dutch orthography looks "silly" to non-dutch speaking anglophones because, among other things, multiple words are close enough to english that they read like misspellings (serieus, kan, probleem) or slang (dat dat). then there are words whose spellings don't make intuitive sense to many anglophones (mbt). and while people who read dutch know that oo and ee represent /oĖ/ and /eĖ/, many anglophones read them as /uĖ/ and /i/; importantly, when oo and ee function as digraphs in english, the words often feel silly, cute, or otherwise unserious (poop, boob, goo; pee, wee, bee)
To be fair, mbt is an abbreviation for 'met betrekking tot' (Wilders even spelled it wrong, it should be m.b.t.). Spelling a full word like that wouldn't make sense in Dutch either.
Twitter had a character limit of 140 characters (though when Wilders posted this the limit was up to 280), which encouraged people to cut superfluous punctuation. I can only imagine that is the reason.
I know zero Dutch, but due to the similarities between the two languages, I can read and understand some Dutch sentences; however, with the English pronunciation in my head, it sounds ridiculous, like a parody of English.
The Dutch pronunciation isn't much better, have you heard them speak? Watched a Dutch horror movie about a lion once and was laughing my ass off because every other sentence sounded like someone failing to speak English
Itās only funny if youāre an anglophone and use English very regularly, but also at the same time donāt know Dutch. The only reason this is such a funny thing for so many people is because so many people are fluent in English as a first or second language. So then they look at the way Dutch is spelled and spoken, and it appears like Jar Jar Binks trying to speak English. I admit that I think itās hysterical, but itās got nothing to do with thinking you guys are below me or anything; itās just funny from my own perception. Another commenter said itās like the uncanny valley for English speakers and I think thatās a really great way of describing it.
The real flex is understanding spoken Frisian or written Limburgish.
In case you're wondering, speaking Limburgish is spelled "plaat kalle" with modifiers depending on what town you're from. I'd write out some Frisian but my phone doesn't support Abyssal Script.
Theyāre reading Dutch with English pronunciation and inflection, which sounds funny to them because it almost makes sense while being gibberish at the same time.
Since Dutch is so similar to english it sat at the uncanny valley of language familiarity for english speakers. Except it makes them sound funny to english speakers.
I'm sorry to tell you Dutch speakers, but to English speakers (Germans sound off if it's the same for you guys) but your language is intelligible enough to us that it just looks like silly English.
I wonder if the reason so few Dutch people get this is because being bilingual is the minimum here. I think English would be similar for us if we didn't see any until we were adults, but by 12 everyone speaks it (and probably a bit of German, French, maybe some Spanish or Latin, plus wherever extra languages you took from home like Bahasa, Turkish or Arab) so the only funny language to us is Afrikaans, which is often closer to Dutch than Plaat or Frysk are.
Which is all to say that maybe us proper Europeans are just too educated to get your jokes lmao get dunketh upon.
To me it always comes across like if an Italian were to make a huge fuss about Portugese being different.Ā
Like to us Afrikaans resembles how they used to do racist stereotypes in comic strips , from the word order to elements like the double deny, and we don't have like a bunch of memes about Afrikaans speakers.Ā
Meanwhile the South African headline "Hitler Dood , wat nou" , which is objectively a funny title in standard Dutch because "wat nou?" is informal to us ( like "now wot ?" ) ( but just "what happens next?" to South Africans )Ā , has become a meme with English speakers thinking it's Dutch and therefore funny.Ā
English has the same heritage as Dutch on one side, but all of the "sophisticated" words are Latin-derived through French, so Dutch looks similar to English without the Latin. Also, the spelling is similar to English, but in the same way that English gibberish (different languages have different gibberish) is similar to English, so it looks funny.
despite the many French (and North Germanic) influences on English, it is still a West Germanic language. So English has the same heritage as Dutch on both sides
It looks like someone is writing in an intentionally silly way, like OWO speak if you're familiarl. it's just legible enough to know the words but spelled weirdly
It wouldāve been āWat nu?ā instead of āWat nou?ā in Dutch. The word ānouā is less formal and more common tongue, so itās not used in print like this.
Broski it still works. A newpaper title doesnt hace to be formal, especially if it is rather old.
Dutch is my mother tongue, no need to explain its registers to me
Iām just saying you wouldnāt see a newspaper use āwat nouā in this way. BROSKI. Itās because Afrikaans was influenced by English (compare with āwhat nowā).
watching guardians of the galaxy as a kid confused the fuck out of me bc ''groot'' just means ''big'' in dutch but i was like how did they sneak a dutch word into an american movie
As a dutch person seeing Geert Wilders on the timeline does the same for me. He's like the figurehead of the being racist political party. Also he's the only member of his party.
