Template talk:nl-conj

=Documentation=

Parameters
Required parameters:


 * 1) Present imperfect first person singular
 * 2) Present imperfect second/third person singular
 * 3) Past imperfect singular
 * 4) Past imperfect plural
 * 5) Past participle
 * 6) (optional, but recommended) Subjunctive singular, present
 * 7) (optional) Subjunctive singular, past

Optional parameters:


 * sep= Separable part, for separable verbs.
 * aux= Auxiliary verb for past participle. Defaults to 'hebben'.
 * aux2= Second auxiliary verb for past participle, if applicable.
 * inf= Infinitive form without the separable part. Affects the construction of present singular and present participle forms. Defaults to page name.
 * pres2s= Second person singular form, if different from third person singular form.
 * prespl= Present plural form, if different from infinitive and/or pagename. For separable verbs, use inf= instead of this.
 * prespart= Present participle form, if different from infinitive+d and/or pagename+d.
 * <tt>imp=</tt> Simple imperative form, if different from 1st person singular form.
 * <tt>refl=yes</tt> for reflexive verbs, in which case <tt>inf=</tt> should be set to the infinitive without "zich".
 * <tt>3p=only</tt> for verbs which are used only in the third person.
 * <tt>wide=yes</tt> for verbs which would otherwise wrap at the right margin (e.g. terugbrengen)

Usage
For a normal verb:

For a normal verb with present subjunctive:

For a normal verb with present and past subjunctive:

For a separable verb:

For a verb with differing 2nd and 3rd person forms:

For a reflexive verb:

Categories
If the sixth (unnamed) parameter is missing, then the table will categorize the article in Category:Dutch verb conjugations missing subjunctive.

=Discussion=

2nd and 3rd person
Second person and third person singular present are the same? I know of several verbs where they are different: zijn, hebben, willen, kunnen etc. Bit of an oversight of whoever made this template (although the intention was good), so could someone think of a way to fix it, and the entries that use it? --CodeCat 22:30, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Those verbs which you mentioned are all irregular, see Category:Dutch irregular verbs; this template is meant for regular verbs, whether weak or strong. &mdash;AugPi 16:49, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it make more sense to have a single template for all purposes? It would get a bit messy otherwise with different-looking templates for different variations of the same thing. --CodeCat 09:30, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Redoing the table a bit
I would like to redo the table a bit, as I currently think it's a bit messy and hard to oversee. However, I'd like some input from other people before I start on this. The general idea is to divide the table into two columns, present and past, somewhat similar to the current setup. However, vertically the person-forms for each tense would be listed, rather than the numbers as is now the case. I believe that it's a bad idea to unite 2nd and 3rd person singular, because a few verbs (zijn and hebben) have differing forms for these two, and it makes it impossible to use this template for those verbs. The setup I'm thinking of therefore looks something like this (in bad ASCII art :P):

infinitive  | zijn                          | imperative  | ben                           | |   present    |     past      | 1st singular | ben          | was           | 2nd singular | bent         | was           | 3rd singular | is           | was           | plural      | zijn          | waren         | participle  | zijnd, zijnde | zijn geweest  |

However, there is the issue of reflexive verbs. Support for them could be easily added to this template, except on one point. Because the plural forms are unified under a single entry, it makes it impossible to distinguish them for reflexive verbs, where the reflexive pronoun differs for person. For example zich bevinden would need three plural forms bevinden ons, bevinden je and bevinden zich. I suppose it's possible to make a switch in the template so that it displays all three forms for a reflexive verb, while only displaying one form for other verbs. Like this:

infinitive  | zich bevinden                                     | imperative  | bevind je/u                                       | |         present           |        past          | 1st singular | bevind me                 | bevond me            | 2nd singular | bevindt je                | bevond je            | 3rd singular | bevindt zich              | bevond zich          | 1st plural  | bevinden ons               | bevonden ons         | 2nd plural  | bevinden je                | bevonden je          | 3rd plural  | bevinden zich              | bevonden zich        | participle  | zich bevindend, bevindende | hebben zich bevonden |

