We gave Americans a finger 🖐️, a UK accent means they're Dutch 🤷, autism and languages 🗨️
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 English, written for Dutch speakers. 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 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
How can you rewrite the sentences below in correct English?
I live in The Netherlands, how about you?
The students closed their book.
The idiom depicted here is the same in English and Dutch. What’s the idiom in Dutch? And what is it in English?
Answers below!
Fun fact
If you ever watch American films or series (in other words: if you are alive in the 21st century) you might have noticed that Americans call the littlest finger the “pinkie” or the “pinkie finger”. If you thought that sounded too much like the Dutch to be a coincidence, you were right! The American word “pinkie” comes from our Dutch word “pink”.
And that’s not the only fun fact about this little finger!
Is it “pinkie” or “pinky”? Most dictionaries choose “pinkie”, but give “pinky” as an alternate spelling. That means whichever spelling you pick, you are right. Yay!
Most languages in the world do not have a separate word for the littlest finger. They call it simply “little finger”. Dutch is pretty special with its specific naming of this finger. A gift to English worth mentioning!
We have no idea where the Dutch word “pink” comes from.
The British English term is “little finger”. When there is an American/British difference, Australia and New Zealand usually follow the UK, but in this case our antipodean friends (= vrienden aan andere kant van de wereld) also say pinkie.
Dutch/English in the news
The new miniseries A Small Light about Miep Gies and Anne Frank debuted on streaming services Disney+ and National Geographic yesterday.
Here’s the trailer:
The creators of the series decided to have the Dutch characters speak with native English accents, the logic being that in reality they spoke Dutch without a foreign accent, therefore they are portrayed as speaking English without a foreign accent. The German characters, such as Otto Frank, speak English with a German accent. Nu.nl spoke to the director and a few actors about this. (Article in Dutch, free access, but login required.)
New translations
I post a new translation on hoezegjeinhetEngels.nl every day. For this newsletter, I have selected a few recent ones.
There’s only two this week, as I have been busy with other things, and most of my recent updates to the website have been rather boring 😮.
Representatief
One of those things you don’t really think about in Dutch, but a sentence like “Je moet er representatief uitzien” is actually a little odd. “Representative of what?” The answer is, I guess, the company’s good values and excellent service.
In English we cannot use “representative” in this sense. You have to be explicit about what you want your future employee’s clothes to represent.
Something like “We expect your attire to reflect our company’s good standing.” or “We expect you to have a professional appearance.” More here.
Ezelsbruggetje
Where Dutch speakers have a lovely, if quaint (= curieus), expression for a little trick to help you remember something, English speakers have to make do with the near-ridiculous “mnemonic device”. You don’t pronounce the “m”, which makes it a little better, but not much. More here.
Interview: Anouschka Schutte, autism-translator
Anouschka Schutte (52) is twice a translator: a translator between languages, but also a translator between the autistic and the non-autistic world. She calls herself an autism translator.
If you have autism, or know people with autism, be sure to read this interview! I know my newsletter is read by a lot of English teachers, so I was sure to also ask Anouschka about dealing with autistic students in the classroom.
Quiz answers
Correct: My name is Anja, and I am your contact person.
I’m just leaving this here for people who received my newsletter via email and are confused: the email version of my newsletter had a bit about “contact person” not being correct English. However, I have since learned that “contact person” is fine in American English, and is making its way across the pond to the UK as well.
Yay for Americans making English easier for Dutch people!
Incorrect: I live in The Netherlands, how about you?
Correct: I live in the Netherlands, how about you? (No capital T for “the”)
The “the” in “the Netherlands” does not get capitalised in English. Neither does the “the” in country names like “the United States” or “the Republic of China”.
When “the Netherlands” is at the beginning of a sentence, or is used on its own as a heading or title, the “the” is capitalised. If you were thinking that you see a capital t quite regularly, that’s the reason.
The only two countries that get a capital T in their “the” are The Gambia and The Maldives, but even in these cases not everyone agrees.
Important note: “The Hague” does have a capital “T”!
Incorrect: The students closed their book.
Correct: The students closed their books.
In Dutch you can say “de leerlingen deden hun boek dicht”. However, if you say “the students closed their book” in English, it sounds as if all the students have only one book to share, and they are all huddled around it and closing it together.
Idiom in picture: as quiet as a mouse
Zo stil als een muis is the same in English, but don’t say *as silent as a mouse*. Though people would probably understand you, it is not how the idiom goes, and just sounds a bit off. More translations for “ zo stil als een muis” here.
(In the picture, the little man is holding his finger up to his mouth and saying “sssh” to the mouse. I made this unclear on purpose, of course, to make the quiz more interesting. It has nothing at all to do with, you know, the fact that I can’t actually draw…)
And finally…
Kevin Tatar, a.k.a. KWOOWK, uses his channels to review food from around the world. His secret? Make people angry.
So before you get upset about this review of hagelslag, remember: he is doing it on purpose.
(The way he opens the packet makes my hair stand on end!)
Aargh, I pressed "send" too fast... Though the "contact person" thing is true for older Brits, I've had a better look, and it turns out Americans are happy to say "contact person". It also looks like this term is becoming more usual in the UK.
So ignore that part of the quiz, please. Sorry!
To me, "the antipodes" refers to Australia and New Zealand rather than the people who live there. Merriam-Webster, Cambridge and Oxford Learners seem to agree with this. Interestingly, though, dictionary.com defines the antipodes as:
1. places diametrically opposite each other on the globe.
2. those who dwell there.
Meaning 2. came as a surprise to me, but M-W's expanded information on the term delves slightly deeper:
"It first appeared in a translation of a Latin text as a word designating "men that have their feet against our feet," that is, inhabitants of the opposite side of the globe. ... "Antipode" is no longer used in English as a designation for people, but the notion of the other side of the globe lives on in its current geographical sense."
If I were to refer to the people who lived in the antipodes, I would call them "our antipodean friends" or "antipodeans" if being less pally!