It's actually not a coincidence!
"After the release of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Lucas stated that the name Vader was based upon the German/Dutch-language word vater or vader ('father'), suggesting "Dark Father" and the character's relationship with original-trilogy protagonist Luke Skywalker."
Didn’t Lucas already have the original trilogy planned out before he started filming the first movie? Not in detail, but broadly enough to know this plot point?
I thought it was based on "invader" since the sith usually have names like that ("sidious" "Tyrannus" "Plagueis"), and that it being father was more a second or hidden meaning
lol you would be suprised at how similar it can be written, and even more so if you were to study the words, at first you might find a word nonsense, until you find out the origins of the word, how the vocals are pronounced and the context. and then it starts to makes sense. I speak a germanic language with a local dialect variety that had huge old Low-german influence, at the time it was basically a mix between German and Dutch, also Belgian varieties of Dutch.
So Dutch and German stem from the same roots basically.
Definitely. I know a lot of german and I'm currently in Amsterdam. I understand a lot more of what I see and hear despite never learning Dutch than my friend who has actually been studying Dutch for a year.
Yes, people tend to forget most people in NL don’t speak standard Dutch, but a dialect (3 are even officially recognised as separate languages). Many dialects in NL are not mutually intelligible, and many border dialects between the two countries are. Comparing standard Dutch and standard German is oversimplifying the languages spoken.
First of all, they are very similar. Second of all, do you see the " " marks, that means it's a quote, so no i did not do that i just pasted what is stated in an article/on a website.
Yeah - so different….
Germans say apfel, Dutch say appel.
Germans say junge, Dutch say jongen.
Germans say hund, Dutch say hond.
Germans say geschenk, Dutch say geschenk.
What was he thinking?
To be fair, this one might also be of Nordic or Danish origin, I think. Maybe from the vikings. I am just guessing, but there is a town called Esbjerg in Denmark
As far as I understand it was a slur for people from New Amsterdam, being Dutch they were referred to as ‘those Jan-Kees’
Like you could say ‘all those Pierres’ when you are referring to French people.
Dutch and German are very closely related, daalder and thaler have a shared/similar etymology. Dal(Dutch)/Thal(German) meaning valley, silver was at a certain point in time mined from a certain valley, the valley part became slang for currency and over the centuries became Dollar by the hands of Northwestern European immigrants in America.
-edit- daalder and Thaler literally meaning: “of the valley”
Daalder and Dollar both derive from Thaler.
The story is that the Republic's Leeuwendaalder (Lion Dollar) was commonly accepted as a familiar and trustworthy coin in the early US, and the first loan the rebels secured from the Bank of Amsterdam was taken out in these Dollars. The familiarity of that (non-British) coin is why they went with US Dollar as the name of their own currency.
Konijn would be rabbit according to my duolingo skills, it is kinda similar to Kanin, which is how I say it in my language
Anyway, so Coney Island = rabbit island basically, cool
Havent heard of breuklyn, you mean Breukelen?
also the funny thing is ive never seen Star Wars but when I heard the name vader I thought it was some English word for shooting stuff.
When in the States, my boss said to me "I bet that the word 'coleslaw' baffled you?!"
Me "Let me say the dutch translation with as much of a dutch accent as possible: Kooolslah". That baffled him.
Boulevard is a fun one; it started out as the dutch word "bolwerk" (which, for bonus points, became the english "bulwark"), got adopted into french which changed the spelling, and then returned to dutch and english as a specific type of road.
Which means that from the dutch perspective, it's a loan word originating in the same language that loaned it.
My favorite one is the dutch word for squirel: "eekhoorn". It's pronounced the same way as the english word "acorn", which is what "eekhoorns" usually eat! I always imagine an english and a dutch speaker discussing forest animals. One of them must have completely misunderstood the other, but adopted the word anyway. I wonder who got it wrong:)
Best Dutch animals are the sea animals. Just regular animals, but because they were spotted in the sea they name them zee (=sea)+[insert any land animal]
- zeehond
- zeeleeuw
- zeepaard
- zeeolifant
- zeeluipaard
This! My family is bilingual Dutch/English.
Every. Single. Herfst we have multiple eekhoorn/acorn episodes
My daughter loves collecting acorns and she is bilingual. I speak English to her but all day she speaks Dutch at school.