This setup works, but it has one very minor nagging problem: u bevindt zich. U is properly a 2nd person form, but for some reason it uses zich rather than u as the reflexive pronoun. Any suggestions for this? --CodeCat 09:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Grammatically, u is third person, even though semantically it is 2nd person. So don't worry about that.  In general, the idea seems good, since it would provide a single template for all verbs.  Make it the default that the 3rd person singular will be the same as the 2nd person singular, unless an optional parameter, say <tt> 3rd= </tt> is used, which would contain the 3rd person singular form. &mdash;AugPi 19:06, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a similar split between grammar and semantics for the Spanish word usted: it is grammatically 3rd person, but semantically 2nd person. This split is precisely what makes these words be formal. &mdash;AugPi 19:13, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I did consider this, but then thought of u hebt and u bent, both of which are 2nd person forms. The combination with a reflexive pronoun is even stranger: u hebt zich. Perhaps a similar switch should be used so that the u-form is mentioned separately from the 2nd and 3rd person form. But I'm afraid this would make the template rather bulky and verbose. After all, we'd be making the template longer just for listing the differing reflexive pronouns, which aren't even important for the conjugation of the verb itself. So maybe it's a good idea to leave the reflexiveness out altogether, or replace it with a single (refl) to stand for the appropriate pronoun. --CodeCat 22:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Right, I've finished the first 'stage' of the new template. It is located at User:CodeCat/nl-verb-table for now. You can see it in action with two verbs on my userpage. Both verbs have differing 2nd and 3rd person forms, and one of them is also a separable verb. Please tell me what you think. :) --CodeCat 17:27, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that for separable verbs you might be better off using the <tt>prespl=</tt> parameter as default, using <tt>inf=</tt> additionally only if it differs from the present plural form (but that is pretty rare, isn't it?). In other words, keep the template backward-compatible with its present form so that we don't have to go through all the separable verb articles having to change <tt>prespl=</tt> to <tt>inf=</tt>. &mdash;AugPi 16:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Rare? I'd say nonexistent. But I didn't really change anything there, the original template already had separate <tt>inf=</tt>, <tt>prespl=</tt> and <tt>prespart=</tt> parameters. The only thing I changed is that it automatically derives the present plural and present participle from the infinitive form, so that the latter two parameters are technically no longer required. They are only retained for backwards compatibility with the old template. My reasoning was that sometimes, the template might need to be used on a page where the name does not match the verb's infinitive form (such as on my user page). In those cases, the <tt>inf=</tt> parameter would be used to override. However I figured that for separable verbs, the specified infinitive doesn't need to contain the separable part because it is already specified with <tt>sep=</tt>. And since the present plural and present participle can be derived from the 'bare' infinitive without the separable part, specifying only the infinitive would be enough anyway. --CodeCat 18:41, 26 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Here is a test of the verb aanbieden using your template:

The test shows that the new template is not backward compatible with what is currently there. &mdash;AugPi 15:03, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Apart from the infinitive and present participle forms it looks fine to me. And the only reason those went wrong is because the page name is used as the infinitive form by default. You should add <tt>inf=bieden</tt> to fix it. Compare also the same parameters used on the old template, which gives the same result:

