Don't scare the eggs! 🥚 The "duck tape" controversy is Dutch 🦆
The reason England does well at football is Dutch culture (apparently) ⚽
Welcome to the latest instalment of English and the Dutch, the newsletter with tips and tricks, fun facts, new translations and other good stuff about how Dutch speakers speak English. In your inbox every second Wednesday. (Or every third Wednesday during the summer holidays.)
The newsletter is written by me, Heddwen Newton. I also own the website www.hoezegjeinhetEngels.nl. If you are wondering where you signed up for this newsletter - that’s probably where you signed up for this newsletter. And if you have not yet signed up for this newsletter, you can do so right here:
Quiz
What is wrong with these three sentences? Which one will cause the most trouble and/or giggling?
My son has chosen an university in the Netherlands.
He explained me his choice yesterday.
He has to do an intern for 3 weeks.
The idiom depicted here is the same in English and Dutch. What’s the idiom in Dutch? And what is it in English?
Fun fact: the “duct tape” or “duck tape” controversy
Some English speakers like to feel superior to people who say “duck tape” instead of “duct tape”. They assume the tape is called “duct tape” because it is used on ducts (= leidingen, buizen). To their mind, “duck tape” must be a malapropism (= verhaspeling), like saying “flamingo” instead of “flamenco”.
However, it is not at all clear if “duct tape” didn’t in fact start out its life as “duck tape”, the duck in question not being a water-loving bird, but an anglicised form of the Dutch word “doek”.
Before the age of sticky tape, workers would wrap cables and pipes with “cotton duck”, a type of cloth, and it stands to reason that the later “duck tape” may have taken its name from this practice.
In the end, though, nobody knows for certain which came first, “duck tape” or “duct tape”. Which is good news, really, because it means nobody is wrong. So whichever way you were saying it, you don’t have to change :-)
Dutch/English in the news
Is England football manager Sarina Wiegman’s success due to Dutch culture?
Dutch football manager Sarina Wiegman’s former university coach attributes her success with the England team to herself, and to Dutch culture being “serious” and “about the collective”.
“But no, I don’t take any credit at all – I think it’s her influences, I think it’s the Dutch culture. Did we help her to a small degree? Yeah, I think she had a good time playing for me, we loved her. But I am never going to take a piece from her success – we attribute it to her and the culture she’s a part of.”
England is playing Australia in the semi-final right as this newsletter is being sent out, so we’ll see how she does!
Reading time: 3 minutes / The Independent (UK)
Dutch teenagers prefer English books, but this is not only true in the Netherlands
Mark van Oostendorp makes the point that young people around the world are strongly attracted to anglophone products. This makes for a bigger world for the individual, who can discover entertaining voices from a different culture. But in the end, it perhaps makes for a smaller world, in which ideas only count if they come from anglophone regions.
Reading time: 5 minutes / Neerlandistiek.nl (NL)
15 Dutch slang terms Americans should know
Tim Brinkhof, a Dutch jounralist in the US, takes a broad definition of the term “slang” in this article that features English explanations of words like “Mokum”, “gezellig”, “havermelkelite” and “-tje”.
Reading time: 4 minutes / Mental Floss (USA)
Recent translations
I post a new article about a difficult-to-translate Dutch word or phrase on my website every day. Here is a selection from the past three weeks.
een ei laten schrikken
You don’t “scare an egg” in English, and, disappointingly, they don’t have a good phrase for this practice. English speakers have to make do with something like “cool the egg down with cold water”. But perhaps that’s because you don’t actually have to cool the egg to make it peel more easily? More here.
je kont tegen de krib gooien
One of those where I wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult to translate. “To dig your heels in” comes closest, but does not imply the kind of active sabotage that “je kont tegen de krib gooien” might include. More here.
wipkip
Is there a better Dutch word than wipkip? I don’t think so. In English it is a “spring rider” (spring = veer) or perhaps a “playground rocker”. So boring. I also discovered that the first wipkip was indeed a chicken! More here.
boerenslimheid
Sometimes American English is just better. After writing this article, I have decided that the American term “horse sense” is the best translation for “boerenslimheid”, and also a word I should start using more often. Other Brits are coming to the same conclusion, it seems; it’s one of those words that is making its way across the pond. More here.
roggebrood
Oh no, the Germans have won! When it comes to “dark rye bread”, the English-speaking world has dozens of terms, none of them very well-known, and many of them rather German, like “schwarzbrot”, “pumpernickel” or simply “German rye bread”. More here.