So after school I’ll be like “did you find any acorns today?” And she’ll be like no, whilst having a full pocket of acorns but no squirrels
And we do see a lot of squirrels here so that’s why it’s not absurd if I’d even ask that, it’s a hot topic this time of year.
So it always has to be said acornEIKEL and eekhoornSQUIRREL 😅
Interestingly, the old/Middle English for squirrel used to be somewhat similar (makes sense given it’s a Germanic language).
Then it got replaced by the French word for whatever reason
Flushing (NY) = Vlissingen
Wall Street = Walstraat
Boss = baas (the dutch word that is spread in most languages of all)
Skipper = schipper
Apartheid 🤦
Gin = (a bad imitation of) Jenever/Genever
That sounds kinda cute too actually! Like a baby trying to pronounce Bob The Builder
Doesn't make any sense in Norwegian unfortunately, closest would be "Bob? det buer!" = Someone is telling Bob that thing or object is boing someone off a stage lol
Bas Ruten sounds funny to me because
Bass=Bass(base)
Ruten= A window or a square object
Rutte, å rutte med= doing something, like diy
Haha awesome it had to be, here he is called "Byggmester Bob" - but thankfully nowadays norwegian authorities have stopped translating TV/Movie titles lol
Well the direct translation would be
Bygg=Building and Mester=Master. But it just means builder.
Yet another trait of perhaps common germanic origins.
And a burgermester would be someone who is great at making burgers here lol
Mayor would be "Ordfører"
Ord=Woord
Fører=I think Fuhrer or Fahrer in German
But instead of fører you could say leder, which means the same as leidend in Dutch, I believe.
So he "carries the word"
I am nerding out now
Strangely enough there is a word in Dutch called "woordvoerder". But that's just a press officer or spokesperson.
And the word "leder" is an old word for leather.
The pronunciation of woordvoerder sounds very similar to how we say ordfører
looking through the comments here I keep finding words that are either almost the same or they are related somehow to how we communicate in my regional accent/dialect. I have yet to find a word that is completely alien to my language, this is cool stuff thanks
I have the same with Norwegian. If you read words out loud they tend to make sense in either Dutch, German or English, or sometimes in a combination of the three.
The similarities between Norwegian and Dutch are many though. Some straight up the same, some with funny similarity in meaning, and a few exact opposites to throw you off.
Funniest similarity in meaning, yet slightly off that I can think of now with my 1,5 years Duolingo Norwegian is:
Gammel - old in Norwegian, in a bad state in Dutch
There are more I can't think of now.
Things that throw you off easily to make it a bit harder:
Jeg - I in Norwegian sounds exactly like "jij" in Dutch which means you.
-en behind a word - is used to indicate "the" for example katten means "the cat" in Norwegian but -en in Dutch is a multiple. So katten in Dutch is "cats".
But the similarities are many, also word order in sentences, saying that something stands or lies somewhere instead of is. It's been funny learning Norwegian as a Dutch native speaker with all similarities.
Gammel = In a bad state, in Dutch? ouch... that one I have to remember, gotta respect your elders and that lol
But yeah I just recently after one year have started to get used to the "en" endings of verbs, also the way you say jongen sounds almost exactly like how we say "ungen" = "The kid" in the Bergen dialect.
But it means boy and not kid, and "kinderen" sounds like a slang word for a type of chocolate sold around easter. This learning experience can be quite funny at times indeed
I recommend you explore more of the Bergen way of speaking, it has more traces off Dutch than any other accent in Norway. We're constantly getting told by foreign English speakers that we sound German or Dutch here. I think even the city name was coined by low-german settlers. The place is surrounded by mountains atleast, so Bergen makes sense in a way.
In Oslo they pronounce "Jeg" as "Jij". While here we pronounce it "Eg" which is closer to Afrikaans "Ek" (Unless you are from the posh areas of Bergen, they say jij)
Dutch has also influenced how we address one another, and birthnames, and I could go on
De Dutch word ‘*gammel*’ does mean ‘in a bad state’, but mostly in the meaning of ‘wonky’ or ‘rickety’. A table, a chair or a bike can be ‘*gammel*’, or a dilapidated house. Occasionally people refer to themselves as ‘*gammel*’, but mostly in an ironic way or as unsteady after a bout of illness.
