The t kofschip (, ''the merchant-ship''), t fokschaap (the breeding sheep), also often referred to as kofschiptaxi or soft ketchup (among foreign language learners) rule is a

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...

that determines the endings of a regular

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

verb in the past

indicative A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Most ...

subjunctive The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality ...

and the ending of the

past participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

. This rule should not be confused with the so-called

T-rules The T(ea)-rules (''T(hee)-regels''), are a set of conjugation rules used in the Dutch language to determine whether the second person singular/plural and the first and third person singular of a verb end in ''-t'' or not. These rules are related ...

(''t-regels'').

Rule

The rule goes as follows: For example: Because of the idiosyncrasies of Dutch spelling, some forms are spelled in unexpected ways. The past tense forms of ''proeven'' and ''blozen'' are written with ''f'' and ''s'', as Dutch spelling rules permit the letters ''v'' and ''z'' only at the beginning of a syllable; however the pronunciation remains and . Words may not end in a double consonant, so the past participles ''gerust'', ''geland'' and ''gered'' do not get an additional ''-d''. See

Dutch orthography Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational establishments. Legal basis In the Netherlands, the official spelling is regulated ...

for more information. Because of regular

final-obstruent devoicing Final-obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as Catalan, German, Dutch, Breton, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Turkish, and Wolof. In such languages, voiced obstruents in final p ...

, the past participle ending is pronounced with a voiceless even though ''d'' is spelled. When the participle is inflected (in accordance with a following noun), the devoicing is undone, like in other words. Thus ''geland'' , ''geleegd'' , ''geproefd'' inflect to ''gelande'' , ''geleegde'' , ''geproefde'' respectively.

Further details

On a phonological level, the rule is a form of voicing assimilation: the consonant of the past-tense ending takes on the voicing of whatever sound precedes it. Thus, the endings beginning with voiceless ''-t-'' are used after voiceless consonants, while the endings beginning with voiced ''-d-'' are used after voiced consonants and vowels (which are always voiced). Similar rules appear in several other Germanic languages, such as Swedish and English. In English, the rule is not usually reflected in spelling, but is still regular in pronunciation: compare ''raced'' and ''razed'' . Because the rule is intended only as an educational tool, it only covers the basic Dutch vocabulary which consists mostly of native Germanic verbs. It cannot be applied to verbs with "new" phonemes such as and , nor to foreign words whose spelling was not completely adapted to Dutch spelling. It also cannot be used for

initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

s. In this case, only the underlying voicing of the pronounced final consonant can be used to determine the ending. For example:

Rule

Further details

References

Further reading