How (Not) To Pick Up Dutch Girls – Part 1
It is a late summer evening six years ago. I am still young, free and single. I am standing at the checkout of my local Albert Heijn super market. The young and attractive Dutch girl in front of me beeps the ingredients of my pasta dinner over her scanner. I decide to show off a little and talk to her in Dutch.
“Mag ik een tasje?” I ask.
With a smile she reaches under the counter and gives me the requested bag. The rest of our little flirtation continues in Dutch as she asks the usual questions; do I have a bonus card, would I like to pay with cash, would I require a receipt. I reply to all her questions with my perfect Dutch vocabulary. Slowly our brief little moment comes to pass. I am about to leave but then…
“I have to ask. Are you English?” she suddenly asks.
The poor girl. She is obviously powerless against my irresistible English charm. I turn back to her with a smile. There is still a long line of people waiting to be served but all she must be able to think about is the terrible feeling of knowing she let me walk out of her life without getting my phone number. Maybe my dinner for one was about to become a dinner for two.
“Yes I am.” I reply with my best ‘I’m British so I’m as smooth as James Bond’ smile.
“Rightttttt. You’re accent is horrible. You should never talk Dutch again.” And without another word she starts serving the next customer.
My ‘smooth as James Bond’ smile suddenly becomes an ‘awkward as Hugh Grant’ stammer. After a few stunned seconds I decide to leave… quickly.
Very rude or bluntly outspoken? I’m going with rude! I would have been on the spot with “well your English sucks” remark.
When I first moved here I tried so hard to speak my best Dutch even before I took lessons… except with door to door sales men/women. Some guy came to my door (of course I’m home alone) trying to sell me something. I make out as if I only speak English. He flips over to his best English. I swear I could understand his Dutch better than his English and I had only lived in the Netherlands for 3 months at that time. I told him I couldn’t understand his English either just to get him off my door way and he seemed to take it well but I felt so bad. After hearing these stories, maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad.
I think you and Breigh should pay her a visit! ;-)
Keith – I just tried to buy shoes in Dutch and did not get told the same again… they didn’t have my size though. Maybe they would have if my accent had been better.
Philly Girl Abroad – Ouch. That one hurts to. Luckily it only stopped me for a little while but I’m trying harder than ever now.
Wendi – thank you :)
Candee – You should not feel bad at all. It sounds like you scored one for the expat team. Expats: 1 – Dutch: 10,000,000+
Stu, and all the ones with bad experiences:
Don’t feel bad about what some a****le say ’bout your Dutch: is a fact that the world is full of stupid people, but i reckon that in Holland there’s more than in the rest of the globe.
A couple of examples: i’m just a low-skilled workman and for a whole year i worked by a factory in the Leiden area where the main 2 language spoken were Leidsch and Kattijks (for the not-initiated: the dialects of Leiden and Katwijk aan zee).
Well, at least once a week someone was screaming to me “LEARN DUTCH!” because “they could not understand me” while the whole day they was screaming at each other “wat zei jij?” because people born and breed 5 (five) kilometer the one from the other could not understand themselves…
Or, more recently, at my actual work i was driving a forklift to the refill station and a colleague asked me if i could help…
– “ik moet tanken”
– “wat?”
– “ik moet tanken”
– “wat moet jij?
– “tanken”
– “ik begrijp jij niet”
– “T-A-N-K-E-N!!!!”
– “oh, je bedoelt TENKEN(??)” (with the look “oh, yeah…foreigner”)
Well, i got in doubt and later i asked my cloggie girlfriend…result
– “Well, tAnken is Dutch, we say tEnken, but is dialect, absolutely not a Dutch word”….
(And excuse me for my broken English!!!)
Andreas – That must make your work day a lot of fun… not.
I didn’t consider your English broken at all.
She has to work in AH so that’s punishment enough.
I agree with you there
A lot of this goes back to Dutch not being a world language. As English speakers we are so used to deciphering Broken English it becomes second nature and we just appreciate how hard it is to know a second language. Growing up in the New York metro I can understand most of the accents from Eastern Europeans, MiddleEastern and SubContinent. I have many friends with immigrant parents and they spoke with very thick accents and had a habit of switching back to native language to finish sentences when they hit a word they didn’t know in English, whether German, Italian, Indian or Czech.
I have a very hard time understanding Asians speaking English though. Luckily my wife lived in Singapore for 3 years so can usually understand Asian’s speaking English, between the two of us we can usually muddle through any broken English we run into in our world travels. We always try to learn a little of the local when traveling, but we know we are just butchering and run into various levels of animosity or happiness at this. I know I was surprised that in Paris I met some of the nicest people just because we tried, even if they chuckled and switched to english for us :)
I would never laugh at anyone who speaks a foreign language . However, the way the Dutch deliver their (sometimes pathetic) English with utter conviction of smug pedantic superiority warrants a few laughs at their expense.
And their subtitles on TV are hilarious .’ Well-heeled ‘had been translated as ‘well-healed ‘and to ‘dot another i ‘ was translated as ‘someone losing another eye’.
The Dutch remind me of neurotic 3-year olds who continously need telling how fantastic they are and how amazing their country is and how excellent their English is.
If someone dares cracking a harmless joke at their or their country’s expense they are insulted and again behave like neurotic 3-year olds.
I often can’t believe how deluded their vision of themselves and their country is.
I know this is a very late comment on this, but this is in response to Emerson’s comment.
I am Dutch by birth, but moved to Canada when I was 16. A few years ago I was visiting family in the Netherlands, when a commercial came on for the television show “the Closer”, as in “closing the case”, however, the announcer pronounced it as in “getting closer to something”. I started laughing, but even when I tried to explain the difference, nobody else thought it was funny.
I also sense that sometimes when I try to hold the converstaion in Dutch, they lack a certain willingness due to the fact that it takes extra effort for them to “simplify” or “decode” the communication. I can understand that. To say that is also fine. But to discourage a person that apparently tries to learn and adapt by saying “never do this”, is too much, and it’s immature at least.
Then again there are times I faced the other side of the medallion, where people were really supportive of my effort to complete sentences and try to sound out weird words (such as “verschrikkelijk”, or “grappig”). So as always there are all kinds of people out there scattered throughout the bell curve, and again some “outliers”. In any case, thanks for sharing your experience, it means a lot to us fellow Dutch learners.