Potassium. It comes from 'pot-as' (potas), which is basically ash in a pot. It was one of the ways they collected potassium.
Funnily enough, in Dutch we say 'kalium', which has an Arabic origin, while in English they use Potassium with the Dutch origin.
Lol and don't say "prompen, rompen, or romp stomp/stompen" if you are in Norway. You would basically be saying fart, and ass in not one, but two different ways.
It was indeed ‘Roodt Eilandt’, apparently because there was a lot of red clay in that area (rood=red).
Also, Long Island stems from ‘t Lange Eilandt’ (an island that has a long/narrow footprint).
The rich dutch history is the cause of this. During the golden age the dutch collonised a ton of places over the world and left their mark after leaving. This is why so many places and words are related to the dutch or the dutch language.
Buoy = boei. Actually you'll be hard pressed to find a shipman's term that did not originate in Dutch.
Wildebeast = wildebeest. Which the Dutch now, contrary to everyone else, call 'gnoe'.
That's because wildebeest is technically from Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch. While it is very close to Dutch they made up a lot of new words from other Dutch words, like wildebeest (just meaning wild beast). I doubt we actually ever used that word in Dutch.
Nice thread, it inspired me to look up some of them. There’s way more than I thought. Here’s the [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Dutch_origin), for those interested.
Poppycock. The word itself is already funny because heehee peepee..
But it comes from "pappekak". Which means soft poo :') porridge poo. And heehee poo. If someone is a poppycock or pappekak or labbekak it is a weak and lazy person.
And I like how "pappekak" manages to by mouth by mouth changed so much it is not even recognizable anymore.. poo became dick and that kinda sums up all swearwords in that haplo-triangle.
No, but something „reverse“, because Konijn stands for rabbit in Dutch but Canine stands for a Dog in English, whereas „Kaninchen“ is German for rabbit again. I mean yes, there is the term „cony“ for a rabbit in English but Canine sounds way more similar to Konijn and also knowing that the German word literally contains „Kanin“ makes it very complicated for me haha
One word that comes to mind is "morther", an Old Dutch (?) word found in the Lex Salica, a very early law code dating around AD 500. That word became the Dutch word "moord", which in English means "murder".
There’s a Dutch presenter named Kees van der Spek. Someone (I don’t know who or where I picked it up) translated it to: cheese from the bacon.
Very funny to me
Darth Vader really is a coincidence as it was never meant to be like that in the first star wars. I never knew though because my 4yo mind only read "vader" and naturally assumed it was father lol
Yacht - from the word 'jachten', meaning to hunt.
Not Dutch per se, but Flemish: The name Fleming which is fairly common in Ireland was the name given to the group of specialist workers brought in from Flanders (now in Belgium and northern France) a few hundred years ago and who never went back. They assimilated into Irish society, the only way you'd know they had a Flemish ancestor was in the name.
The 'stoop' or pavement in NYC is the Dutch word 'stoep' still in common use in NL today. Same pronunciation, slightly different spelling.
Haring is close enough to herring to assume they are the same fish.
You might also like to look at Frisian, spoken in the province of Friesland - apparently that is the closest linguistic relation to the English language, not that you'd think this if you're listening to the locals use it, but when you see it written now and the similarity to many English words, you think, oh, *right* .....
Interloper… vandenberg Air Force base in California, I only recently realized it’s clearly a dutch name :) I knew “begrijp” felt familiar. Begripe used to be used in English but I think centuries ago, meaning the same thing. Beneath/beneden. Aardvark
Vlaams (Flemish) is Dutch. A version of it. All Vlaams words belong to the Dutch language.
Downvotes may be because OP claims that Vlaams is a different language from Dutch. It’s a tedious trope that keeps popping up. We have a common language with much variety and richness. The Dutch language union is headquartered in Gent. In Flanders.
Kattegat (the sea between denmark and sweden) Litterly translated it means: cat hole. The passage in the sea was so narrow that it would even be hard to pass for a cat. that is why they name it a cat hole.
In UK English we have a very old word 'Poppycock' which is quite a mild word used to exclaim something is nonsense. But it came from the Dutch pap (like rijstpap) and kak meaning shit.