So I really don't see the problem. --CodeCat 16:32, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right; I just tested your template directly in the aanbieden page, and it's working fine. &mdash;AugPi 19:17, 27 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I undid some of the edits you made, mostly because increasing the width of the left column broke the layout. I'm curious why you made the table centered and reversed the bolding though, it looked pretty good with everything left-aligned. I based my style on that of fi-conj, which you can see in action here. An idea I also had was to split up the word links for separable verb, so that the separable and main parts each link to their own word. I don't think anyone is going to ever want to find biedt aan so I think it would make sense to link it as biedt aan for lack of a better choice. In any case, I think the template works well enough to replace the old one. So go ahead or not? --CodeCat 09:28, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and did the move. Why did I make those visual changes? (1) To make it more similar to the old <tt>nl-verb-table</tt>, which I liked, (2) the new table looked kind of vacant.  The Finnish table  is a lot more populated; it has several more columns and rows, so it looks good with the entries flushed to the left and non-bold, but the Dutch table is a lot simpler, it only has three columns, so I though that the empty space would be filled better with centered entries in bold.  Besides, (3) bold conjugated forms make sense since they show up in bold (if) on the inflection line, as for example the case of .  However, I tried reversing bold and non-bold with  and found that it didn't work, because the dark green doesn't work well with non-bold: it works better with bold, and the light green works better with non-bold.  This shows that porting the style of one language directly to another language doesn't always work.  However, I see that  and  use non-bold centered for conjugated forms, so I might settle with you to have non-bold & centered conjugated forms with this template (i.e. reverse bold and non-bold again) if you insist.  Back to point (2): I still think there is some extra empty space in this table, so I am just now trying to make the NavFrame narrower, to 80%.  Are you OK with that?  As far as entries of the form biedt aan, I have sometimes looked up entries of such form, since I know that en.wiktionary has them.  While reading a Dutch text, I can often tell, even for verbs I don't know, that it corresponds to a preposition that comes later, and I know that I can join them (with a space in between, that is) for purposes of looking up on en.wiktionary.  However, such separated conjugated forms don't seem to be supported by the nl.wiktionary, so for the case of nl.wiktionary I would probably give up and look up aanbieden instead.  If you look at teruggaan you see that all of its conjugated forms are filled out (i.e. blue, not red), and this is true of many separable verbs on en.wiktionary, so one who already knows this about en.wiktionary, and who knows enough Dutch to recognize a separable verb when it appears in separated form, but not enough Dutch to know the particular separable verb in question (whichever it may be) would know that he (she) can look up an entry of the form biedt aan and often find it.  However, I don't know what other people's actual practices are "out there".  Words such as ging terug, though, qualify as entries in en.wiktionary (i.e. meet CFI), and many such words already form part of en.wiktionary, so for the sake of "completeness" I think that  should have links to such entries.  If the links are red, as is the case of biedt aan and its siblings in aanbieden, then that should encourage Wiktionarians such as myself to add such entries.  Also, when I type in "ging" in the search box and click on "Search" instead of "Go", I find the entries "ging over", "ging terug", "ging in" which mean different things than just "ging", so I think that having such compound forms is helpful.  By the way, when I do "fill out"/"populate" the conjugated forms of a separable verb, I use a spreadsheet to speed up the process: I copy the <tt>nl-conj</tt> template (with parameters filled out), paste it to one cell in the spreadsheet, then type in the pagename on another cell, and then the spreadsheet returns the codes for the different conjugated entries, spread out in different cells, for me to just copy and paste back to en.wiktionary. &mdash;AugPi 20:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Move to nl-conj?
Following Category talk:Conjugation and declension templates, I believe that this template would be best moved to Template:nl-conj. I know AugPi is going to hate me for this, but the move would leave a redirect behind so he wouldn't have to redo all his hard work. ;) --CodeCat 18:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Come to think of it, template would give the impression, due to the morphology of its title, that it belongs in the inflection line, which is wrong.  Template  seems to fit in better with its position under the Conjugation header.  So I'd say, go ahead.  &mdash;AugPi 14:51, 27 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I did so. By doing, I noticed that it has been moved before, and there is a stray talk page lying around: Template talk:nl-verb-conj. H. (talk) 17:02, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Subjunctive
It was trouble, but I finally added subjunctive functionality to the template. This meant creating two new templates: and  which are linked to conditionally by  depending on whether the 6th (unnamed) parameter is filled or not. One of the things remaining to be done is to add Reflexive functionality, and User:CodeCat will probably be better at this than I. &mdash;AugPi 01:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually AugPi, subjunctives (as rare as they are) can occur in both forms for separables:


 * Het bakke niet aan. Dat het niet aanbakke!

