Strange Facts About The Dutch Language

Dutch is a difficult and challenging language that features some very strange aspects, such as unexpected borrowings and very difficult spelling.

Dutch & Other Languages

You may be surprised to learn how many Dutch words are borrowed from other languages. French used to be considered the height of elegance in the Dutch-speaking world, leading to a lot of borrowings from French, such as paraplu(umbrella), bureau (desk or office), and horloge (wrist watch), among many others.

Almost equal in the number of borrowings is Hebrew, which is often surprising until you consider the large Jewish populations in Holland beginning in the Middle Ages. Jews developed their own versions of the local languages (e.g., Yiddish) but also contributed to Dutch by process of linguistic osmosis. Today most of the Hebrew words are part of the ‘street’ or slang language in Amsterdam, such as bajes (jail),jatten (to steal), and kapsones (arrogance).

Dutch Words

Dutch is a curious language in three main aspects that make them look very odd to English-speakers (or, frankly, the speakers of most other languages!).

For one, Dutch is very hard to pronounce. It contains a lot of very hard consonant sounds that can be very rough on the throat. When you first start learning Dutch, in fact, it’s not unusual for your throat to start to hurt as you try chewing through words like Scheveningen. If you think German is a tough language to pronounce well, get ready, because the Dutch hit those hard consonants even harder. The difference is great enough that in World War II would identify German spies by the way they pronounced Dutch words.

Dutch also contains some extremely long words. More than thirty letters isn’t uncommon, like their word for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: chronischevermoeidheidssyndroom. Yes, where English uses three words, the Dutch simply have one enormous word. Not only are these words long, but many Dutch words also have a lot of consonants, which can make for difficult reading and speaking. Take slechtstschrijvend (worst writ­ing) for example. After trying to learn and pronounce words with nine or more consonants in a row, you’ll need a drink.

Still, it’s exactly this sort of weirdness that makes language, for me, the most interesting subject in the world. It’s simply never a dull moment!

- Stacy (One Hour Translation)

- Image credit to shekills

A Guide to Dutch - 10 facts about the Dutch Language

1. Where is Dutch spoken?

Dutch is a national language in the Netherlands, Belgium, Surinamein South America and the Dutch Antilles. In Belgium, it’s the official language of Flanders, the Northern region of the country, and is also spoken in Brussels, although the majority of the city’s population speak French. In Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, Dutch is still an official language, but several other languages are spoken there too.

In total, there are over 22 million native speakers of Dutch and it’s a popular second language in Germany, the north of France and increasingly in Eastern Europe. You may also find older native speakers in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada as many Dutch people migrated to these countries in the 1950’s.

2. What you already know about Dutch

Many Dutch words are similar to English ones as both languages come from the same old Germanic root; particularly names for everyday things like fruits and vegetables or colours, e.g.

Dutch settlers in the U.S. in the 17th century held on to their language for quite some time and many words made their way into (American) English, such as coleslaw from koolsla, cabbage salad, cookie from koekje, biscuit, or Santa Claus from Sinterklaas / Sint Nicholaas, Saint Nicholas.

Another source of Dutch influence on the English language is throughAfrikaans, which in its turn is a Dutch-based creole, e.g.

Look at the following Afrikaans sentence:

“My pen was in my hand.” You can see that it’s spelled exactly the same in English, even though the pronuncation in Afrikaans would be closer to Dutch.

3. How hard is it to learn?

Dutch is probably the easiest language to learn for English speakers as it positions itself somewhere between German and English. For example, you may know that German has three articles: der, die and das, and English only one: the. Well, Dutch has two: de and het, but it doesn’t have all the grammatical cases like German. However, de and het are quite possibly the hardest part to learn, as you have to memorise which article each noun takes.

Just like German, Dutch sentences often place the verb at the end, which takes some getting used to. It also makes use of so-called modal particles, lots of little words such as: “nou, toch, nog, maar, eens, even”, which alter the mood of a sentence, e.g. they make a command less direct, nicer, or a request more urgent. On the whole, they have no direct translations in English.