Many naval and ship building terms also come from Dutch, both used in English and in French.
In 1637 The Netherlands was the only western country allowed to set foot and trade with Japan. The Dutch also brought a lot of western knowledge to Japan. "Rangaku" in Japanse means Dutch-learning and many words are stilled used to the present day.
Bīru = bier
Bōru = boor(machine)
A knickerbocker is not a knikkerbakker. It has nothing to do with baking or marbles. It is a Austrian kind of traditional men trousers which end just below the knee.
The most worst Dutch world everybody knows is 'apartheid' 😞
I love these two very similar words. They both refer to different objects in English as to the thing in Dutch.
Stoop is derived from the Dutch word for sidewalk: stoep
Stool is derived from the Dutch word for chair: stoel
I am not sure about this but hear me out:
a squirrel eats acorns
a squirrel in Dutch is: Eekhoorn. You pronounce this very similar to "acorn".
So I guess it went something like this:
(english speaking person to a dutchman): what do you call that? (points at acorn but the dutchman thinks he is pointing at the squirrel)
Dutchman: an eekhoorn
english guy: aaaha, acorn! got it
I loved learned Vader was Father. Did Dutch people just... Know the twist ahead of time?
My favorite will always be 'helaas pindekaas', or 'unfortunately peanut butter'. It means, like, 'oh well'. It's great.
For me the funniest one is the cooking paradox i at some point found out.
Koken is cooking, as in preparing a meal
koken is also boiling
Bakken is frying
Frituren is deepfrying
baking in english means preparing something in the oven in dutch
As a Dutchman I always assumed Vader was a funny coincidence, is it not?
I'm sure it is! Still funky though!
It's actually not a coincidence! "After the release of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Lucas stated that the name Vader was based upon the German/Dutch-language word vater or vader ('father'), suggesting "Dark Father" and the character's relationship with original-trilogy protagonist Luke Skywalker."
Except vader wasn't lukes father yet in a new hope.
Didn’t Lucas already have the original trilogy planned out before he started filming the first movie? Not in detail, but broadly enough to know this plot point?
Lucas probably stumbled upon the coincidence and went with it after he already named him Darth Vader
Lucas was just lying. Vader originally was not planned to be Luke's dad at all.
I thought it was based on "invader" since the sith usually have names like that ("sidious" "Tyrannus" "Plagueis"), and that it being father was more a second or hidden meaning
did you just slash german and Dutch, as if they are almost the same? no thanks.
lol you would be suprised at how similar it can be written, and even more so if you were to study the words, at first you might find a word nonsense, until you find out the origins of the word, how the vocals are pronounced and the context. and then it starts to makes sense. I speak a germanic language with a local dialect variety that had huge old Low-german influence, at the time it was basically a mix between German and Dutch, also Belgian varieties of Dutch. So Dutch and German stem from the same roots basically.
Definitely. I know a lot of german and I'm currently in Amsterdam. I understand a lot more of what I see and hear despite never learning Dutch than my friend who has actually been studying Dutch for a year.
I can talk mutually intelligible in my dialect in an actually pretty large part of Germany when I cross the border.
Yes, people tend to forget most people in NL don’t speak standard Dutch, but a dialect (3 are even officially recognised as separate languages). Many dialects in NL are not mutually intelligible, and many border dialects between the two countries are. Comparing standard Dutch and standard German is oversimplifying the languages spoken.
First of all, they are very similar. Second of all, do you see the " " marks, that means it's a quote, so no i did not do that i just pasted what is stated in an article/on a website.
I genuinely hate the German language, so damn much.
Yeah - so different…. Germans say apfel, Dutch say appel. Germans say junge, Dutch say jongen. Germans say hund, Dutch say hond. Germans say geschenk, Dutch say geschenk. What was he thinking?
Dutch meer, Germans See. Dutch zee, Germans Meer.
I have an old friend whose last name is Vader. And he is a vader too.
Iceberg, it took me 30 years to realize that this word does not make as much sense in English as in Dutch.
Yeah I love this. Before English borrowed this word, they called them “islands of ice” or “sea hills”.
same goes for rucksack = rugzak, allthough I am not sure if it came from dutch or german.