Answers quiz
1. should be: My son has chosen a university in the Netherlands.
Not AN university, but A university.
The reason many people do this wrong, Dutch as well as English speakers, is that the first rule you learn at school is: “if it starts with a vowel, you must add an n”.
I wish they wouldn’t do this, even young children are perfectly capable of understanding the real rule, which is “if you hear a vowel, you much add an n. And the reason you do this, is so that it becomes easier to pronounce. Just read the sentence out loud and you’ll hear it.”
Words that start with u sometimes get pronounced with you. you-niversity, you-niverse. Sometimes they don’t. uhm-brella, uhn-dershirt.
In the case of university (you-niversity) the y is not a vowel sound, and can be easily pronounced with “a”: “a university”
In the case of umbrella (uhm-brella), if you were to leave out the n, it would be tricky to pronounce, something to make you trip over your sentence.
*Can you pass me a umbrella, please*
People don’t like tripping over their sentences, so they add an n to make it easier for themselves.
“Can you pass me an umbrella, please.”
2. Should be: He explained his choice to me yesterday.
In Dutch, you say “ik leg je iets uit” which Dutch speakers translate to *I explain you something*. Dutch speakers are in good company with this one, I hear this from non-native speakers all the time. Germans certainly do it, and I believe Polish and Russian people do, too.
However, literally “he explained me” means “he explained how I tick” or “he explained all about me”. Dutch cannot make this distinction, but English can.
Compare:
“Ik legde de koelkast uit aan Marijke”. (I explained the fridge to Marijke)
“Ik legde de koelkast uit dat ik gewoon geen tijd had om hem schoon te maken.” (I explained to the fridge that I just didn’t have time to clean it)
A note: because there is usually more to the sentence, on the whole, English speakers will understand what you mean when you say something like *He explained me his choice*. Especially English speakers who are used to listening to non-native speakers. So it is not a huge mistake. But still, one to be aware of.
3. should be: He has to do an internship for 3 weeks.
Oh dear, now I’m going to have to explain what the original sentence means. Best just to get it over with:
“He has to do an intern for 3 weeks” means “hij moet drie weten sex hebben met een stagiaire”.
So yeah. Don’t say it like that.
“Internship” is just one way to translate the Dutch word “stage”, other ways can be found here.
Credits to Buffi Duberman’s book 100 Ways to Save your Ass in English, which gave me the inspiration for this week’s quiz. Especially that last one 🙊 Thanks, Buffy!
Idiom
“Geen slapende honden wakker maken” becomes “let sleeping dogs lie” in English. However, “don’t rock the boat” might be a little more popular at the moment, and there are other options, too. More here.
And finally (1)…
This picture has been making the rounds on social media, but just in case you missed it, here is the excellent map of Dutchified English place names by Olivier van Renswoude from Taaldacht.
What makes the map extra wonderful is the amount of thought and research that has gone into it - it’s not just someone making a joke, it is the intentional work of a talented etymologist.
(p.s. On his website, Van Renswoude attempts to write Dutch with as few loanwords as possible, and the result is lovely.)
And finally (2)…
The Oppenheimer speaking Dutch controversy continues! And there is a resolution (kinda). In an interview with RTL Boulevard, director Christopher Nolan explained that he cut random words from the speech to make it shorter, and this is why it was so difficult to understand.
YouTube channel Geschiedenislesjes found the audio clip and subtitled it (clip starts at 0.25). Actor Cillian Murphy’s accent is actually quite passable, once you know what he is trying to say.
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The number of mistakes in this newsletter is directly proportionate to the number of times my three-year-old woke me up last night.