Let's go with that banana! 🍌 It's a food edition! 😋
In which I say unexpected things about waffles
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 third Wednesday of the month.
The newsletter is written by me, Heddwen Newton. I’m half Dutch, half British, and I work as a translator, teacher, and linguist. I am the owner of the website www.hoezegjeinhetEngels.nl, and the newsletter English in Progress.
Quiz
This Dutch speaker isn’t saying what they want to say with these sentences. What are they trying to say? What does the English speaker understand? How should they have worded it?
I’d like to prepare some food for you. It’s from an old receipt that I got from my grandmother.
Let’s see, I need a whisk, a blender, and a rasp for the cheese…
As for the vegetables, I need onions, leek, endive, and potatoes. (Only a problem for American English speakers)
Proverb
The proverb depicted (slightly bizarrely) below is the same in English and in Dutch. What is the proverb in English? What is it in Dutch?
Family ties
Dutch and English are cousins, perhaps even sisters, depending on how you like your familial metaphors. In this section, I highlight some surprising ways in which they are related.
If you have ever thought that American English seems to have more Dutch in it than British English, then you’d be right, and the reason is quite simple: Dutch settlers brought their language along with them, and some words stuck.
When it comes to food and drink, Americans have cookies (koekjes), waffles (wafels), coleslaw (koolsla), and brandy (brandewijn). Some Americans also still refer to a certain kind of smoked ham as “speck”, and a small group of them still eat “head cheese” (hoofdkaas) which is (eww alert!) all leftover edible bits from a pig’s head boiled with gelatin. “Smearcase” (smeerkaas) is used in cheesecake in Baltimore, and “advocaat” is still sold in America, though they import it from the Netherlands nowadays.
The Dutch word snoepen was also brought along to America by settlers, but, for whatever reason, the aspect of the word that stuck was the secretiveness of it. Snoepen, after all, can mean taking secretive little bites of something sweet. The surreptitiousness (stiekemheid) lives on in “to snoop”, which refers to sneaking around, trying to find delectable (lekkere) information.
Another fun one is doop, which used to refer to a thick sauce in Dutch, and came to refer to drugs in English (“dope”), due to many drugs looking like a thick sauce while being prepared. Something excellent being called “dope” started with rap music in the 80s. Though nobody is sure, it is likely that the rappers were thinking of the drug making you feel good, rather than the Dutch sauce being so delicious! I wrote about “dope” more extensively in December 2023.
Apart from the food, “to waffle” can also be a verb. It usually refers to rambling, when someone speaks at length and never gets to the point. In this meaning, it is related to our word wauwelen.
However, American English also uses the verb “to waffle” to refer to being indecisive. “He was waffling about which degree to pursue,” for example. As a Brit, I did not know this usage until I learned of it through my studies into World Englishes. I love the word, also because it is a great translation for the Dutch word twijfelen, which I always feel is not captured very well by the English verb “to doubt”.
Etymologically, neither of the two senses of the verb “to waffle” comes from the noun “waffle”. The edible waffle is related to words like “weave” and the German word “Wabe” (honeycomb), so the Dutch would have just called it that because of its shape.
The verb “to waffle”, when referring to being indecisive, comes from Scots and is rather pleasingly related to the Dutch weifelen; it refers to a movement from one side to the other, which you can see in another word it is related to: “to wave”.
Fun extra fact: the Dutch words twijfelen and weifelen are not related to each other, either; twijfelen comes from the word twee, which leads us right back to another translation for twijfelen that I prefer to “to doubt”: “to be in two minds about something”.
Sources: Dutch food words in American English, to snoop 1, 2 (interpretation my own), waffle 1, 2, 3, 4
Untranslatable Dutch
Some Dutch words and expressions give translators a headache, because English just doesn’t have the same concept. Every month, I put a spotlight on two or three of them.
gourmetten
This one already appeared in one of my newsletters, but with various winter celebrations coming up it bears repeating: gourmetten is a typically Dutch activity that cannot easily be translated into English. My preferred translation is “to choose ingredients from a buffet and prepare your own meal on a tabletop grill.” Yes, it is long and clumsy, but so is the activity itself, so I’d call it poetic justice. Whatever you do, don’t invoke the word “gourmet” in English, as that refers to fine dining, which gourmetten most decidedly is not. More here.
uitbuiken
I was surprised to find that uitbuiken is only as old as 1991, at which point it was seen as student-Dutch, not to be taken overly seriously. Nowadays uitbuiken can be found on various lists of untranslatable Dutch, which I find true only up to a point, as you can explain in English that you need some time to let your food settle, or that you want to relax a bit after a big meal. However, the mental picture of a big tummy full of food cannot really be captured in English. More here.
de inwendige mens
Truly untranslatable, but missing from the lists, is de inwendige mens. I used to translate marketing texts for tourism, in which people were being invited almost daily to come to this-and-this restaurant to *fortify their inner human*. It just means eating something, but there is no way to translate the phrase while keeping the spirit alive of this separate, internal person, who is apparently sitting in your insides enjoying your food. As my texts were less-than-literary I usually ended up writing something simple, like “have a delicious bite to eat”. More here.
