Comments on: It’s Greeking to Me

By: mand

mand — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:08:01 +0000

Yes, i struggle not to say ‘Holland’ even though i know better. Re the dialects – fun! :0)

By: Cora

Cora — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:16:23 +0000

Hi Mand, well the proper name of Netherlandic (see Wikipedia) is indeed a mouthful! The same applies to Holland vs. the Netherlands. As you probably know, Holland is only a small part of the Netherlands: the two Western provinces which were traditionally the most powerful. Again, ‘Holland’ rolls easier off the tongue which is why football fans chant ‘Holland’ and not ‘Nederland’.
As to dialects, yes, there is an amazing variety for such a small country. I was brought up by parents who spoke dialect to one another and standard Dutch to me. There has been a dialect revival recently, with books and other publications (incl. Wikipedia!) published in dialect.

By: mand

mand — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:16:47 +0000

People are always going to be lazy when it comes to foreign words and languages. This whole thread has been reminding me of a over-simplified derivation i’d vaguely been told of the English word ‘Dutch’, which was that it came about by mistaking Dutch for Germans who of course call themselves ‘Deutsch’. I’m glad it’s not quite as ‘wrong’ as that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language#Names .

By: surfmadpig

surfmadpig — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:29:12 +0000

@Cora: Also, re Double Dutch, I don’t speak Dutch at all, but I think it’s a really lazy thing for English people to say, as some Dutch words are rather similar (they both are Germanic languages after all). Written Dutch is NOT that difficult to understand if you speak English, I believe. I was actually able to tell what most of the Dutch signs/menus were referring to when I visited Amsterdam, and I don’t speak a word of Dutch.

By: surfmadpig

surfmadpig — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:24:12 +0000

@Maeve: I’m very tempted to try to guess what your original input was, but I’ll do that tomorrow.

@Cora: As a Greek, I don’t mind the whole “it’s all Greek to me” thing at all. I even find it a bit flattering, since I CAN actually understand it (therefore I am a genius, woohoo!). However, in my experience, Brits (at least) think it sounds like Spanish, probably because we (I?) talk rather fast. Then again, it’s very easy for Greek speakers to properly pronounce Spanish (especially as it is pronounced in most of Spain), so we obviously have some sounds in common.

And, of course, we have a similar saying in Greek, which translates into “it sounds Chinese (to me)”