(no subject)
Feb. 6th, 2026 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynTrying to learn Dutch because a) I run across it periodically on places like Bluesky and every. single. time. I feel like a stroke victim looking at written English- I should understand this and it really looks familiar but it isn't making sense, and b) it has some really epic ways of swearing. Also c) the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize in biology was given to a Dutch scientist for his documentation of incredibly disturbing behavior in the mallard duck he happened to see out his window, but I'm not sure if that paper was originally written in Dutch or not.
That being said, there are some serious 'false friends' in this language and it makes things extremely weird for me. For instance, the word for eleven is 'elf'. It is pronounced exactly the way one would indicate that Legolas is neither a Man nor a Dwarf nor a hobbit. The word for daughter is 'dochter' and it's pronounced as if you were starting to address an MD but got something small caught in your throat halfway through the word. (The word for doctor is 'dokter' and it is pronounced exactly how it looks.)
And then there are two verbs which cause me to pull up short. Understand, please, that so far as I can tell neither of these verbs is in any way related to English or Yiddish terms unsuitable for polite company, they just...
The verb for 'be able to' is kunnen. It is a perfectly reasonable verb, and the first person singular is 'ik kan', I can. The third person singular is 'zij kan', he/she/it can. All the plural forms are '$PRONOUN kunnen' - we can, y'all can, they can. It's just that the second person singular is 'jij kunt', and I know it's not pronounced the same as the English word that begins with a C but Lord, my brain stalls out whenever I hit that one.
But not quite as badly as when I am reading the conjugation of 'to watch, to observe attentively'. Which, uh. The infinitive is 'kijken' and in Dutch the 'ij' combination there is pronounced 'eye'. ('jij' is pronounced 'yaie', basically.) First person singular is 'ik kijk'. Second and third person singular are 'jij kijkt' and 'hij kijkt', respectively.
According to my copy of The Joys Of Yiddish the similar-sounding slur is derived from the Yiddish or German word for 'circle' or 'little circle' and had to do with the practice of signing one's name with a circle rather than anything similar to a cross, so this is about as significant as the fact that the Italian word for 'kidney' is one letter removed from the Italian word for 'reindeer'. But it's still really uncomfortable to repeat the sound.
That being said, there are some serious 'false friends' in this language and it makes things extremely weird for me. For instance, the word for eleven is 'elf'. It is pronounced exactly the way one would indicate that Legolas is neither a Man nor a Dwarf nor a hobbit. The word for daughter is 'dochter' and it's pronounced as if you were starting to address an MD but got something small caught in your throat halfway through the word. (The word for doctor is 'dokter' and it is pronounced exactly how it looks.)
And then there are two verbs which cause me to pull up short. Understand, please, that so far as I can tell neither of these verbs is in any way related to English or Yiddish terms unsuitable for polite company, they just...
The verb for 'be able to' is kunnen. It is a perfectly reasonable verb, and the first person singular is 'ik kan', I can. The third person singular is 'zij kan', he/she/it can. All the plural forms are '$PRONOUN kunnen' - we can, y'all can, they can. It's just that the second person singular is 'jij kunt', and I know it's not pronounced the same as the English word that begins with a C but Lord, my brain stalls out whenever I hit that one.
But not quite as badly as when I am reading the conjugation of 'to watch, to observe attentively'. Which, uh. The infinitive is 'kijken' and in Dutch the 'ij' combination there is pronounced 'eye'. ('jij' is pronounced 'yaie', basically.) First person singular is 'ik kijk'. Second and third person singular are 'jij kijkt' and 'hij kijkt', respectively.
According to my copy of The Joys Of Yiddish the similar-sounding slur is derived from the Yiddish or German word for 'circle' or 'little circle' and had to do with the practice of signing one's name with a circle rather than anything similar to a cross, so this is about as significant as the fact that the Italian word for 'kidney' is one letter removed from the Italian word for 'reindeer'. But it's still really uncomfortable to repeat the sound.