Either sentence is grammatically correct. Both are terribly archaic and are about as useless to thee as the thou-form in thy own language... Jcwf 01:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The template doesn't really work, because it foregoes the distinction between present and past subjunctive. This distinction is important because many verbs have both forms. For example zij vs. ware, hebbe vs. hadde or lope vs. liepe. The subjunctive singular and plural would therefore best be listed as two rows between the plural indicative and the participles. The template should accept a 6th, and optionally a 7th parameter, to specify the subjunctive present and past singular (plural is always identical to indicative). If the 7th is not specified, it takes the form from the indicative (which is useful for weak verbs as they have no distinctive past subjunctive). For example, for hebben: <tt> </tt>
 * Oh, and btw, the second sentence there is a subclause, and so the separable part is put before, just like all other verb forms. --CodeCat 08:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I have now implemented the past subjunctive. Check out zijn, hebben, lopen, aanbakken.  The coding was simpler this time: I used a pair of template "patches",  and  to conditionally "patch up"  at the appropriate places.  Instead of a 7th parameter, I used an optional (given the 6th parameter) named parameter <tt>pastsub=</tt>. &mdash;AugPi 18:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Seems to me like it needlessly complicates things. Why even have several different templates? I could easily rig it up so that it works with a single template. And it could also easily be made to work without a <tt>pastsub=</tt> parameter, and instead just a 7th one that can optionally be left off. I think the best approach is to simply make param 6 required and param 7 optional, since every verb has a distinct present singular subjunctive form. The template could be made to automatically add any articles missing parameter 6 to some category, so that we can easily spot those with faulty templates and fix them up. I will start on this in a week or so, as I'm currently away from home. --CodeCat 19:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I once tried to add conditional rows to a template but it didn't work because the MediaWiki got the | separators between adjacent rows of the table confused with the | separators between adjacent entries of the <tt> </tt>.  But if you can get it all to work in a single template without any of my "splits" or "patches" then that would be better, so go ahead (with this and also with 7th and requisite 6th parameters). &mdash;AugPi 19:39, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a template especially for that I think. It does the same as a regular | but doesn't mess up in tables. Anyway, I'll have a go but as I said it'll be about a week. --CodeCat 19:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The template has worked like a silver bullet.  I have reversed the template "patchings" and "splittings" and deleted the auxiliary templates (which now show up red-linked on this page), so now all the code is in  like it should be.  I also changed the <tt>pastsub=</tt> parameter so that it is now param 7.  If param 6 is missing then Category:Dutch verb conjugations missing subjunctive shows up, but it currently contains only 75 articles, even though there are (I think) vastly many more; it might be just a matter of time before the rest show up. Also, I changed the subjunctive for wezen to be more like zijn since that seemed more logical: you might check it since you are the native speaker. &mdash;AugPi 21:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I really have reservations about plural forms and even more so past subjunctives. Even in Middle Dutch the only distinguishable subj. was the third person singular (as in English by the way: 'he say' instead of he says). In modern Dutch its use is pretty much limited to fossilized idiomatic expressions. Past subjunctives are extinct now, except for things like "als het ware". (zijn).


 * Reservations or not, the subjunctive is, at least semantically, still part of the language, and I do still use it even in informal speech. However, I do believe that people use the indicative form as a subjunctive, instead of the distinct subjunctive form. For example was dat niet gebeurd.... But nevertheless, you'll still run into the subjunctive in more formal speech and set phrases, and as long as people are going to encounter it, they are going to want to look it up. The mission of Wiktionary (AFAIK) is to document every word in every language, so that certainly includes Dutch subjunctives, however rare they may be. And to AugPi: I believe the present subjunctive of wezen is weze. At least I do recall hearing it occasionally. --CodeCat 10:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Passive voice
At nl.wikt I have added passive voice functionality to the -nlverb- template. There are three cases:


 * 1) Transitive verbs that have a full set of passives using worden and zijn as aux.
 * 2) Inergative verbs that only have an impersonal passive using er. "Er wordt gexxx".
 * 3) Ergative verbs that have no passives at all.