4. The most difficult words and tongue twisters

During the Second World War, the Dutch would identify Germans by asking them to pronounce Scheveningen. Consequently, the name of this seaside town is a well-known shibboleth, a Hebrew term for a word that, if pronounced correctly, distinguishes you clearly as belonging to a certain group.

Similarly, the Flemish used to ask people to pronounce Schild en Vriend, shield and friend, when trying to identify French-speaking spies. As you can see, they all have the sch sound. But it can get harder when you have to combine this with an r. Have a go at the Dutch word for terrible, which is a terrible word to pronounce indeed: verschrikkelijk. Or how about “herfst”, the Dutch word for autumn? Both words have four consonants in a row!

For a real challenge, try this: Wij smachten naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten, we long for eighty eight wonderful nights at eighty eight wonderful canals.

5. Know any good Dutch jokes?

Like its European neighbours, the Dutch language knows many jokes about (blonde) women, relationships or other nations. The Dutch like to joke about the Belgians (by which they usually mean the Flemish) and in return, the Flemish like to joke about the Dutch. Quite often, the content is the same, and the neighbours are made out to be immensely stupid.

In the following joke, substitute 'men' by a Dutchman and a Belgian and interchange them, depending on who you prefer… “Twee mannen wandelen in de woestijn Zegt de ene tegen de andere Waarom zeul je een autodeur mee? Nou, zegt de andere, als ik het te warm krijg, kan ik het raampje opendraaien!” Two men are walking in the desert. One says to the other: Why are you carrying a car door? Well, says the other, if I get too hot, I can always wind down the window!

6. If I learn Dutch, will it help me with any other languages?

Dutch is a member of the West Germanic family tree, and as such, is a cousin of English and German and a sibling to Afrikaans. Another cousin is Frisian, a regional minority language spoken in the North of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Dutch is also related to North Germanic language family members, such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

7. What not to say and do

If you walk into a Dutch café, you won’t find any fry-ups, but you could ask for a beer as a café is more like a bar, although coffee is always served, too. If you see a sign for   lagere school, it’s simply a primary school. And if you see “kip” on the menu, don’t think you’re getting fish, as it's actually chicken. Tourists enjoying a cup of coffee in quaint tearooms have expressed surprise at seeing “slagroom” on the menu. Rest assured, this means nothing more than whipped cream!

As Dutch has a separate word for male or female friends, beware when introducing a friend as “mijn vriendin”, my female friend, or “mijn vriend”, my male friend, as this implies this person is your girlfriend or boyfriend. To avoid a misunderstanding, it’s better to say that they’re “een vriend / een vriendin”, a friend.

8. Famous quotations

Famous quotes which have found their way into the Dutch and Flemish psyche are often credited to well-known writers. In 1889, the impressionist poet, Herman Gorter, wrote the famous first lines  Een nieuwe lente en een nieuw geluid, a new spring, a new sound, to his lyrical celebration of spring in the long poem Mei, May - a useful line for whoever wants to indicate a new dawn is coming.

One of his contemporaries, Willem Kloos, wrote: Ik ben een God in't diepst van mijn gedachten, I am a God at the deepest point of my thoughts (1884), which is often used, replacing 'God' with whatever suits the context.

But last words can be famous too, as in the final sentences of Gerard Reve’s iconic post-war novel,   De Avonden, The Evenings, which read: "Het is gezien", mompelde hij, "het is niet onopgemerkt gebleven". Hij strekte zich uit en viel in een diepe slaap. “It has been seen”, he mumbled, “it hasn’t remained unnoticed”. He stretched out and fell into a deep sleep.

