Customer Reviews

Dutch: A Comprehensive Grammar (Comprehensive Grammars)

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Somewhere out there there may be a more comprehensive Dutch grammar for English speakers, but you won't need it unless you are a scholar. This book covers pretty much every useful grammatical topic you will need for learning Dutch. Thankfully, Dutch is not a particularly difficult language for English speakers, so that fact helps keep the size of this grammar manageable. Any assiduous student should be able to master it in less that six months. After reading it you should be able to read any newspaper; and although speaking is a totally different animal, there is no reason you should not have a good grounding in speaking proper Dutch. The book, however, does not delve into colloquialisms to a great degree.

Bruce Donaldson is the doyen of English Dutch Teachers and his Comprehensive Grammar is far and away the best Dutch Grammer aimed at English speaking students available--far better than Professor Shetter's grammar cum text. It is an excellent reference grammar with clear explanations that do not require an in-depth understanding of generic grammatical terms. It is best used in conjunction with a text as a reference book. If you want to "read through" a brief summary of Dutch grammar, try Stern's Essential Grammar.

That's a very good grammar. I'm a Portuguese native speaker and it is very difficult to a Latin language speaker to learn a Germanic language, but this grammar made it easier. It even helped me with the German language. This one is great for beginners, everyone should buy it. With this book I was glad twice: I started to study an interesting language (Dutch) and I began to understand a very difficult language (German). Buy it, you won't be disappointed. It gives you a comprehensive explanation about all points of the Dutch language.

I totally agree with the other reviews about the value of this book. I have (and still use) Henry Stern's Dutch grammar book, but was to the point where I needed more information. Well, I sure got it! I was searching for something good but not quite as expensive as this book, but finally broke down and got it. It's well worth the cost.
I do think this should not be the choice for beginners, but for advanced learners that want the info without having to wade through reading a grammar book in Dutch I give it two thumbs up... heck, I'll borrow my Dutch boyfriend's thumbs and go for four thumbs up.

Bruce Donaldson's other book, Beyond the Dictionary in Dutch, is also awesome and great for someone with a little experience in the language.

Susanne Spangler

Over 30 years ago when I tried to learn the basics of the Dutch language in-country, there was nothing like this available. It was a struggle, particularly so when you're butchering the basics and kindly Dutch folks inevitably say, "Why don't we just speak English?" (which they do ever so well).

Ah, but now I'm older and wise enough to have picked up Donaldson's superb Dutch grammar for another go at the subject, this time in the warmer clime of the Dutch West Indies.

It's still a struggle, but thanks to this great resource, the "Why don't we just ..." questions come far less frequently. Reading Donaldson's "Comprehensive Grammar" is actually (amazingly) pleasureable and a good thing, too, since that's likely to be a daily affair for those who really want to learn this complicated "keel ziekte". A bit pricy, sure, but a great value, indispensible for the likes of me.

English-speaking learners of Dutch are done a great service by Bruce Donaldson. His comprehensive grammar [which I recommend be used in conjunction with the Routledge Essential Dutch Grammar and Dutch-English Dictionary] lives up to its name with its enormous scope, but unfortunately for the beginner, does away with the absolute basics and assumes that the reader already has these covered. Donaldson covers all manner of idiomatic usage in the book [particularly his extremely useful section on prepositions], though he unfortunately steers clear of modal particles. He explains away some constructions by recommending a parrot-fashion approach, but for the most part is very good at clarifying peculiar usages. For those interested in taking their Dutch explorations a step further, Kevin Cook's Dubbel Dutch serves as an excellent follow up to this volume [if you are: a. able to get your hands on it and b. willing to foot its price tag]

PS: The discrepancy in price between hardcover and paperback editions of this book is absurd. Stick to paperback.

The following review refers to the first edition:

This grammar is directed primarily at the intermediate student of the language, and in serving that audience, fails on two counts to earn the descriptor 'comprehensive'. In the first place, it assumes, especially with regard to phonology and graphology, that the reader is already substantially versed in the Dutch standard, and provides description only of points troublesome to a reader with such knowledge. It also fails to provide full treatment of forms deemed unusual or archaic, believing them to fall outside the range of interest of its intended audience, which demands a rough-and-ready practical description of contemporary Dutch usage. It is that which this grammar provides, not comprehensive description of the Dutch language.