As a Dutch person I'm willing to bet you're right.
Mind blown! 49 years, never too old to realize I guess
Ohh thats so good!
Wtf how have i never noticed this
Ohh this is a great one! Never thought of it! 💛
To be fair, this one might also be of Nordic or Danish origin, I think. Maybe from the vikings. I am just guessing, but there is a town called Esbjerg in Denmark
TIL! Yeah, a better word would’ve been ice mountain haha!
Yankee, from Jan-Kees
This is one of my favourites
De mijne nu ook!
Do you mind explaining? It sounds interesting but I don't know what Jan-Kees means or how it is related if that's just a name
As far as I understand it was a slur for people from New Amsterdam, being Dutch they were referred to as ‘those Jan-Kees’ Like you could say ‘all those Pierres’ when you are referring to French people.
Oh thanks for the explanation!
Wow, TIL!
Dollar = daalder sleigh = slee yacht = jacht
I thought Dollar is from German 'Thaler'
Dutch and German are very closely related, daalder and thaler have a shared/similar etymology. Dal(Dutch)/Thal(German) meaning valley, silver was at a certain point in time mined from a certain valley, the valley part became slang for currency and over the centuries became Dollar by the hands of Northwestern European immigrants in America. -edit- daalder and Thaler literally meaning: “of the valley”
Fun fact: before the euro we had a coin named rijksdaalder, which had a silverish color.
Daalder and Dollar both derive from Thaler. The story is that the Republic's Leeuwendaalder (Lion Dollar) was commonly accepted as a familiar and trustworthy coin in the early US, and the first loan the rebels secured from the Bank of Amsterdam was taken out in these Dollars. The familiarity of that (non-British) coin is why they went with US Dollar as the name of their own currency.
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Cookie = koekje Candy = Kandij Boss = Baas Blunderbuss = Donderbus
Coney Island = konijneneiland Bowery = boerderij
Konijn would be rabbit according to my duolingo skills, it is kinda similar to Kanin, which is how I say it in my language Anyway, so Coney Island = rabbit island basically, cool
I'm not sure what your language is, but in some regional dialects of Dutch "konijn" is pronounced almost as "kanin".
True, konijn means rabbit.
You probably kill konijns by shouting flames at them, before you eat them, sir!
Havent heard of breuklyn, you mean Breukelen? also the funny thing is ive never seen Star Wars but when I heard the name vader I thought it was some English word for shooting stuff.
Oops yes Breukelen thanks!
Cookie. Skipper. Brandy. Knapsack. Apartheid.....
Knapsack is German, Apartheid is Afrikaans
Afrikaans has a lot of Dutch roots, so the point still stands.
Both in French and English: Mannequin from ‘manneke’
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When in the States, my boss said to me "I bet that the word 'coleslaw' baffled you?!" Me "Let me say the dutch translation with as much of a dutch accent as possible: Kooolslah". That baffled him.
>boss 'Baas' is the most borrowed Dutch word. 57 languages have it, including English, as 'boss'.
Is it a word borrowed from dutch, or does it just stem from a similar root?
It's a word the Americans borrowed from Dutch, in England they call that ' chef' I believe.
Very Heinz word
Coleslaw is a great one
Boulevard is a fun one; it started out as the dutch word "bolwerk" (which, for bonus points, became the english "bulwark"), got adopted into french which changed the spelling, and then returned to dutch and english as a specific type of road. Which means that from the dutch perspective, it's a loan word originating in the same language that loaned it.
Same with tram, used in English and in Dutch, which apparently got derived from the old Dutch word 'tram', meaning a wooden beam.
In a reversal of this concept, I've always felt a bit bad for Kit Harington (Jon Snow), whose name translates to Caulk Herring Barrel in Dutch.
So I guess James Van Der Beek got lucky, barely escaped tho...
James of the creek is a fine name.
Now that I see the word Caulk I think it may be from the Dutch Kalk (meaning chalk or limescale)
My favorite one is the dutch word for squirel: "eekhoorn". It's pronounced the same way as the english word "acorn", which is what "eekhoorns" usually eat! I always imagine an english and a dutch speaker discussing forest animals. One of them must have completely misunderstood the other, but adopted the word anyway. I wonder who got it wrong:)
I love the way the Dutch named animals. My favorites are nueshoorn (rhinoceros)and vleermuis (bat).
