{"id":922,"date":"2014-05-30T08:21:02","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T07:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=922"},"modified":"2014-05-30T08:21:02","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T07:21:02","slug":"the-economist-tricky-pronunciation-spreek-je-dutch-3052014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=922","title":{"rendered":"The Economist: Tricky pronunciation, Spreek je Dutch? (30\/5\/2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

WELKOM!<\/em><\/p>\n

The signs at the airport should be reassuring. Welcome to the Netherlands! What could be easier to figure out? Dutch has been rightly described as between German and English, which means that while all three are closely related west Germanic languages, Dutch is closer to English. (Frisian, spoken on a string of islands along the coast, is even closer.)<\/p>\n

Pick up a Dutch newspaper, and your first impression will be reinforced. The local freesheet tells me that \u201cen niewe komedie\u201d is appearing starring Charlize Theron. This new comedy is called \u201cEen Miljoen Domme Manieren om Dood te Gaan\u201d, and if you squint (and happen to know the English title) you can easily see \u201ca million dumb manners for dead to go\u201d, or \u201ca million dumb ways to die\u201d.\u00a0 (In English the film is called \u201cA Million Ways to Die in the West\u201d.)\u00a0 The movie is \u201cvan de maker van Ted\u201d, \u201cfrom the maker of Ted\u201d (another comedy). And so on. If you have a bit of German, even the words that don\u2019t look like English are usually clear. (Reports of an \u201congeluk\u201d are clearly about an \u201caccident\u201d, just like the German\u00a0Ungl\u00fcck.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

So if you speak German and English you can learn Dutch in about 15 minutes, right? Wrong. Not, at least, if you want to go beyond the newspaper and speak to anyone. A German room-mate once described Dutch as \u201csounding like a throat illness\u201d. The English-speaking native can be forgiven a raised eyebrow upon hearing this from a German.<\/p>\n

Dutch consonants are mostly familiar. But those that aren\u2019t are forbidding. The sound in the Scottish\u00a0loch\u00a0<\/em>and German words like\u00a0Bach<\/em>\u00a0shows up everywhere. Those who have learned to use it at the ends of words must learn to use it at the beginning\u2014all the time. Dutch has no native\u00a0g\u00a0<\/em>sound, as in the English\u00a0go<\/em>, and usually replaces it instead with this throat-clearing. Other familiar letters are put to unfamiliar uses, like\u00a0oe,\u00a0<\/em>which is pronounced like the vowel in\u00a0food<\/em>. And then consonants \u201cdevoice\u201d at the end of words, so that\u00a0d\u00a0<\/em>sounds like\u00a0t\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0b\u00a0<\/em>like\u00a0p\u00a0<\/em>and so on. So if you were reassured that\u00a0goed\u00a0<\/em>is the English\u00a0good<\/em>, you must remember that it sounds like\u00a0khoot<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Then the Dutch like to join their consonants together. English does this too, so that poor souls used to simple consonant-vowel alternation (as in Japanese) struggle mightily with words like\u00a0strengths<\/em>. But one of the strengths of the Dutch lies in their ability to string words into ungainly compounds, like their German and Scandinavian counterparts. If the first element of the compound ends in a tricky cluster and the second element also starts with another, you might get a monster like\u00a0slechtstschr<\/strong>ijvend<\/em>, with nine consecutive consonants, representing seven consonant sounds. Admittedly, this is the kind of barely-a-word mostly used to flummox foreigners (it means “the worst writing”). But as such, it is best-in-class. The legendary Danish shibboleth\u00a0r\u00f8dgr\u00f8d med fl\u00f8de\u00a0<\/em><\/a>may beat it for unpronounceability, but at least a foreigner can look at it and give it a try. Looking at\u00a0slechtstschrijvend<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>it\u2019s tough even to see where the syllables are. It looks more like someone has fallen asleep on the keyboard.<\/p>\n

Of course Dutch has vowels, but these too can trip the unwary, especially when they join forces. The last bit of Rembrandt van\u00a0Rijn<\/em>, for example, has a diphthong that is a bit like\u00a0eh-ee<\/em>\u00a0at its core. Not so bad, if you practise. But the common dipththong in words like\u00a0uit\u00a0<\/em>(out) requires a quick glide from something like a British person\u2019s\u00a0er\u00a0<\/em>to the\u00a0u\u00a0<\/em>sound in French words like\u00a0tu<\/em>, with the lips rounded and the tongue high and far forward. Got that, now?<\/p>\n

It is tempting to give up. As you flail around in their language, the Dutch will inevitably quickly switch to flawless English. And on the rare occasion when they don\u2019t know a word, the kinship to English can, in the end, sometimes save the day. Johnson asked a waitress what the thinly shaved red thing wrapped around some white cheese was. She frowned apologetically. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I don\u2019t know… We call it a\u00a0biet.<\/em>\u201d I was relieved to tell her, \u201cSo do we.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WELKOM! The signs at the airport should be reassuring. Welcome to the Netherlands! What could be easier to figure out? Dutch has been rightly described as between German and English,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,13],"tags":[119,87,114,80],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}