Perhaps something to add? Jcwf 02:03, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Passive voice is formed by a phrase in Dutch, which means that you'll be listing the same thing over and over again for each verb, since the verb form itself doesn't actually change in the passive. Seems like it defeats the point of a conjugation table. --CodeCat 08:52, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't know that nl.wiktionary had full-fledged verb conjugation tables, 878 of them! Hey CodeCat, look at hebben/vervoeging: it gives me an idea on how to handle the formal conjugations for reflexive verbs: "<tt>2nd person singular</tt>" would be replaced by "<tt>2nd person singular   formal</tt>", then "<tt>hebt je</tt>" next to it would be replaced by "<tt>hebt je   hebt zich</tt>". &mdash;AugPi 22:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Jcwf, I looked at the afgieten/vervoeging article, and this thought comes to mind: if en.wiktionary doesn't even have future tense, then much less should it have passive voice, because the passive voice is constructed from {form of worden} + {past participle of xxx}, each of which is given, respectively, by the conjugation tables of "worden" and "xxx"; just as future tense is constructed from {form of zullen} + {infinitive of xxx}. Future tense would have to come first, then passive voice: passive voice isn't being used much in the nl.wiktionary, whereas the future tense is used universally. &mdash;AugPi 23:38, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Reflexive
I have added reflexive functionality: check out zich bevinden and zich gedragen. Should template be deleted? &mdash;AugPi 01:35, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've noticed that the title of the conj table for reflexive verbs only displays whatever is in the inf= parameter. Was this intended? I believe it should include both zich and the inf (ie the ).


 * This line:   only deals with sep verbs when the inf= param is present in the template. We should probably add another if statement to check for the presence of the refl param and deal with it accordingly:    Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 10:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I've made the change. Let me know if you think this should be done otherwise. Thanks Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 05:55, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Irregular or Weak
An example of a verb which can be either irregular or weak: toezeggen. AugPi 02:59, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:nl-verb-conj
Creates a large awkward table, and doesn't categorise the verbs, hence 70 verbs in Special:UncategorizedPages. I'd do something myself, but I'd probably just end up breaking it even more. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:57, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Why should it categorize the verb? Most conjugation tables don't categorize, becaue the inflection line template does that already.  So, the way to fix the lack of categorization is to add .  As far as size, this is actually a rather compact table compared to some.  I'm not even sure it's worth making it collapsible.  However, I'll defer to community opinion.


 * The real problem here is that has been used as a redirect to this conjugation table template, which means the conjugation table is sometimes appearing on the inflection line.  I'm not sure a bot can be made to clean this up, but what seems to be needed is (1) a repositioning of the conjugation table in a Conjugation section after the verb, (2) a use of  in that Conjugation section, (3) a proper rewrite of  to serve as an inflection line template, and (4) a use of  on the inflection line.  This affects over 500 entries, and will not be a simple cleanup. --EncycloPetey 13:06, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I fixed the table, by redirecting it internally to . Also, in the inflection line, the following templates are supposed to be used:, , and , depending on what kind of verb it is. &mdash;AugPi 17:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Stricken --Volants 14:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Another revamp
When I was working on, I noticed how a lot of adjective forms were able to be derived from a much smaller set of 'base' forms. I figured the same could probably be done with verbs as well. So I started on some small-scale editing of and after a while ended up with a complete redesign. It works like now, which is actually a 'base' template that others can be derived from. That way it splits the generation of the inflection forms from generation of the table itself, which is a lot more manageable I think. I'm certainly proud of it. :) The new table includes some more rare forms as well, such as subjunctives and plural imperatives, which are no longer in widespread use nowadays but will occasionally be encountered by readers/language learners. It also shows the gij-form separately, which is rare in the Netherlands but is common in Belgium, so I figured it would be unfair to leave it out (and it is part of the standard language in any case).

