Translation: Alsof er een engeltje over je tong piest For the infographic, scroll to the bottom of the page. Here are my 33 favourite funny Dutch idioms and expressions. Just when you think you’ve learned them all, all of a sudden you hear about someone ‘having butter on their head’ or ‘falling into the house with a door’. The Dutch love expressions and will litter their everyday conversations with them. I do love a bit of etymology so I’ve included some of them where known. I’ve found countless examples of amusing expressions, insults and, vocabulary oftentimes with equally funny or interesting origins. When I came across the Afrikaans expressions ‘ ń Klap van die windmeul weg hê‘, literally ‘to be hit by windmill’ meaning ‘to act crazy / unintelligent’ I wanted to learn more! Despite there being no windmills in South Africa, this expression went unchanged from its original Dutch form ‘ Een slag van den molen weg hebbe’. There are some modifications to the Afrikaans versions which include either historical or geographical references. It’s interesting to note that there are still a lot of expressions and general vocabulary which are exactly the same in both languages. So, all this hilarity actually comes from the Dutch. If you’re heading to South African, make sure you get my free Afrikaans travel phrase guide and if you’re going to Belgium, then I also have a Flemish Dutch travel phrase guide. Afrikaans is actually the offspring of the Dutch language which formed after the Dutch settled in South Africa in 1652. But, they can’t take all the credit for these linguistic gems. Since learning Afrikaans, I’ve discovered a bunch of hilarious Afrikaans expressions. Despite the longest word in the Dutch dictionary ‘ Meervroudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornissen‘ (meaning ‘multiple personality disorder’) weighing in at 38 letters, they don’t speak ‘double Dutch’.Īpparently, Dutch is one of the easiest languages to grasp if you’re an English speaker and even easier if you speak German, but you might need some ‘dutch courage’ to attempt pronouncing all their guttural-sounding ‘g’s. There are 16.99 million Dutchies across the globe and a further 28 millions of Dutch descent. Well, the Dutch probably use closer to 90%! Here are 33 Dutch phrases and idioms to get you started. 44.2K If you ain’t Dutch you ain’t much! They say roughly 30% of our everyday speech is made up of expressions.
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