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Written by Tim Richardson
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Sunday, 04 November 2007 |
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Let me put my Linguistics degree to good use and list some of my favourite Dutch words.
1. Waterkoker. English: kettle. Think about it: "water cooker". Great, love it.
2. Stofzuiger. Vacuum cleaner. This one is not quite so obvious, but when you hear it, you get it. It's a "stuff sucker".
3. Eikenboom: Oak tree. This one is interesting, rather than funny. It is pronounced as "Ayken boom". Boom just means tree and "-en" is plural. So "Oak" is in Dutch "Aik" to try to render the pronunciation phonetically. Doesn't sound very similar to the English word. However, in English, we call the nut of this tree an "acorn". So the name for the tree shifted in vowel, but Engish and Dutch have kept the same vowel for the nut. This really brings home to me the connection between the Germanic languages.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 04 March 2008 )
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