How do you say potato? 🥔 Fox News angry at the Dutch 🙄 Ready is Kees! 🥂
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, well, English and the Dutch. In your inbox every second Wednesday.
The newsletter is written by me, Heddwen Newton. I also own the website www.hoezegjeinhetEngels.nl. If you are wondering, where did I sign 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
This little speech has 6 problems. What is the Dutch speaker trying to say, and what should they have said?
“I remember my basic school days fondly. I was a little brutal sometimes, never working at my bureau. I sometimes even threw my gum at other children. But I loved the music lessons, playing the flute. I was very brave during those lessons.”
The idiom depicted here is the same in English and Dutch. What’s the idiom?
Answers below!
Fun fact
You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto
Let's call the whole thing off
If you’ve ever thought that these lyrics don’t make sense, because British people do not say “potahto”, then you are quite right. The reason behind the “mistake” is not that the song was written by stupid Americans who didn’t know how people in the UK really talked. In fact, it’s not a mistake at all.
The original song, written in the 1930s, is not about an American and a Brit comparing accents. It is, in fact, about two Americans from different regions. In that time, there were some regions in the US where “potato” was pronounced like “potahto”—probably due to the influence of the Spanish word patata. More here.
Dutch/English in the news
Amsterdam launches stay-away ad campaign targeting young British men
This BBC article discusses Amsterdam’s Stay Away campaign.
How will we feed Earth’s rising population? Ask the Dutch.
Vox is a website that aims to explain the world and the news with in-depth reporting and fact-checking. You might know them from the Netflix series Explained. I think they are pretty brilliant. In this long-read, writer Kenny Torrella explains the Netherlands’ huge agricultural output.
Dutch Farmer Citizen Movement explained to Americans
Dutch/British journalist Ben Coates explains upside-down flags and the cultural importance of farming in the Netherlands in this New York Times article.
Fox News gets angry about Dutch show “Gewoon Bloot”
The American right-wing media outlet Fox News has written a piece about a Dutch show in which grown-ups strip naked in front of children from groep 7 and 8 (9 to 12-year-olds). The children get to ask questions and talk about bodies. They are predictably angry about episode 7, in which the naked adults are transgender. Wonderfully out-of-context reporting, including quoting a child as saying “I want that, too” and insinuating the show had convinced her to become transgender. (I watched the episode. She was talking about the feeling of euphoria in general.)
Interview
Jaap Vriend, a Dutchman with a successful one-man show in English, talks about how he had the idea to create a show about the history of Amsterdam aimed at tourists. He also, of course, gives some useful tips!
Quote
Descartes, the French philosopher, lived in Amsterdam for a while. He said, “you can say and do whatever you want here in Amsterdam, as long as the Dutch can make some money”.
Tips
Tip 1: In English, you say “please raise your hand” or “please raise your arm”, not *please stick up your finger*!
The first few times I did my show, I asked my audience to stick up their finger if this was their first time in Amsterdam. I got some hesitant responses and questioning looks, so I looked it up. Turns out, in English people raise their hand, not their finger!
Tip 2: explaining difficult words can bring humour into your presentation
Having to explain a word can be awkward, but you can also use the opportunity to make the presentation lighter and more entertaining.
I have a part in my show about a heron (= reiger), a famous bird here in Amsterdam. Because I’ve noticed many people don’t know what that word means, I use audience participation to make it clear. Some people think it’s a herring (= haring), which is great to laugh about. If there is a native speaker in the audience, it can be funny to interact with them about what the bird looks like. Or I explain it myself, joking about what an ugly bird it is, with its stocky posture and its big beak.
More tips and more about the show in the full interview.
New translations
I post a new translation on hoezegjeinhetEngels.nl every day. For this newsletter, I choose a few recent ones that I am proud of.
Voortkabbelen
Two problems for this one. Firstly, it’s tricky to translate. Secondly, Dutch people don’t seem sure what the word actually means. Take “voortkabbelende muziek”. Is that murmuring, quiet music, relaxing, like listening to a brook? Or is it slow and droning, boring, standard music, that just trudges on? More here.
Klaar is Kees
My favourite translation for this idiom is “Bob’s your uncle!”. Unfortunately, it is rather British and somewhat old-fashioned. It also only works if you are finalising some simple instructions. A more international (but slightly more boring) translation might be “we’re in business!” More here.
De bloemetjes buitenzetten
Another idiom that is just more fun in Dutch. “It’s party time” could be a translation, or “let’s paint the town”. I really like the facial expression of the lady in the picture, by the way. She isn’t going to let anybody tell her how she’s going to buitenzet those bloemetjes! You can see her here.
Iemand met een gebruiksaanwijzing
The trickiest one of the past two weeks, I think the best translation is “someone who takes some getting used to”. It’s not quite satisfying, but neither are any of my other solutions. If someone has a good idea, please let me know in the comments!
Boerenbedrog
A reader’s question that made me doubt my Dutch: surely “boerenbedrog” is not the same as “nonsense”? So many online dictionaries seem to say that it is, that I think I must be in the wrong. My favourite translation is “eyewash”, which can mean both and so nicely circumvents the problem. More here.
Quiz answers
The problems have been marked in bold script:
“I remember my basic school days fondly. I was a little brutal sometimes, never working at my bureau. I sometimes even threw my gum at other children. But I loved the music lessons, playing the flute. I was very brave during those lessons.”
basic school - the speaker is thinking of basisschool. This is primary school in UK English, elementary school in US English.
brutal - the speaker is thinking of brutaal. This is rude in English, although in this context cheeky would probably be the better word. If the speaker were brutal (=wreed), then he would be attacking his fellow students with something other than an eraser! More here.
bureau - the speaker is thinking of a table to sit at and write. This is desk in English. To a native speaker “working at a bureau” means you work for a fancy organisation, like the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the FBI. More here.
gum - the speaker is thinking of the Dutch word gum, one of those soft things to rub out pencil markings. In English this is eraser (US and international) or rubber (UK). To an English speaker “throwing your gum” sounds as if you are throwing your chewed chewing gum at other children. Yuck! More here.
flute - the speaker is thinking of blokfluit. This instrument is called a recorder in English. It is unlikely (but not impossible, I suppose) that the speaker was playing the flute (= dwarsfluit) during his music lessons at primary school. If this is the only one you missed, you can cut yourself some slack; many native speakers wouldn’t even notice it. More here.
brave - the speaker is thinking of braaf. He should have said well-behaved, or simply good. Of course, if the music teacher was very scary, perhaps brave (= dapper) was the right word! More here.
Idiom:
(finding/ trying to find) a needle in a haystack
een speld/naald in een hooiberg (vinden/ zoeken)
And finally…
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