From Bag & Baggage: a Dutch law firm has started a blog, claiming to be the first European law firm to do so. Also linking to a Dutch chocolate page, Denise says, ‘Yet another reason to learn Dutch’. Hasn’t she heard about Belgian chocolate? But I do remember being taken to try cherries in liqueur and chocolate in Amsterdam, with the stalks still on.
I tried to learn Dutch at evening classes two years ago. I only went for the pronunciation, but it was a very frustrating experience. If you know German, Dutch is so easy, but being asked to tell a story and realizing every word you were saying was pidgin was quite irritating. Isabella Massardo recently mentioned a vocabulary book for learners of Dutch as a second language, i.e. immigrants, that looks really useful for speakers of German and probably English too.
Time for a new Tom Lehrer classic: Poisoning pidgins in the park. Seriously, if you classify Dutch as a pidgin, then you must hate English, which surely fulfils the basic requirements much better than Dutch.
You misunderstood me – I classify the ‘Dutch’ I was speaking as pidgin Dutch. If you mumble a few German-sounding words with a couple of sounds shifts you are likely to be understood, but that isn’t what learning a language is about (IMO). Just ungrammatical mumblings. I rather liked Dutch – sorry if I gave the impression I hated it.
That sounds rather like the way I speak German. Sorry…
I think I’ll put you on my blogroll – looks interesting. Btw I had a number of comments in Dutch and from the Netherlands to my second most popular entry:
http://www.transblawg.co.uk/serendipity/uploads/MT_archives/000139.html
There are other good reasons to learn Dutch (apart those you mentioned), I just can’t think of any at the moment;-)
And I agree with you, learning Dutch can be an _extremely__ frustrating experience (just think of the spelling rules that keep changing every so many years…)
It’s not helped by the language learning textbooks designed for German evening classes!
Yeh. There’s/are loads of legal Dutch/’Belgian Flemish’ trans. & interpreting work into Eng. floating about. Trans. agencies and the ECJ have traditionally had a problem finding competent into-Eng. translators.
I fell into the false-friends trap after having my arm twisted to translate a Dutch annual report and accounts, thinking doorzetten (Du: continue) meant the same as the German durchsetzen (implement). I’ve never touched another Dutch annual report since.
I lived in the US for almost 20 years, I am still a Dutch citizen and fluent in Dutch as well as English (American). I also just finished my law degree here in the US. I am going to return to The Netherlands next year. Is anyone interested in hiring me as a translator?
Ineke
I lived in the US for almost 20 years, I am still a Dutch citizen and fluent in Dutch as well as English (American). I also just finished my law degree here in the US. I am going to return to The Netherlands next year. Is anyone interested in hiring me as a translator?
Ineke