Goed idee!
As we’ve mentioned before, learning Dutch is een goed idee (a good idea) because it is spoken in more places than you might think, it’s easy for English speakers to learn, and it sounds pretty cool. Some people would disagree about the latter though, pointing to the ‘tongue twisters’ in the language. In any case, it is undoubtedly incredibly impressive if you speak Dutch. Imagine the look in your friends’ eyes when you tell them that you are longing for eighty-eight wonderful nights and eighty-eight wonderful canals: ‘Ik smacht naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten’. But there are even more reasons why learning Dutch is worthwhile!
You will hear the quick jokes the Dutch tend to make among themselves. You can enrich your interactions with ‘consequential strangers’: people that occupy the vast territory between strangers and close ties, like co-workers, gym buddies, but also vendors on the street, bus drivers and waiters by speaking or responding in Dutch. Life becomes more meaningful and fun when you speak the official language of others around you!
But Americans and especially New Yorkers don’t even have to travel that far to be able to enrich their lives by learning Dutch. After all, the Dutch were some of the first Europeans to settle in America and Holland, Michigan and New York’s Brooklyn and Harlem remain as tributes to America’s strong Dutch roots. In the 2012 U.S. Census, 4.6 million Americans (1.5 % of the population) identified themselves as having Dutch ancestry and in the survey ‘Origins of the English Language’ it is estimated that about 1% of English words are of Dutch origin.
Yankee!
The word cookie is considered one of the most American words in the English language (the British version is ‘biscuit’), but it’s actually a Dutch word: ‘koekje’. ‘Luck’ also originates from the early Middle Dutch word ‘luc’, a short version of ‘gheluc’. ‘Geluk’ in modern Dutch meaning happiness or good fortune. ‘Coleslaw’ comes from the Dutch word ‘koolsla’ and then you have book (boek), rucksack (rugzak) and boss (baas). Did you ever wonder where ‘Yankee’ came from? Yankee is a combination of two of the most popular Dutch names for boys at the time: Jan en Kees: Jan-Kees: Yankee.
Keelhauling
Apart from words for food or fortune, most Dutch words that have been adopted as loanwords in English (and by many other languages all over the world) are related to the rich naval history of the Dutch. The East Indian Company being the first multinational trading company in the world. Most naval terms and words in the English language stem from Dutch, like ‘keelhauling’ (kielhalen), ‘sloop’ (sloep), ‘pump’ (pomp) and ‘Yacht’ (jacht).
Rabbit Island
Nowhere else in America are the Dutch traces as strong as in New York. Several boroughs, neighborhoods and street have names that are derived from when the time it was colonized by the Dutch (and called ‘New Amsterdam’). Brooklyn for instance was originally known as ‘Breuckelen’, a name derived from a town in the Netherlands. ‘Harlem’ is named after a city in the Netherlands, ‘Cony Island’ used to be: ‘Konijnen Eiland‘ Dutch for ‘rabbit island, a name that originated because Coney Island used to have a reputation as a good place to hunt, especially when it came to rabbits. And then there’s the Bowery (Bouwerij as the old word for farm in Dutch) and not to forget Flushing (named after the Dutch town Vlissingen).
So, knowing Dutch is not just fun and life enriching, allowing you to take part in everyday life of the societies where Dutch is spoken. Knowledge of the Dutch language might also open your eyes to the influence of Dutch in your own country!
The Dutch online course will give you an excellent opportunity to study Dutch, which as you can see, is well worth the effort! Another fun way to learn Dutch is to watch Dutch movies! The Dutch movie industry is quite extensive and, opposed to what some say, not all Dutch movies are about the second world war.
Here’s a list of good Dutch movies:
http://netherlandsbynumbers.com/2013/03/25/ten-dutch-films-you-must-see/
Veel plezier! (Have fun!)