Funny Dutch
Of course, Dutch has plenty of funny idioms and proverbs to do with food. Here’s just a few.
to walk into the soup
Rather than describing a little elf taking a stroll into some delicious broth, the Dutch in de soep lopen actually means that things get ruined or messed up. English equivalents are a little clearer in their meaning: things go down the toilet, or my personal favourite, they go to hell in a handbasket. More here.
go with that banana
When you tell someone to gaan met die banaan, you are either telling them to go for it, take the plunge, or you are asking them to hurry up, get your skates on! More here.
a cookie of own dough
When you give someone een koekje van eigen deeg, in English you give them a taste of their own medicine. More here.
a look in the kitchen
When you take a kijkje in de keuken in Dutch, you take a look behind the scenes, a sneak peek, or (funny English alert!) you get to see how the sausage is made. More here.
it was poured in with the porridge spoon
I’ve always appreciated the mental image of a Dutch person pouring porridge into their baby’s mouth with a spoon, while at the same time yelling into their ears that “We Brabanders are supposed to be hospitable!” or “Don’t forget you love walking!”. We don’t have an expression like this in English, instead, where a Dutch person would say gastvrijheid wordt er in Brabant met de paplepel ingegoten, an English speaker would just say that Brabanders are raised to be hospitable. And where we say het plezier van wandelen is er bij ons met de paplepel ingegoten, in English we could say that a love of walking was instilled in us from a young age. More here.
Answers quiz
I’d like to prepare some food for you. It’s from an old receipt that I got from my grandmother.
What are they trying to say? - Ik wil graag voor je koken. Het is van een oud recept dat ik van mijn oma heb gekregen.
What does the English speaker understand? - Ik wil graag voor je koken. Het is van een oud bonnetje dat ik van mijn oma heb gekregen.
How should they have worded it?- I’d like to prepare some food for you. It’s from an old recipe that I got from my grandmother.
A classic, and one of the ones I get to remind my students of again and again. A “receipt” is a little piece of paper that tells you how much money you spent in a shop. (Pronunciation: ruh - seet; you don’t say the “p”). A “recipe” is a list of instructions on how to cook something. (Pronunciation: rehh - see - pee.) More here.
Let’s see, I need a whisk, a blender, and a rasp for the cheese…
What are they trying to say? - Even kijken. Ik heb een garde nodig, een blender, een een rasp voor de kaas.
What does the English speaker understand? - Even kijken. Ik heb een garde nodig, een blender, een een houtrasp voor de kaas.
How should they have worded it? - Let’s see, I need a whisk, a blender, and a grater for the cheese…
A tool to grate cheese or other food, like the rind of a lemon or orange, is called a “grater” in English. English does have a tool called a “rasp”, but it only refers to one of those long tools that carpenters use to round the corners of their planks. “Same difference!” a Dutch person might say; the tools are reasonably similar, after all. But you’ll just have to trust me on this one: many English speakers won’t even know the noun “rasp”, and if they do, they will find the idea of using it for cheese very strange indeed!
As for the vegetables, I need onions, leek, endive, and potatoes.
What are they trying to say? - Wat de groenten betreft, ik heb uien, prei, andijvie en aardappelen nodig.
What does the English speaker understand? - British English speakers understand this just fine, though they may not know what “endive” is, as it is not a very common vegetable in the UK. An American, however, would understand: Wat de groenten betreft, ik heb uien, prei, witlof en aardappelen nodig.
Perhaps it is not quite a false friend, as andijvie and witlof are actually two different variants of the same plant. (And the stamppot will probably still taste quite nice.) Still, I was surprised to learn that Americans call what I would call “chicory” “endives”, so I thought I’d share it with you!
How should they have worded it? - As for the vegetables, I need onions, leek, escarole, and potatoes.
Andijvie is not a common vegetable in the English-speaking world. After doing some research, I decided “escarole” is probably the best word to use for American English speakers, though “escarole” is a little milder than our andijvie. More here, including pictures.
Proverb
De liefde van de man gaat door de maag.
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
And finally…
And finally, a silly joke, funny video or interesting picture that I found on the Internet, that has something to do with Dutch, English, or the newsletter’s theme.
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Hi Heddwen, what about chicory for witlof? Abe & Cole’s cookbook on vegetables refers to witlof that way. Looking forward to your answer. I enjoyed reading the newsletter. Keep it coming! Ellen van den Haak