The Side Effect of Learning Dutch
Stuart
Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.
I know exactly what you mean. It can be frustrating!
And confusing :D
The concept of “Dinglish” is now firmly entrenched in our kids’ vocabulary…
My kids don’t know the term ‘Dinglish’ yet but they use it all the time.
Yup. Use it or lose it! :P I’ve got this the other way around, I can think of the English words, but not Dutch. Especially when I teach grammar, I know the words like relative pronouns, but when I need the Dutch word betrekkelijk voornaamwoord does not immediately spring to mind. :P
The same has happened to my wife a few times as well. She’s Dutch too.
Not sure if I should call more advanced or more pathetic ;-) but a similar effect can mesh up your grammar too. Constructing a sentence in such a way that you’ll need to insert words of the “other language” just to make sense, well sort of.
It’s actually quite weird that inserting an English word in a dutch sentence (or vice versa) actually can feel right while inserting the equivilant in the “correct” language would result in a wordsalad morr exotic than Trump’s phonetics……;-)
I also find that some words sound better in Dutch so I have been known to drop Dutch words into my English sentences.
It’s only fit for the king to speak the language of the common people! Good luck with your lessons, and I’m looking forward to your first all dutch blogpost.
I speak portuguese and I do the same…with my parents hahaha But they can’t understand any word hahaha It’s very annoying.