For language lovers, it is one of the highlights of the year, the Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal. Saturday it’s that time again. The Eindhoven linguist Wim Daniëls wrote the text, just like in the past four years.
The Dictee will be broadcast around eleven o’clock in the morning on NPO Radio 1, during the program De Taalstaat by Frits Spits, born in Eindhoven. The broadcast comes from the Forum in Groningen. Twenty well-known Dutch people and twenty listeners of De Taalstaat make the Dictee there on location. Former Chamber President Gerdi Verbeet reads the text. Enthusiasts can participate from home and share their so-called ‘writing’ on Twitter with the hashtag GrootDicteeop1.
“A Dictation shouldn’t be too serious an activity.”
“The Dictee is organized in a different place every year. The makers wish to give it a regional touch,” explains Wim. “In addition, the story must be somewhat up-to-date. Then it is clear what you end up with in Groningen, the earthquake problem.”
But the participants need not fear a dramatic story. “No, a Dictation shouldn’t be too serious an activity”, the linguist explains. “It shouldn’t get too gloomy and you should finish it corny. And that in seven or eight sentences.”
“I test the rules of the Dutch game.”
Since Daniëls wrote the text, the Dictation looks very different from the Dictation that used to be seen on TV. It was full of complicated words. “A Dictee is not about dishing out a series of difficult words that people probably don’t know,” emphasizes Wim. “I test the rules of the Dutch game, not words you wouldn’t know. There are enough pitfalls here to make mistakes.”
Daniels thinks writing the Dictation is a fun activity. “I know a lot about it, so it’s not a big deal to make something like this,” he explains. “The Dictee is also well listened to, we get a lot of reactions to it.”
“If the winner has more than fifteen errors, it was a bad dictation.”
“You cannot make fifty mistakes in this Dictee”, Daniëls assures. “The winner should have five mistakes or less. If they had more than fifteen mistakes, I would have made a bad dictation. A dictation should be fun, should remain nice. This dictation is doable for someone who knows the spelling rules .”
However, according to him, it will be difficult to make the Dictee completely error-free. “The spelling rules are not always easy, sometimes even a bit inconsistent. For example, we write breathing together, but get water separately. You write agreement with two k’s, but approval – which is related to this – with two c’s. And vacant is with a c, while nowadays you write holiday with a k. Those are strange things in spelling, you cannot reason.”
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