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Feb. 6th, 2026 10:13 amTrying 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... ( I would be happier if my brain didn't notice similarities to outright slurs that don't really apply. )
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... ( I would be happier if my brain didn't notice similarities to outright slurs that don't really apply. )