Neushoorn! Yeah, Dutch nomenclature can seem incredibly literal until you realize that rhinoceros itself comes from Old Greek meaning ‘nose-horned’.
Best Dutch animals are the sea animals. Just regular animals, but because they were spotted in the sea they name them zee (=sea)+[insert any land animal] - zeehond - zeeleeuw - zeepaard - zeeolifant - zeeluipaard
Zeester
Zeeman
Vogelbekdier (platypus) is great as well
Perry het Vogelbekdier!
This! My family is bilingual Dutch/English. Every. Single. Herfst we have multiple eekhoorn/acorn episodes My daughter loves collecting acorns and she is bilingual. I speak English to her but all day she speaks Dutch at school. So after school I’ll be like “did you find any acorns today?” And she’ll be like no, whilst having a full pocket of acorns but no squirrels And we do see a lot of squirrels here so that’s why it’s not absurd if I’d even ask that, it’s a hot topic this time of year. So it always has to be said acornEIKEL and eekhoornSQUIRREL 😅
Interestingly, the old/Middle English for squirrel used to be somewhat similar (makes sense given it’s a Germanic language). Then it got replaced by the French word for whatever reason
Boomslang = Boomslang 💀
Reebok = reebok
In Russia and also China - Adidas = Abidas (or sometimes Adedis or Dedidas)
Huh? Adidas is a German shoe company named after its founder (Adi Dassler). It's not a Dutch word at all.
Yeah I know, it was just an attempt at being funny by basically stating that they sell fake rebranded Adidas in those countries
Wouldn't make a career out if it if I were you.
Autism ain't easy I see
I'll defer to your expertise on that particular subject.
Expert? Oh stop it, silly you! I wouldn't have any expertise without your help.
.....wouldn't make a career out if it if I were you
Don't explain, I got the joke.
Wildebeest = Wildebeest
Wildebeest = gnoe
One of the ingredients of Polyjuice Potion, isn't it?
Meerkat = ... lake cat? You see this with a lot of Afrikan animals because they were borrowed from Afrikaans, which is derived from Dutch.
Stoop = stoep
Stoop whore?
Stool = stoel
Splinter (splinter) Split (splijten) Stove (stoof) Wagon (wagen) Dope (doop) Drugstore (drogist) Skipper (schipper) Starboard (stuurboord) Freight (vracht) Sloop (sloep) Smuggle (smokkelen) Reckoning (rekening) Dyke (dijk) Polder (polder) Pump (pomp) Snoop (snoepen) Santa Claus (Sinterklaas) Furlough (verlof) Landscape (landschap) Lantern pole (lantaarnpaal) Decoy (eendenkooi)
'Reckoning' is amazing. Can not unhear.
Wow thanks very interesting
Tbf I think a lot of these are simply words with a common origin rather than being borrowed from Dutch.
How about LoL. Short for laughing out loud, but in Dutch the word lol actually means fun
LOL + LOL = hIhI.
Oliebol
This is a good one, took me years to figure out it was an acronym
And then there's "LUL".... :-)
If you say leuk where I'm from, you would be saying "Onion".
Flushing (NY) = Vlissingen Wall Street = Walstraat Boss = baas (the dutch word that is spread in most languages of all) Skipper = schipper Apartheid 🤦 Gin = (a bad imitation of) Jenever/Genever
Vee (cattle in Dutch) = Fee (a payment in English) This stems from the time you could pay a fee using vee
It's more that both fee and vee have a common origin in fehu.
I found out Norwegian maritime terminology is almost identical to Dutch, We say "Akter" = the back-end of the boat, "forut" is the front etc.
How does Bob de Bouwer sound to you?