9. First publication

A popular myth has it that the oldest Dutch words were discovered in Rochester in the U.K., in the margins of an old Latin manuscript in 1932. These written words date back to the 12th century, and they were probably written by a Flemish monk doing copying work and trying out his pen. They contain the lines of a light-hearted love poem, which goes like this: “Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu. Wat unbidan we nu?” Have all birds begun nests, except me and you? What are we waiting for?

It’s a true and very sweet story, but they weren’t the oldest words. Older manuscripts have, in fact, been found such as a local law book, the Salic Law, dating as far back as the sixth century.

10. How to be polite and show respect

Dutch makes a distinction in the second person pronoun ‘you’ between the more formal “u” and less formal “je / jij”. The formal u is normally used for people you don't know and the je in all other cases. There’s been a shift in the last few decades towards an increased use of the informal over the formal and it’s quite normal now to be addressed with je in a bar or a shop by the serving staff, which would have been unthinkable just 40 years ago.

When people meet, they often kiss, up to three times depending on the region, but in more formal setting, handshakes will do.

An interesting custom in the Netherlands is that at a birthday party, guests will not only congratulate the birthday person, but also his or her relatives. They will say: “Gefelicteerd met je moeder! or Gefeliciteerd met je vader, je zus, je man, je zwager.” Lit. Congratulations with your mother, or, Congratulations with your father, your sister, your husband, your brother-in-law.

Source:  A Guide to Dutch (BBC)

Why I won't learn any more germanic languages.

Why is Dutch so hard to learn?

The signs at the airport should be reassuring. Welcome to the Netherlands! What could be easier to figure out? Dutch has been rightly described as between German and English, which means that while all three are closely related west Germanic languages, Dutch is closer to English. (Frisian, spoken in a coastal region spaninng the Dutch-German border, is even closer.) Pick up a Dutch newspaper, and your first impression will be reinforced. The local freesheet tells me that “een nieuwe komedie” is appearing starring Charlize Theron. This new comedy is called “Een Miljoen Domme Manieren om Dood te Gaan”, and if you squint (and happen to know the English title) you can easily see “a million dumb manners for dead to go”, or “a million dumb ways to die”.  (In English the film is called “A Million Ways to Die in the West”.)  The movie is “van de maker van Ted”, “from the maker of Ted” (another comedy). And so on. If you have a bit of German, even the words that don’t look like English are usually clear. (Reports of an “ongeluk” are clearly about an “accident”, just like the German Unglück.) So if you speak German and English you can learn Dutch in about 15 minutes, right? Wrong. Not, at least, if you want to go beyond the newspaper and speak to anyone. A German room-mate once described Dutch as “sounding like a throat illness”. The English-speaking native can be forgiven a raised eyebrow upon hearing this from a German. Dutch consonants are mostly familiar. But those that aren’t are forbidding. The sound in the Scottish loch and German words like Bach shows up everywhere. Those who have learned to use it at the ends of words must learn to use it at the beginning—all the time. Dutch has no native g sound, as in the English go, and usually replaces it instead with this throat-clearing. Other familiar letters are put to unfamiliar uses, like oe, which is pronounced like the vowel in food. And then consonants “devoice” at the end of words, so that d sounds like t and b like p and so on. So if you were reassured that goed is the English good, you must remember that it sounds like khoot. Then the Dutch like to join their consonants together. English does this too, so that poor souls used to simple consonant-vowel alternation (as in Japanese) struggle mightily with words like strengths. But one of the strengths of the Dutch lies in their ability to string words into ungainly compounds, like their German and Scandinavian counterparts. If the first element of the compound ends in a tricky cluster and the second element also starts with another, you might get a monster like slechtstschrijvend, with nine consecutive consonants, representing seven consonant sounds. Admittedly, this is the kind of barely-a-word mostly used to flummox foreigners (it means "the worst writing"). But as such, it is best-in-class. The legendary Danish shibboleth rødgrød med fløde may beat it for unpronounceability, but at least a foreigner can look at it and give it a try. Looking at slechtstschrijvend it’s tough even to see where the syllables are. It looks more like someone has fallen asleep on the keyboard. Of course Dutch has vowels, but these too can trip the unwary, especially when they join forces. The last bit of Rembrandt van Rijn, for example, has a diphthong that is a bit like eh-ee at its core. Not so bad, if you practise. But the common dipththong in words like uit (out) requires a quick glide from something like a British person’s er to the u sound in French words like tu, with the lips rounded and the tongue high and far forward. Got that, now? It is tempting to give up. As you flail around in their language, the Dutch will inevitably quickly switch to flawless English. And on the rare occasion when they don’t know a word, the kinship to English can, in the end, sometimes save the day. Johnson asked a waitress what the thinly shaved red thing wrapped around some white cheese was. She frowned apologetically. “I’m sorry. I don’t know... We call it a biet.” I was relieved to tell her, “So do we.” -  THIJSSEN TRANSLATIONS Source: http://www.thijssen-translations.eu/blog/2014/06/26/why-is-it-so-hard-to-learn-dutch

