on time' - te laat 'too late, not in time'

The Day

zons-
opgang

zons-
ondergang

- 2

12 uur
's nachts

6 uur
's morgens

12 uur
's middags

6 uur
's avonds

- 2

12 uur
's nachts

(de) nacht

(de) morgen

- 2

(de) middag

(de) avond

's nachts

at night

's morgens

in the morning

's middags

in the afternoon

's avonds

in the evening

vanmorgen		this morning
vanmiddag		this afternoon
vanavond	2	this evening, tonight
vannacht		tonight / last night (look at the tense of the verb)
vandaag	2 3	today
but: morgen	2	tomorrow
overdag	2	in the daytime

Tot vanmiddag		See you this afternoon
Tot vanavond		See you tonight
Tot morgen		See you tomorrow
Tot maandag		See you on Monday
Prettig weekend		Have a nice weekend

Vanmorgen scheen de zon.

('This morning, the sun was shining.')

In Fall and Winter in Holland, the sun rises after 6AM and goes down before 6PM.
Zomertijd ('Daylight Saving Time')
Middernacht ('[12] midnight')
een kwartier 2 ('15 minutes')
drie (3) kwartier ('45 minutes')
een halfjaar ('6 months')
anderhalf jaar ('a year and a half, 18 months')
tientallen jaren ('[10s] dozens of years')
een paar jaar later ('a few years later')
twee jaar geleden 2 ('two years ago') - geleden ('ago')
Morgen - 2 means both 'morning' and 'tomorrow,' and (like in English) it's also short for Goedemorgen ('Good morning!')
For 'morning' there's also the nice Dutch challenge word ochtend - 's ochtends - 2 ('in the morning')
Bij 't krieken van de dag ('at daybreak, at first light, very early in the morning')
The common expression tussen de middag means during the lunch break, say 12-1PM, between morning and afternoon work or school, but it is a bit strange, when you think of it, 'between the afternoon.' Maybe 'and morning' was dropped somewhere along the way.
The T in 's nachts ('at night') is sometimes dropped: .
Schemering 2 ('twilight') (The length of the grey bars exaggerates the length of the Dutch twilight.)
Duisternis 2 ('darkness')
Zonsopgang and zonsondergang ('sunrise' and 'sundown') are compound words: zons-opgang, zons-ondergang.
Waar blijft de tijd? 2 3 ('Where does the time go?')
Dutch often uses 'avond' ('evening') where in English you say 'night.' - Zaterdagavond 2 ('saturday night' - dancing etc.)
Vanavond gaan we naar de bioscoop. Tonight we'll go see a movie (at the cinema.)

The Week

De Dagen van de Week			The Days of the Week
maandag Monday	dinsdag Tuesday	woensdag Wednesday	donderdag Thursday	vrijdag Friday	zaterdag Saturday	zondag Sunday
In English and Dutch, some of the days of the week are named after the old Germanic gods, like Wednesday for chief god Wotan (Dutch: Wodan) - Thursday for god of thunder Thor (Donar) and Friday for Freya, Mrs Wotan. door de week ('on weekdays') - in 't weekend 2 ('in the weekend') doordeweekse dag 2 ('weekday') - weekdag ('weekday') - werkdag ('workday') werkweek ('workweek') - feestdag ('holiday') (de) dag ('day') - dagen 2 ('days')

de zon

de maan

The Months

Leer ons alzo onze dagen tellen

So teach us to number our days (Ps 90:12)
Tapestry by Elizabeth Sipma-Veenstra

De Maanden van het Jaar	The Months of the Year	De Seizoenen	The Seasons
januari	January	(de) winter	Winter
februari	February
maart	March
april	April	(de) lente	Spring
mei	May
juni	June
juli	July	(de) zomer	Summer
augustus	August
september	September
oktober	October	(de) herfst	Fall, Autumn
november	November
december	December
all numbers

For the days of the months, Dutch uses regular numbers, and not ordinal numbers like in English:
1 april 1572 ('April 1st, 1572')
(het) seizoen ('season')
You may come across the somewhat formal (het) voorjaar 2 ('Spring') - (het) najaar 2 ('Fall, Autumn') and (de) nazomer 2 ('the last weeks of Summer.')

