Putting them in the flowers 🌼, a kind kind of 'kind' 🧒, John Cheese - oh, please 🧀
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
False friends
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?
The animation team at this hotel is very good.
It was my birthday during our holiday, and they organised slingers!
They got my age wrong, but when they realised, they immediately offered their excuses.
Idiom
The idiom depicted below is the same in English and in Dutch. What is the idiom in English? What is it in Dutch?
English media getting the Dutch wrong
When English media mention the Dutch, oversimplifications and incorrect facts abound. This past month, there were at least three.
Why are the Dutch so happy?
In a piece about the 20 happiest countries in the world (the Netherlands ranks 6th) Business Insider quotes: “A large part of Dutch culture lies in the concept of "niksen," or doing nothing.” Uhm, no, Business Insider. Just because we have a word for it, doesn’t mean we do it very much. The Guardian article I linked two months ago did a much better job explaining it.
The origin of the word Yankee
This incorrect factoid pops up again and again, ever since Bill Bryson used it in his book Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language, in 1990. (Making teenage me distrust anything else he said in that, or any other, book. I have never been a fan.)
It is a valid theory that the word Yankee, which refers to Americans, might come from the Dutch name Jan Kees. What is not correct, however, is that Jan Kees translates to “John Cheese”. That would be Jan Kaas. Jan Kees translates to John Cornelius, and is a completely normal Dutch name. National Geographic, shame on you!
The Dutch on flowers
“In Dutch culture, flowers are nationally recognized for all their mental health benefits.” I mean, sure, having some flowers in the room brightens the spirits, but I really don’t think the Dutch are any more or less aware of that than most other cultures. To be fair, though, I think this may have been a marketing spiel from the flower company that the local New York journalist in question spoke to. And that company was, of course, Dutch.
Recent translations
tegelwippen
Removing tiles from your garden or (with permission) from the pavement in front of your house is a great way to create more green, less urban heat, and more drainage for water when there is heavy rain. In Dutch, this practice has the fantastic name tegelwippen. There are even national championships in the Netherlands and Flanders.
There is no good translation yet, in my opinion. Therefore, I humbly suggest pavestone popping.
Fun fact: my sister Cerian literally wrote the book on ways to create more green in public spaces, so I already have an ambassador for my new term. More here.
ver van mijn bed
While doing a translation recently, I found that there is no good way to translate this Dutch idiom. It doesn’t affect me, it is far from my concern, it feels a bit remote; all the English translations feel too direct. Maybe it is just me, but when I say something is “ver van mijn bed” in Dutch, I feel less guilty than when I say “it doesn’t affect me personally so, you know, I just don’t really care.” More here.
van uitstel komt afstel
English lacks an expression that directly reflects the idea that procrastination might lead to never completing a task, but it offers many idioms that urge us to act without delay. Strike while the iron is hot, there’s no time like the present, make hay while the sun shines, and more. Otherwise, you can just say something like if you don’t do it now, you might never do it. Not an idiom, but perfectly fine English. More here.
letterlijk in de bloemetjes zetten
“Iemand in de bloemetjes zetten” is already tricky to translate into English, because what are you doing exactly? Honouring them in public, giving them the recognition they deserve, or just “spoiling them” with a gift voucher and a bar of soap?
There are quite a few possible translations, depending on what you will be doing to the soon to be spoiled, honoured or recognised person, but none of them actually involve flowers in English. This means that the Dutch pet joke of putting someone in de bloemetjes by literally giving them flowers is untranslatable. The best I could come up with is to shower someone with appreciation and flowers. Much more here.
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.
kind
The English words kind, as in a kind person, kind, as in a kind of horse, and the Dutch word kind, as in Mijn kind is drie jaar oud, are all related. They all stem from the idea of family relations; compare the English word kin.
If you are kind to other people, you treat them as family, a kind of horse is related in some characteristic to others of its kind, and a Dutch kind is a family relative. (Sources for English here, and for Dutch here)
Child is also related to kin and kind, but we have to go all the way back to Proto-Indo-European for that one. (For those of you who are not into etymology, this means we are going back about 5000 years, to the oldest roots of languages like Dutch and English that etymologists have been able to figure out.) There we see a root word *gene- which carries a meaning of "to give birth, beget", and which leads, among others, to the words kin, kind (in all three variants) and child. And as you will have guessed, it also gave us words like genes and genetics, via Greek.
The word child and its Dutch translation kind have extremely similar plurals (children and kinderen), and a very similar origin story for those plurals: both kind and child (then still cild) used to be plurals in their own right. One child, two child. Like sheep and deer. Then they added the r to make a more obvious plural, childru in English, kinder in Dutch. The Germans stopped there (ich habe zwei Kinder is perfectly normal modern German), but not the Dutch, and not the English. They decided to add an en, perhaps to make it extra clear to everybody that there were way too many of the little rotters running around.
(Note: At that point in time, the en was still a valid way to make a plural in English, though it has by now of course died out except in a very few plurals, namely oxen, brethren and, yes, children.)
This means that the words in both languages effectively have a double pluralisation. Children in English, kinderen in Dutch. As far as I can see, however, the fact that this happened so similarly in both languages is a coincidence. Which I think is pretty weird. Any actual etymologists reading this, your input would be much appreciated!
Answers quiz
The animation team at this hotel is very good.
What are they trying to say? Het animatieteam van dit hotel is erg goed
What does an English speaker understand? Het team dat tekenfilmanimaties maakt in dit hotel is erg goed
How should they have worded it? The entertainment team at this hotel is very good. More here.
It was my birthday during our holiday, and they organised slingers!
What are they trying to say? Ik was jarig tijdens onze vakantie, en toen hebben ze slingers georganiseerd!
What does an English speaker understand? Ik was jarig tijdens onze vakantie, en toen hebben ze mensen georganiseerd die met dingen gingen gooien!
How should they have worded it? It was my birthday during our holiday, and they organised bunting! More here.
They got my age wrong, but when they realised, they immediately offered their excuses.
What are they trying to say? Ze hadden mijn leeftijd verkeerd, maar toen ze dat merkten, boden ze meteen hun excuses aan.
What does an English speaker understand? Ze hadden mijn leeftijd verkeerd, maar toen ze dat merkten, kwamen ze meteen met smoesjes/ redenen.
How should they have worded it? They got my age wrong, but when they realised, they immediately offered their apologies.
Idiom
het hoofd boven water houden / to keep your head above water. In Dutch it is “het hoofd” (though “mijn hoofd” is probably also fine) and in English it is “your head”. Other than that, same idiom, same meaning. More here.
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 and English.
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Any mistakes in this newsletter were put in by me AFTER my two amazing proofreaders checked through it. Thank you, you wonderful people. I would like to put you in all the flowers that this newsletter has to offer!
Would you also like to receive this newsletter two days early and have the chance to tell me everything that is wrong with it? (I love a ruthless proofreader, me.) Let me know by replying to this newsletter!
Oh, and a blanket apology to Belgian people: I do realise that Dutch is a language that is also spoken in Belgium, I really do. In my translations, I always try to take Belgian Dutch into account (with thanks to Miet Ooms, whose writing keeps me up to date). I also try to find fun news about Belgian-Dutch speakers and their culture as seen by English speakers for this newsletter… But I am hardly ever able to find anything. I am open to feedback, and help!
And truly finally…
This one was sent to me by a reader. Thanks, Carla!
Interesting problem relating to “kind/kindness”: I have trouble figuring out how to say that in Dutch. Vriendelijk? Zachtaardig? These seem wrong because their English cognates would be, but I haven’t found a better word.