GELUKKIG NIEUWJAAR!!!

School Subjects in Dutch

A list of school subjects translated to Dutch! Note that I don’t know which languages every school teaches, I based it on the most studied languages in primary/secondary schools in the US. As for the other subjects, I don’t know what school teaches which subject, but I chose the most commonly teached subjects:

Languages:

Scientific Subjects:

Social Subjects:

Additional Subjects:

10 Interesting Facts about the Dutch Language

1.   It’s probably the easiest foreign language for native English speakers to learn

Given their Germanic roots, Dutch, German, and English bear some similarities; Dutch is probably somewhere in the middle between English and German. While Dutch does enjoy leaving the verb at the end of the sentence occasionally, like in German, it doesn’t have the cases German does, which makes it more akin to English. Further, where German has three (nominative) definite articles, der, die, das, and English one, the, Dutch has two, de and het. However, Dutch pronunciation is notoriously difficult. Your pronunciation of Dutch words, e.g. Scheveningen, tells native speakers whether or not Dutch is really your mother-tongue; this was the downfall of more than one German spy during WWII.

2.   You already speak some Dutch

If you’ve ever eaten coleslaw after leaving some cookies for Santa Claus, then you’ve definitely used a few Dutch words, including: koolsla, koekje, and Sinterklaas.

There are many other words in English that are similar to their Dutch cousins, such as:

So, you see, you’re half way to learning Dutch already!

3.   The first words written in Dutch date back to the 6th century

A love poem scribbled on scrap paper to test a writing implement in the 12th century was long considered the earliest Dutch writing.

Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu. Wat unbidan we nu?

Have all birds begun nests, except me and you? What are we waiting for?

Romantic lot aren’t they? Unfortunately, the current oldest manuscript written in Dutch turns out to be some old boring book on Salic Law from the sixth century.

4.   Flemish is not a language

Nope, it’s not. The people living in Flanders – the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium – speak Dutch, albeit a variant of Dutch called Flemish. This is reflected in Belgian policy: The official language of Flanders, and one of the three official languages in Belgium, is Dutch. The other two are French and German.

5.   There’s a difference between Dutch and Deutsch, but there didn’t used to be

The word Dutch stems from the Middle Ages’ word Dietsc, or perhaps Duutsc, which simply means “language of the people”. In fact, in Dutch, you would say you speak Nederlands, e.g. ik spreek Nederlands. Just like in German, you would say you speak Deutsch, i.e ich spreche Deutsch.

So, in English you call the language Dutch, when it’s actually called Nederlands, and you call their neighbor’s language German, when it’s actually called Deutsch. Confused yet?

Sometimes, English speakers even go completely against the tide of all languages involved by calling that group of people in the USA Pennsylvania Dutch when they are actually of German background!