People who speak Dutch and Afrikaans can read eachothers languages and usually get the general idea of what the intended message is
It's not like how Norwegians and Swedes can have an actual conversation with eachother in their own languages. To a Dutch person speaking Algemeen Nederlands, reading Afrikaans is more akin to reading some of the more out-there regional dialects in de Achterhoek or the south of Limburg. There's some recognition of structure, but the major differences in spelling and vocabulary
I can have a perfectly fine conversation with one party speaking Dutch and the other Afrikaans. It's just that sometimes a very common word is completely unknown.
Lower Saxon or Limburgish is way farther removed from standard Dutch than Afrikaans is. I would also say that Swedish-Norwegian is also more of a difference, but that's a harder one to place.
This whole comment section and post is so weird to read when you're a South African. Ek kan wat julle beteken vertstaan, maar soms julle net yeet focken letters binne as-
(jammer enige Afrikaaners wie lees dit. Jy kan Engels is my eerste taal sien lmao)
LOL For what it's worth, that may just be my fault since Afrikaans is one of my worst subjects in school/Dis okei, Afrikaans is my slegte taal so dis nie rerig jou probleem nie(ek hoop dit nie sarkasties kyk nie-)
I mean, I get why English speaking people find Dutch funny as a Dutch person myself. Altough I donāt think Geert Wilders (the guy in the picture) is quite asā¦. Funny. Or likeable.
It's funny to americans because americans are ignorant beyond belief. They 're sounding out foreign languages with their own vowels and then think that's how it actually sounds.
That Dutchman is wrong. It's just that other countries do food better than us.
Which is fine, we happily eat their food.
It's the snacks where we shine though.
All these people from other countries with their full meals. We all know a hobby is best as a hobby, not as a job. The real love for food is put in snacks. And together with the Brits we got the best sausage rolls in the world.
Sometimes I don't think Dutch is a real language, it's a shitpost that the Dutch came up with just to troll the hell out of Germans and English speakers.
The genetics of the northern Netherlands are crazy. People keep saying they've conquered it but in the meantime there's enough lineages going back to pre agriculture that they're basically a genomic backup system that gives sailing lessons.
When the plague returns Ljouwert is going to rule the Benelux if it is still unflooded.
Ja haha grappig man. Deze klootzak is de grootste zuiger uit de Nederlandse politiek en hoeft niet nog is extra aandacht te krijgen. Zeker niet van ene idioot die is gaan geloven dat mijn taal grappig is, omdat iemand op het internet dat ooit zei. Hoop dat je wat slimmer wordt. Mafkees
Your language to an English native speaker is, objectively speaking, a bit silly at times. Just as Iām sure English is occasionally goofy sounding to a Dutch speaker. Heck, even we make fun of English-isms sometimes.
We have a bunch of additional digraphs (letter pairs that form a single sound), like ei/ij, ou/au, ui.... They are basically similar to eigh (as in sleigh), ea, or ou (as in out) in English, and thus sound as a single 'vowel'. However, many English speakers try to pronunciate them as single letters, which make the words sound very alien. But in reality, Dutch really sounds like English once spoken. You can very often get away with just saying the Dutch word when you don't know the English one, and people will understand you.
Waar hebt jij het er in godsnaam over? Hoe is Nederlands anders in dit aspect? Er zijn veel lettercombinaties die specifiek zijn voor de Nederlandse taal. En op welke manier ziet een taal er lelijk uit? Als er een lelijke schriftelijke taal zou moeten zijn, dan is het Welsh, maar dat heeft alles te maken met het perspectief van jouw moedertaal.
For me itās the frequent doubling of vowels and also just that some words are really similar to English and to my english speaker brain look butchered/funny.
Iedereen weet dat Nederlands de echte taal van de liefde is. Frans en Italiaans maken geen kans. Maar om serieus te zijn, ik denk dat veel Engelstaligen denken dat Nederlands er super raar uitziet omdat ze klanken zoals 'ui, eu, ou, au, ij, ei' compleet verkeerd uitspreken. Ik denk aan alle keren dat er op een of andere Amerikaanse serie iemand 'Nederlands' sprak, om dan een nauwelijks verstaanbaar gebrabbel te horen. Voeg daar nog eens de vreselijke 'g's van de Hollanders erbij, en we zijn helemaal vertrokken.
To be clear, there is absolutely no need to say them. There are quite a few regions in the Netherlands, and all of Flanders (Dutch speaking Belgium) that use a much softer g.
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u/Vwgames49 9h ago
Canāt forget a classic