plover_dutch

This is my effort towards constructing a steno system for the Dutch language, using the Ireland layout usually used for writing English. I try to keep this Dutch system as similar as possible to Plover's English system, to minimize confusion between the two. After all, anyone writing in Dutch will probably also have to write in English rather often. However, quite a few differences are unavoidable to make this system practical.

Warning: this system is not finalized. I am still in the process of finetuning the rules, which also means the description below is permanently out of date. Furthermore, the dictionary is still pretty small (~7500 entries at the time of writing). I'm adding words as I encounter them, but this is not a very fast process.

If you want to use this system, and you run into problems, feel free to open an issue.

Layout

The steno layout is almost identical to the English layout, with the addition of an (optional) no-space key ^ as the upper half of S-. Furthermore, the -Z key is actually used for the -en ending instead of -z, but we'll still refer to this key as -Z. More details below.

Layout drawing by Kaoffie.

Vowels

The vowels are assigned like in English by matching pronunciation, not spelling. For example, we stroke Dutch long ee as AEU because it sounds like English long a (which is also stroked as AEU).

Pure vowels

Phoneme	Stroke	Remarks
a	A	short a as in lamp
aa	AE	long a as in taart, lader
e	E	short e as in mep
ee	AEU	long e as in meer, beter
i	EU	short i as in pit
ie	AOE	long i as in lied
o	O	short o as in kop
oo	OE	long o as in koop, koper
u / uu	U	short or long u as in hut, nu, huur

Note that, just like in English, this system is phonetic, that is, theoretically the spelling doesn't matter. For English loans, we generally prefer to use the English strokes, so hacken is written with A, not E (in this case, plus * to avoid conflict with hakken). The spelling of Dutch has precise rules regarding short and long vowels, but the pronunciation is often not so clear, especially in unstressed syllables. For example, the word planeet ‘should’ be stroked with AE (long a), not with A (short a), because the a is long according to the spelling because pla is an open syllable in the spelling. In practice, however, the pronunciation with a short a is common as well, so in these cases, I try to put both the short and long variants in the dictionary.

Diphthongs

Phoneme	Stroke	Remarks
ui	AU	as in huis
ou	OU	as in auto, hout
ij / ei / aai	AOEU	as in baai, rijk, reis, in case of conflicts usually the ei / aai spelling gets the *
oe	AOU	as in hoed
oi / oei / ooi	OEU	as in hoi, mooi, roei, in case of conflicts usually the oei / ooi spelling gets the *
eu	AO	as in keus

Some extra rules

• In Dutch an -r sound after a vowel tends to ‘color’ that vowel to sound slightly different. We ignore this effect when determining which vowel keys to stroke a word with, rather just following the spelling. So deur is written with AO, even though it may sound more like U.

• If a word ends in -ij we often stroke it as a short i (EU) instead of AOEU. This corresponds to the English system using EU for words that end in -y, and helps work around several conflicts (e.g., mij with EU, mei with AOEU, and maai with AO*EU).

• AO is used pretty consistently for prefix strokes (see below).

Initial consonants

As these are mostly the same as in English, we'll just describe the differences:

Phoneme	Stroke	Remarks
ch	KH
sch	SKH
schr	SKHR
j	KWR	for the default Dutch j- sound, which sounds like English y-; SKWR is still used for loans like jeans
g	TKPW	as in either gas or goal
vl	TPHR	stroked as fl
vr	TPR	stroked as fr
z	STKPW	not S* like in English, as that results in many conflicts
zw	SW	stroked as sw

Final consonants

Here there are some differences. In particular, Dutch has a very common -en ending, used for plurals and verb infinitives. This is so common that the -Z key is solely used for this ending. So, it is not used for words ending in -s or -z (the -S key is used for those).

Because -TZ cannot be easily stroked, we use just -Z (for the -ten ending). Similarly, because -SD cannot be easily stroked (for words ending on -ds), we use -TS instead.

Phoneme	Stroke	Remarks
-en	-Z
-ten	-Z	not -TZ
-ds	-TS	not -SD

Like in English, we use -F as a substitute for -S if required, so words on -st generally use -FT (or sometimes *S in the case of a conflict like lift / list). When adding -en to such a word, -F stays even though we drop -T: kost KOFT, kosten KOFZ (not KOSZ).

Here is an incomplete list of other interesting endings:

Phoneme	Stroke	Remarks
ch / g	-G	in case of conflicts usually the ch spelling gets the *
lijk / ling / lig	-LG	see suffixes below for details
ng / nk	-PBG	in case of a conflict, nk gets a *, or we use -PG instead for nk; see suffixes below for details
tie / sie	-GS	like in actie; this is just for consistency with English
je / tje / pje / kje	-PG
w	-FRPB	after u, such as duw, eeuw, lauw

Prefixes and suffixes

Prefixes with AO

To make prefixes, replace the vowel with AO. This works for almost all prepositions. There are a few special cases, such as in- IN (because in N-, again, like in English). Also note the conflict door- DAOR / deur DAO*R.

-e for adjectives

For almost all adjectives, adding * results in the conjugated -e form. So mooi MOI, mooie MO*I. This gives rise to some conflicts (bange / bank), and in these cases we usually moved the word with -nk to -PG instead. So bang BANG, bange BA*NG, bank BAPG. This also works for past participles used as adjectives. For nouns ending in -e (such as schede), the * is also often used.

The ge- prefix

The prefix for past participles ge- is very common, so for many verbs we allow adding ge- by just adding G- (= TKPW-) if possible, so gehad GHAD. If TKPW-is already occupied, you can often just add K- to indicate ge-, so geweest KWAIFT. If the verb starts with s- or z-, we generally use SK-. All of these can cause conflicts however, for example geleden / gleden. In case of doubt, just use the GE- prefix as a separate stroke.

Another common pattern is that in the case of separable verbs, the separable prefix gets placed in front of ge-, for example uitglijden becomes uitgegleden. It would be inconvenient to have to write uit- ge- gleden as three separate strokes. Therefore for all separable verb prefixes, it is possible to add -G on the right side to make variants with -ge attached, so we would write uitgegleden as uitge- gleden AOGT/GLAIDZ.

Diminutives

-PG adds -(t/p/k)je to make diminuties. For some very common diminutives we allow folding that in (eentje AIPG).

The -LG suffix

-LG is primarily used for -lijk (gevaarlijk KWAERLG), but also for -ling (leerling LAIRLG) and -lig (woelig WAOULG).

Connecting words

Compound nouns can in principle be created arbitrarily in Dutch, so it is impossible to put them all in the dictionary. The standard way to connect two words together is TK-LS (brandweer BRAND/TK-LS/WAEUR), but this is not very stroke-efficient. Therefore the top half of the S- key is named ^ and it serves to remove the space before the currently stroked word (so brandweer BRAND/^WAEUR).

You may be used to using the top half of S- for the s- sound already. Also, Plover currently does not officially support prefix keys, which makes it necessary to use nimble0's branch. Therefore, the ^ key is an optional feature.