THE 'COMPENDIOUS GUIDE' ON DUTCH SYNTAX.
NO DEFINITE RULES.--ALL NOUNS TO WHICH HET IS PREFIXED ARE NEUTER.--DEN
IS NOT A PURE NOMINATIVE.--IK GRAUW, IK KEF, EN IK KWEEL.--A BOYTON TO
THE RESCUE.
Boyton's monograph on pronunciation is his finest piece of work. He
never quite reaches that level elsewhere; and, if he is destined after
a hundred and fifty years to achieve a name, it had better rest on his
'Doctrine of the Native' than on his Syntax.
So van Dam assured us, when our little party met in his room the week
before Christmas.
We had all been busy; but busy or not, the Cape men found time to skim
over Boyton's entertaining paragraphs, as, indeed, we guessed, from the
frequent guffaws and readings that reached us from time to time through
the closed doors. To night we had accepted an invitation to supper,
before the holidays; and we were to hear his views on O'Neill's 'Guide,
Philosopher and Friend', Boyton,--in other words the '_Wegwijzer tot de
nederduitsche taal_'. Long since Jack had, indeed, got other and more
modern manuals of Dutch, so that he was supposed to look now with a
certain contempt on his former monitor: but the "compendious guide" had
laid the basis of his erudition, and he had still a sneaking regard for
its honest old pages.
What we wanted, indeed, was stories from Jack himself: but we had
exhausted the more dramatic of these; and to get the fine aroma of the
others--there were still many others--we thought some acquaintance with
the compendium's syntax was essential.
Van Dam had undertaken to put us up to any niceties he had been struck
with.
The first thing he told us was that Boyton had no clear ideas of any
sort, and never laid down any definite rule. This lent him a certain
diffidence in regard to most points,--a diffidence which in the case of
HET became positive fright. At the first mention of +de+, +het+, and an
+adjective+, he gives as much encouragement as he can.
It is not much.
=An insurmountable Difficulty for the Englischman is the right use of
the Particles, especially +het+. Sufficient rules cannot be given,
E. g. het mooie kind: eene sterke vrouw, een zwart schip.=
=+This is certain, that all Nouns, to which the Particles, het, dat,
or dit, are added are of the Neuter Gender; on this account, the e
final, in the Adjectives, when joined with such words, is,
generally, rejected.+=
=Even this rule admits of an exception. E. G. It is never said: +een
snel vogel: de groote paard+. But it is correct to say, if the
meaning admits it, +een groote man+. (also +groot+.) A native may be
consulted with advantage.=
When Boyton is labouring under strong emotion, the effect is always to
increase the number of commas, colons, and other stops.
His agitation may also be traced in the way he harks back to any
fundamental rule that he has already discussed ad nauseam.
It is quite pathetic to note how he urges on his readers to reserve
their dezen and dien and den for the accusative.
=It is good Dutch to say: ik zag dien braven man gisteren, _I saw
that honest man yesterday_; +but it is very bad Dutch,--whatever
custom may have introduced in some places; to say+--dien braven man
heeft het gezegd.=
Take some gems at random.
=N.B. Prepositions are that part of speech, which are so called
because they are, commonly, put before the words, which are
subsequent to them, as +onder+ and +ondanks+.=
=N.B. Most Adverbs may be distinguished from adjectives by this
rule: If a substantive is added after them, they will make
+nonsense+; whereas, being joined to an Adjective or a Verb, they
will make good sense.=
"What I admire most," said van Dam handing back The Work to O'Neill,
"is the elasticity of the rules. He says, for instance, that you can
render +I know+ by +ik weet+, and on the whole he is inclined to
recommend that way of it. But he never commits himself.
"+It must be also admitted that there are other authors of good standing
who employ the Subjunctive form where we might expect the Indicative
and who say+ IK WETE, +I know+."
That's one of his rules!
As a matter of fact there is no finality about anything in these pages.
O'Neill, you were in training for a poet when you took up this book. I
confess I should have liked to hear you going over your fifteen classes
of irregular verbs, on the model (say) of ik grauw, ik kef en ik kweel,
or even of ik krijsch, ik piep en ik lieg.
There is a rich profusion of tenses too in Boyton. He needn't have
apologized for being too simple when he furnishes you with four
ordinary optatives and four future optatives."
"You may jest as you like about Boyton", interrupted Jack; "but I tell
you it's a book that has points. Do you know it once helped me to save
a lady's life?"
"Save a lady's life!" said the Professor and the Philosopher in one
breath. "We'll withdraw all we've said, if you'll prove to us, now, that
the 'Compendious Guide' was ever the least good to any human being."
"Tell your adventure in your own way, O'Neill," a boyish voice chimed
in; "and shame the cynics."
We all glared at the First-year's man--who was making himself very
much at home for a lad of his tender years--but as he had nothing
more to say, we let him off with a look, and turned to the lethargic
story-teller.