# I am American



## largoplazo2

I became familiar with basic Dutch a very long time ago but now I bought a Pimsleur course to help me bone up on it. I'm already surprised by a couple of usage examples. Am I just not remembering correctly, or has anything changed about spoken Dutch in the last 35 years?

....

2. They give "Ik ben amerikaan" for "I am American" and "Ik ben nederlander" for "I am Dutch". But then they say that for a female, they are "Ik ben amerikaanse" and "Ik ben nederlandse". I'm confused, because I thought the distinction _amerikaan/amerikaanse_ was a noun/adjective distinction, not a gender distinction. Further, I thought "amerikaanse" would be used only attributively before a plural noun or a singular non-neuter noun ("New York is 'n amerikaanse stad"), and that predicatively it would always be "amerikaans" ("Deze steden zijn amerikaans".)

Is Pimsleur completely correct or do I have a point?


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## Peterdg

I'm afraid Pimsleur is correct an you are not. And, it hasn't changed since I was born (which is, if you look at my profile, already quite some time ago)


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## largoplazo2

Peterdg said:


> I'm afraid Pimsleur is correct an you are not. And, it hasn't changed since I was born (which is, if you look at my profile, already quite some time ago)



OK, thank you. I guess whatever intuitive feel I thought I had for Dutch is nonexistent. 

Weird that they made two copies of my thread&#8212;and gave them both titles different from the one I'd given the original.


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## Peterdg

largoplazo2 said:


> Weird that they made two copies of my thread—and gave them both titles different from the one I'd given the original.


You only posted one thread? 

Well, it's possible a moderator came along and saw you asked two different questions in the same thread and that he/she split the thread; you are only allowed to ask one question per thread. Also, the title must correspond to the question you ask, so it's possible that a moderator also changed the title.


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## largoplazo2

Oh, I get it. Thanks. Though I thought it was only one question: Is Pimsleur messing with me?


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## largoplazo2

Ah! I knew something was bothering me about this in the back of my head. I remember THIS stirring speech from "Het Achterhuis" ("The Diary of Anne Frank"):


> In die nacht wist ik eigenlijk dat ik sterven moest, ik wachtte op de politie, ik was bereid, bereid zoals de soldaten op het slagveld. Ik wou me graag opofferen voor het vaderland, maar nu, nu ik weer gered ben, nu is mijn eerste wens na de oorlog, _maak me Nederlander_! Ik houd van de Nederlanders, ik houd van ons land, ik houd van de taal en wil hier werken. En als ik aan de koningin zelf moet schrijven, ik zal niet wijken voor mijn doel bereikt is!



Not "... maak me Nederlandse"!


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## Peterdg

Sorry for the late reply. For some reason I missed your last post.

These are the subtleties of the language, I'm afraid. I've been thinking about a possible analogy with English, but I can't seem to find a good example. I guess that is because English doesn't have that many words that are different for male or female. 

However, I found this one: actor and actress (there must be more, but this one came up first). I think it would be strange if a woman would say "I'm an actor" instead of "I'm an actress". Same thing in Dutch: a woman would normally not say: "Ik ben Nederlander" but "Ik ben Nederlandse". 

"Nederlander", in the Anne Frank example, is a class of people, male and female together and as such it can be used this way. However, if you explicitly apply it to yourself (Ik ben ...), then the natural choice would be to make the gender distinction. 

I don't know if in English it would be accepable for a woman to say "Please let me become an actor" (=belonging to the group of people that act).


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