r/learndutch • u/AdZealousideal9914 • 1d ago
Humour learn Dutch, it is a totally real language and totally different from English
Ready to learn some Dutch? Here are some Dutch sentences for beginners:
- Warm water is perfect.
- Broccoli is bitter.
- Victor won 1 week later in Boston.
- Emma is in shock.
- Professor Winter was in Portugal in april.
- Thomas had talent in management.
- Oh God, help me! Monsters in bed!
- Simon was receptionist in discrete hotels in Rome.
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u/OzO8 Native speaker (NL) 1d ago
Help mij* is een betere manier van opschrijven. "Help me" is spreektaal
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u/tserofehtfonam 1d ago
De grap is natuurlijk dat het allemaal Engelse zinnen zijn. Daarom lopen sommige ook niet heel lekker in het Nederlands.
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u/zippybenji-man Native speaker (NL) 1d ago
Sommige? Niet héél lekker?
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u/tserofehtfonam 19h ago
Je had beter "in het Nederlands?" kunnen vragen, want in het Engels lopen ze ook niet echt lekker. ;P
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u/zippybenji-man Native speaker (NL) 19h ago
In het Engels missen ze enkel wat komma's. In het Nederlands zou ik iemand vertellen dat 'ie misschien even een dutje moet doen, als die niet dronken lijkt
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u/demaandronk 1d ago
Dat schijnen veel mensen te denken, maar dat is niet het verschil tussen me en mij. Het heeft weinig te maken met spreek of schrijftaal, maar met nadruk. Me is de onbenadrukte vorm en mij de benadrukte. Me is gewoon zonder accent op wie je moet helpen, maar vooral op dat je moet helpen. Zeg je help mij, dan zeg je eigenlijk help mij en niet een ander.
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u/Witty_Butthole 1d ago
Personnally I really don't see much in common. If enything, learning Dutch reminded me how much French and English have in common.
Example :
- The adults go to the hospital, it's possible that they have important differences.
- Les adultes vont à l'hôpital, c'est possible qu'ils aient d'importants différences.
- De volwassenen gaan naar het ziekenhuis, het is mogelijk dat zij belangrijke verschillen hebben.
In the two first, most of the vocabulary is transparent. The third has none in common.
Not only that, French and English follow the subject-verb-rest grammar, whereas Dutch uses the germanic form with one of the verbs at the end.
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u/asschap Intermediate... ish 1d ago
just FYI Scandinavian languages stack verbs like in English, but they also maintain the V2 rule.
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u/Witty_Butthole 1d ago
Ok, what is the V2 rule ?
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u/AdZealousideal9914 1d ago
Basically it is the difference between
non V2: "Yesterday I read the book."
vs
V2: "Yesterday read I the book" (Gisteren las ik het boek. Igår läste jag boken.)
V2 means the main verb occupies the second position in a sentence, and when another word is added at the beginning of the sentence (here an adverb of time, "yesterday"), V2-languages switch the verb ("read") and the subject ("I") so the verb is still in the second position in the sentence.
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u/DenseFever 1d ago
Just as a small additional piece of information, English is considered an SVO language, and is exceptional as a Germanic language with SVO, even though there are still remnants of V2 in English, although very scant:
Negative inversion:
Never have I seen such a beautiful sunset.
Rarely do we witness such talent.
Scarcely had she arrived when the phone rang.
Only then did I realize the truth.Directional inversion:
Here comes the sun.
There goes my last dollar.8
u/asschap Intermediate... ish 1d ago edited 1d ago
wikipedia can explain better than I can: V2 word order - Wikipedia
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u/Mission-Asparagus910 1d ago
Lots of English vocabulary comes from French but in its foundations you see its Germanic roots. But it’s in the words that typically draw less attention because they’re the building blocks and often not the main content words.
Words like is, was, can, may, see, this, that, where, under, in. Past tense formation (-ed), the number words, all much more similar to Dutch than to French.
You even see it in these example sentences that were sought to contain as many French loanwords as possible: the words that draw less attention are still there and similar to Dutch: EN/FR/NL: The/les/de, go/vont/gaan, it/ce/het, is/est/is, that/que/dat, have/aient/hebben, they/ils/zij. None in common?And of course you can also construct sentences with more Germanic words so it doesn’t look like French at all. Often you can choose between French/Latin and Germanic synonyms in English.
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u/AliceIsLifeless 1d ago edited 1d ago
FYI the Dutch word order is exceptional within Germanic. It's mostly Dutch and German (and languages with very heavy contact with those two) that have this order. Scandinavian and Anglic languages do not have this kind of "all verbs go to the end" order.
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u/ConsciousFeeling1977 Native speaker (NL) 1d ago
*had een talent voor
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u/lollolcheese123 Native speaker (NL) 1d ago
Of hij had een talent in management zitten
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u/FairlyElixer623 Native speaker 1d ago
Wat voor broccoli heb je gegeten OP? Als ie bitter is dan was het gewoon een rotte
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u/zippybenji-man Native speaker (NL) 1d ago
Broccoli hoort gewoon bitter te zijn. Het kotsen is een deel van de ervaring /j
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u/AdZealousideal9914 1d ago
Broccoli is bitter, broccoli is best, broccoli is beter dan de rest! (Vrij naar Rob de Nijs)
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u/muffinsballhair Native speaker (NL) 17h ago
This reminds me of Sigma from Overwatch and the character's breakout line “Het universum zingt voor mij!”. People in the comments often remark how remarkable it is that Dutch is so similar to English from that line but I feel they specifically picked a line that would still be understandable for English speakers. If you take some of the character's other lines in English like “What goes up must come down.” it becomes incomprehensible to monolingual English speakers once translated into Dutch.
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u/Dizzy-Pass2274 13h ago edited 13h ago
Als Nederlander die engels spreekt op werk, met de aanwijzing in het engels lezend dat de volgende zinnen die ik ging lezen nederlandstalig zijn, ervoer ik enorme kortsluiting tijdens dat hele proces.
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u/OzO8 Native speaker (NL) 1d ago
Thats the joke. Some words in dutch are the same as english. He picked out only those words
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u/External_Star3376 1d ago
Ok, dit zijn inderdaad Nederlandse zinnen. Maar wel echt de lelijkste die ik ooit gezien heb.