Currently, the base table is at User:CodeCat/nl-conj, and I have created three templates that transclude it and provide it with forms to put in the table cells: User:CodeCat/nl-conj-wk, User:CodeCat/nl-conj-st and User:CodeCat/nl-conj-irr. They currently support separable verbs as well, but not reflexives (which isn't a major concern anyway, and I might figure out how to include that). Particularly the irregular verb table may appear cluttered in how it works, because the parameters seem muddled up and illogically ordered. However, I have based the ordering on which are most likely to be needed, so that the ones that are most likely to be defaulted are at the end. And in any case, irregular verbs are rare, so that template will be too. ;) I have put a bunch of test cases on User:CodeCat/sandbox, so take a look.

One final note: The template is not backwards-compatible with the current template, so if this ends up being used at all it'll have to be put at a different name. This isn't a huge problem, as the main nl-conj template isn't meant to be used directly anyway. Rather, you would use nl-conj-wk, nl-conj-st or nl-conj-irr. --CodeCat 00:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I have added preliminary support for reflexives, but while implementing it I ran into a problem. What should the words actually link to? Imagine a word like 'zich opdelen'. Should the 1st person singular term link to 'deel me op'? I doubt that would be a very useful entry, since people would rarely if ever look for such a term. The same applies to the subclause form 'me opdeel'. Furthermore, there is the problem of forms that use several different reflexive pronouns depending on the subject. The plural form 'delen op' would have to be listed as 3 different forms 'delen ons op', 'delen je op', 'delen zich op'. Then the same for the subjunctive as well giving 8 (!) subjunctive forms rather than the usual 2. For the imperative likewise: 'deel je op' and 'deel u op'. The only alternative is to simply list the reflexives e.g. as 'delen ons/je/zich op' but that brings me back to the first question. Which wiktionary entry should such terms be linked to? --CodeCat 12:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:nl-conj
Orphaned, apparently redundant. However I didn't want to delete this without any second opinions. At the very least, we keep the talk page. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:47, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If it's deprecated, then it should be converted for use generating the inflection line of Dutch conjunctions, just like . --EncycloPetey 06:54, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Should inflection line templates for conjunctions really be called xx-conj? I imagine almost all languages with conjugation tables will have a conflict there. Besides, it's confusing if xx-conj is an inflection line template, but xx-conj-yyyy is a conjugation table. —CodeCat 17:20, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. Not all. Yes. --EncycloPetey 18:01, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * So then I conclude that either you're advocating to have the same name (xx-conj) have two meanings depending on language, or you're advocating to rename all conjugation templates to something other than xx-conj. In either case, I say no. There are a lot more languages where xx-conj means 'conjugation' than there are where it means 'conjunction'. —CodeCat 19:20, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems that conj is used on Wiktionary for both conjunction and conjugation. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:23, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That was my conclusion, too, yes. But it depends on the language in question which meaning it has. For languages that don't need conjugation templates (such as English), it means conjunction. For languages which have conjugation templates (such as Dutch) it means conjugation. Even if we preserve the current situation, we shouldn't have nl-conj mean both 'Dutch conjunction' and 'Dutch conjugation'. —CodeCat 19:25, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I came up with the idea of using for the entire template, so if the template's used it doesn't display anything. Or we could rename it and delete/replace the redirect. Or just delete all together. As CodeCat says, it might make a good reference tool for future Dutch editors. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:03, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Deleted. The first words of this discussion are accurate: "Orphaned, apparently redundant." There are various related issues and doubts here, such as what to do with the label "conj" in Dutch or all languages, but no one seems to be wanting to use the current "Template:nl-conj" anyway. Having the template as a reference tool for future Dutch editors might be a good reason for undeleting it, but I'd expect the current Dutch conjugation templates to be always more suitable for this goal. --Daniel. 19:28, 21 May 2011 (UTC)