Archaic Dutch declension was the declensional system of the Dutch language as prescribed by Dutch grammarians of the 19th century. There are some doubts about its use in the spoken language, but it was required in most forms of formal writing. The use of most forms of declension were abolished in a spelling reform that was promulgated by the Taalunie (Dutch Language Union) in 1934. After this reform, Dutch writing marked nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives to distinguish case, number, and gender.
Dutch writing distinguished between four cases—nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative (sometimes also the locative existed); and three grammatical genders—feminine, masculine, and neuter. Nouns could also be either singular or plural. By this time in spoken language however, only common and neuter gender and singular and plural nouns were actually used and these were no longer subject to further inflexion.
Read more about Archaic Dutch Declension: Usage of The Dutch Case System, Nouns, Adjectives, Pronouns
Famous quotes containing the words archaic, dutch and/or declension:
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Too nice is neighbor’s fool.”
—Common Dutch saying, trans by Johanna C. Prins.
“And from the first declension of the flesh
I learnt man’s tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
Into the stony idiom of the brain....”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)