Als de R in de maand zit 2 ('When there's an R in [the name of] the month') - the time for the daily spoonful of levertraan 2 ('cod-liver-oil.')

To tell when something happened or is happening Dutch often uses an old form with apostrophe-S at the beginning of the word and an ending in S:

's morgens		in the morning
's ochtends		in the morning
's middags		in the afternoon
's avonds		in the evening
's nachts		at night


's zomers		in summer
's winters		in winter

But it doesn't sound good for lente ('Spring') and herfst ('Fall, Autumn') so another form is used:
in de lente		in Spring
in de herfst		in Fall

's Morgens vroeg

2 3 ('early in the morning') - 's avonds laat

2 ('late at night')

Years

2021 tweeduizend- éénentwintig 2	2022 tweeduizend- tweeëntwintig 2	2023 tweeduizend- drieëntwintig 2	2024 tweeduizend- vierentwintig 3 4	2025 tweeduizend- vijfentwintig 2 3
New Year's Eve	last year vorig jaar	this year dit jaar 2	next year volgend jaar 2	more previous and next more years more numbers

	the past het verleden	the present het heden	the future de toekomst	more Past, Present and Future
	then toen ‑>>	now nu ‑>>	then dan ‑>>

the day before yesterday eergisteren	yesterday gisteren	today vandaag	tomorrow morgen 2	the day after tomorrow overmorgen 2

2020: tweeduizendtwintig 2 3
2021: tweeduizendéénentwintig 2
2022: tweeduizendtweeëntwintig 2
2023: tweeduizenddrieëntwintig 2
2024: tweeduizendvierentwintig 3 4
2025: tweeduizendvijfentwintig 2 3
2026: tweeduizendzesentwintig 2 3

Het was vorige maand erg koud ('Last month [it] was very cold')
Volgende week gaat het regenen ('Next week it's going to rain')
afgelopen 2 ('last, past') - afgelopen woensdag 2 ('last Wednesday')

toen

lang geleden

('long ago')

toen

(step

)

(step

)

[me reading the standard book about Dos]

10 (tien) jaar geleden

('10 years ago')
Terug naar DOS!

('Back to DOS!')
- 15 (vijftien) jaar geleden

('15 years ago') -

This and That

het huis de boom de auto's	(the house) (the tree) (the cars)
dit huis deze boom deze auto's - 2	(this house) (this tree) (these cars)
dat huis die boom die auto's	(that house) (that tree) (those cars)

hier daar - 2	(here) (there)
die dat deze dit	(that/those) (that) (this/these) (this)

Like English 'this/these' and 'that/those,' Dutch has dit/deze and dat/die for when you point or nod at something, to indicate near or far, but the usage is not exactly the same.

As an adjective (this page, those words), use

dit and deze for nearby objects
- deze for 'de' words (and all plurals)
- dit for 'het' words in teh singular
dat and die for objects further away
- die for 'de' words (and all plurals)
- dat for 'het' words in the singular

this car here	deze auto hier [de auto]
these words are hard	deze woorden zijn moeilijk [de woorden]
this house here	dit huis hier [het huis]
that car there	die auto daar [de auto]
those words are easy	die woorden zijn gemakkelijk [de woorden]
that house there	dat huis daar [het huis]

If I'm not mistaken, English uses 'this' for nearby singular and 'these' for nearby plural, 'that' for faraway singular and 'those' for faraway plural.

There's another usage in sentences like this is... and those are... In Dutch, this kind of line always uses dit or dat - there are no plurals here like in English.

this is my car	dit is mijn auto
these are my words	dit zijn mijn woorden
this is my house	dit is mijn huis

that is my car	dat is mijn auto
those are my words	dat zijn mijn woorden
that is my house	dat is mijn huis

'That' still has a third meaning (called 'conjunction') which also translates as dat in Dutch, like in
is it true that ...? is het waar dat ...?

The word order after this dat will be dealt with in a future lesson.

Die week moet ik werken ('That week I have to [be at] work')
Dat jaar was heel mooi ('[That year was very beautiful] That was a good year')
Een dezer dagen ... ('One of these days ...') - a standard expression with an old-fashioned possessive ending; modern Dutch would be 'een van deze dagen.'

