Dutch law blog

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.

9 thoughts on “Dutch law blog

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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…)

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  6. 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

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