6.   The Dutch language, like English, is a cheeky thief!

That’s right, Dutch is guilty of ‘stealing’ words from all over the place, especially from French and Hebrew, as well as several other languages. If you were a right posh Dutch-speaking person back-in-the-day, you dropped French words into conversation every now and again just to show how posh and upper-class you were. Many of them stuck! Amongst lots of others, Dutch words of French origin include: au pair (nanny), bouillon (broth), bureau (desk or office), humeur (mood), jus d’orange (orange juice), pantalon (pants), etc.

Some Hebraic words made it into Dutch as street slang, including: bajes (jail), geinig (funny), jatten (steal), mazzel (lucky), tof (cool). Nowadays, Dutch finds itself influenced by the variety of cultures that speak it and the multiculturalist society of the Netherlands. You might hear street slang comprised of Moroccan, Surinamese, and Antillean words, and of course English is all pervasive in all modern genres of Dutch, especially “social media language” and texting abbreviations.

7.   The longest Dutch word in the dictionary is 35 letters long

Meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornis means multiple personality disorder. While it is sometimes written as two words, some linguists argue it changes the meaning. Of course, as Dutch is a language capable of compounding nouns, it is possible to make some monsters, especially when it comes to bureaucracy.

English, in comparison, only features the measly 28 characters of antidisestablishmentarianism, which refers to a group of people who loved the Church of England and didn’t want to see it disestablished as the nation’s official church in 19th century England.

German, like Dutch, has some linguistic wonders. In the Duden dictionary – the authoritative German dictionary – you’ll still find words like the 33-letter Arbeiterunfallversicherungsgesetz (worker accident insurance law). In the Duden’s corpus (database) of German words, some titans pop up, such as the 67 letter Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung, which doesn’t make much sense in English either: regulation on the delegation of authority concerning land conveyance permissions.

8.   Dutch loves consonants

Even if you are incredibly scared and let out a scream, you have to remember your Dutch consonants – eight of them in fact. What you do is called an angstschreeuw, which literally means a scream of fear. English does hold its own with the seven consonants of rhythms, but that’s the only common word with so many. On the other side of things, the Hawaiian word hooiaioia, meaning certified, has eight consecutive vowels.

9.   Dutch is a regulated language

The Taalunie – the Dutch Language Union – is a public organization managed by the Dutch and Flemish ministers for culture and education. It is responsible for both standardizing the Dutch language and promoting Dutch language and culture around the world. Algemeen Nederlands, or AN for short, is Dutch for Standard Dutch, and it is what is taught in the schools of Dutch-speaking countries. It is set out and defined in a book called the Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, the Word-List of the Dutch Language. However, this book is the authority only on the spelling of Dutch words; for the meanings of said words, grab yourself a “Fat van Dale”!

The leading dictionary of the Dutch language is the Van Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal, i.e Van Dale’s Great Dictionary of the Dutch Language, but the locals call it the Dikke van Dale – the Fat van Dale – for short. This is probably due to its enormous size, though many pocket, electronic, and online editions are available to accommodate the average Dutch-speaking person. The Dikke van Dale is the authoritative dictionary to which all turn when they require the definitions and uses of Dutch words. It has, therefore, a significant regulatory influence on the language.

10. The most important word in Dutch might just be “gezellig”

This word has no satisfactory, literal translation in English, though German-speakers – particularly Bavarians – will recognize it as gemütlich. Situations can be gezellig, as can people and places – it’s an adjective, the noun being gezelligheid. If something is gezellig, it is familiar, warm, friendly, cozy, and jovial. For example, enjoying a cozy dinner with old-friends in one of your favorite, quaint, little restaurants with some tasty food and wine is gezellig; being in a meeting at work is notgezellig!

Bonus: Dutch is weird and wonderful

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Dutch is an interesting language. The only way to learn it is to dive right into the language itself and, of course, the culture. If you’re living in a Dutch-speaking country, knowing the Dutch language will help you feel at home. Veel plezier!

 SOURCE: http://www.languagepartners.nl/nederlands-nt1-en-nt2/10-interesting-facts-about-the-dutch-language/