For the many other meanings of dat and another meaning of die see (and hear) the 'Dat' Disambiguation Page

Cognates

You may have noticed that some Dutch and English words look alike, and even more telling are similarities in grammatical features like 'this and that' in the paragraph above, or the irregular plurals of 'child: children' and kind: kinderen

English and Dutch both come from the language of the Germanic tribes that started to spread out from what's now Southern Sweden, Denmark and the coast of Germany about 2300 years ago. Frisian, German, the Scandinavian languages (except Finnish) and the extinct Gothic are other descendants of the Germanic language. And of course, further back, most of the European languages, Persian and Kurdish, and many of the languages of India developed from the language of the Indo-Europeans that roamed Eastern Europe thousands of years ago.
As the Germanic tribes conquered, spread out over a larger area, they grew apart, and entering new environments and encountering other peoples and civilisations, their languages changed, and changes were no longer shared with the old neighbors.
The Angles and Saxons, whose language developed into English, moved to present-day England around 450 AD, where they in turn suffered the viking invasions of 800-1000 AD, and after 1066 they were ruled for a time by another group of vikings that had adopted the French language. Beside the human suffering caused and material damage done, these invasions greatly changed English. 1500 Years ago, the English were close to the Frisians, and it is said that speakers of modern Frisian have less difficulty reading Old English than modern-day English speakers.
Of course, languages adopt words all the time (leenwoorden

'loan words.') I guess most languages (except French) use a word similar to 'computer,' but that does not mean that they are linguistically related to English. Most European languages have about the same names for the months, but those are from Latin and were spread by the Romans and later the Catholic Church.
Linguists call words from the same root that live on in different languages 'cognates.' They rarely look exactly alike because words change in the course of time, and also because different languages have different phonetic systems, represent sounds with different letters.
The best way to learn about cognates is to hear them spoken. My English and German are not perfect, but you get the idea.

English	Dutch	German	hear	English	Dutch	German	hear
yesterday	gisteren	Gestern	2	free	vrij	frei	2
cold	koud	kalt	2	thunder	donder	Donner	2
salt	zout	Salz	2	weather	weer	Wetter	2
green	groen	grün	2	dove	duif	Taube	2
snow	sneeuw	Schnee	2	white	wit	weiß	2
more cognates

Only a small number of words between English and Dutch are cognates. 'Black,' for instance, does not have a Dutch cognate.The ones you notice may make memorizing the words easier.
black	zwart	schwarz	2
Dutch	Duits	Deutsch	2	The Dutch and German words mean 'German.'

Earlier in the lesson you've seen the names of the seasons:
lente

('Spring') - zomer

('Summer') - herfst

('Fall, Autumn') - winter

('Winter')
Two of these words are not cognates - but we still find something very similar to the Dutch word 'lente' (Spring) in the English word of 'Lent,' the 40 days of 'fasting' between Ash Wednesday and Easter, and the Dutch word 'herfst' (Fall) looks very much like the English word 'harvest,' which occurs at that time.
Change of meaning while staying in the same general area is very common with cognates. For instance, the Dutch word smal

just means 'narrow,' the Dutch word prettig

means 'pleasant,' and the Dutch word dier

2 3 is the general word for 'animal.'
Of course there are only 26 letters representing not an endless number of sounds, and they can only be put together in a limited number of pronounceable combinations. Not all words that look alike spring from the same root.

Further Reading:
J.P. Mallory: In Search of the Indo-Europeans
Orrin W. Robinson: Old English and Its Closest Relatives

zwaluw (swallow)
vink (finch)
nachtegaal (nightingale)
duif (dove)
zwaan (swan)

havik (hawk)
uil (owl)
koekoek (cuckoo)
raaf (raven)
kraai (crow)

merel (blackbird)
lijster (thrush)
specht (woodpecker)
roodborstje (robin)
eend (duck)

adelaar, arend (eagle)
ooievaar (stork)
reiger (heron)
meeuw (seagull)
gier (vulture)
(vleermuis (bat))

spreeuw (starling)
mus (sparrow)

sperwer 2 (sparrowhawk)

leeuwerik 2 (lark)

more animals - 2

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Don't be a dief (thief) / dievegge (female thief) - diefstal (theft) - stelen (to steal) - heler (dealer in stolen goods) - hear Dutch - 2