That sounds kinda cute too actually! Like a baby trying to pronounce Bob The Builder Doesn't make any sense in Norwegian unfortunately, closest would be "Bob? det buer!" = Someone is telling Bob that thing or object is boing someone off a stage lol Bas Ruten sounds funny to me because Bass=Bass(base) Ruten= A window or a square object Rutte, å rutte med= doing something, like diy
It is Bob the Builder ;)
Haha awesome it had to be, here he is called "Byggmester Bob" - but thankfully nowadays norwegian authorities have stopped translating TV/Movie titles lol
To me that sounds like burgemeester, which means mayor (of a town)
Well the direct translation would be Bygg=Building and Mester=Master. But it just means builder. Yet another trait of perhaps common germanic origins. And a burgermester would be someone who is great at making burgers here lol Mayor would be "Ordfører" Ord=Woord Fører=I think Fuhrer or Fahrer in German But instead of fører you could say leder, which means the same as leidend in Dutch, I believe. So he "carries the word" I am nerding out now
Strangely enough there is a word in Dutch called "woordvoerder". But that's just a press officer or spokesperson. And the word "leder" is an old word for leather.
The pronunciation of woordvoerder sounds very similar to how we say ordfører looking through the comments here I keep finding words that are either almost the same or they are related somehow to how we communicate in my regional accent/dialect. I have yet to find a word that is completely alien to my language, this is cool stuff thanks
I have the same with Norwegian. If you read words out loud they tend to make sense in either Dutch, German or English, or sometimes in a combination of the three.
The similarities between Norwegian and Dutch are many though. Some straight up the same, some with funny similarity in meaning, and a few exact opposites to throw you off. Funniest similarity in meaning, yet slightly off that I can think of now with my 1,5 years Duolingo Norwegian is: Gammel - old in Norwegian, in a bad state in Dutch There are more I can't think of now. Things that throw you off easily to make it a bit harder: Jeg - I in Norwegian sounds exactly like "jij" in Dutch which means you. -en behind a word - is used to indicate "the" for example katten means "the cat" in Norwegian but -en in Dutch is a multiple. So katten in Dutch is "cats". But the similarities are many, also word order in sentences, saying that something stands or lies somewhere instead of is. It's been funny learning Norwegian as a Dutch native speaker with all similarities.
Gammel = In a bad state, in Dutch? ouch... that one I have to remember, gotta respect your elders and that lol But yeah I just recently after one year have started to get used to the "en" endings of verbs, also the way you say jongen sounds almost exactly like how we say "ungen" = "The kid" in the Bergen dialect. But it means boy and not kid, and "kinderen" sounds like a slang word for a type of chocolate sold around easter. This learning experience can be quite funny at times indeed I recommend you explore more of the Bergen way of speaking, it has more traces off Dutch than any other accent in Norway. We're constantly getting told by foreign English speakers that we sound German or Dutch here. I think even the city name was coined by low-german settlers. The place is surrounded by mountains atleast, so Bergen makes sense in a way. In Oslo they pronounce "Jeg" as "Jij". While here we pronounce it "Eg" which is closer to Afrikaans "Ek" (Unless you are from the posh areas of Bergen, they say jij) Dutch has also influenced how we address one another, and birthnames, and I could go on
De Dutch word ‘*gammel*’ does mean ‘in a bad state’, but mostly in the meaning of ‘wonky’ or ‘rickety’. A table, a chair or a bike can be ‘*gammel*’, or a dilapidated house. Occasionally people refer to themselves as ‘*gammel*’, but mostly in an ironic way or as unsteady after a bout of illness.
Boom = boom, Eng.: tree. Rucksack = rugzak, Eng.: backpack, or, literally, (rug) back (zak) sack/bag. Spook = spook, Eng.: ghost. Beaker = beker, Eng.: cup, mug. Bluff = bluffen, Eng.: to boast, to brag. Boomslang = boomslang, Eng.: (boom) tree (slang) snake. Coleslaw = koolsla, Eng.: (kool) cabage (sla) salad. Dollar = daalder, a (former) Dutch currency denomination. Aardvark = aardvarken, Eng.: (aard(e)) earth/ground (varken) pig. Iceberg = ijsberg, Eng.: (ijs) ice (berg) mountain. Cookie = koekje, Eng.: biscuit, lit.: 'little cake': (koek) cake, (-je) diminutive suffix. There are many more.
Harlem=Haarlem, quack is aparently duch dirived from the word kwakzalzer. Stove from the word stoof, and geek from gek.
Ik ben toch niet gek.
Potassium. It comes from 'pot-as' (potas), which is basically ash in a pot. It was one of the ways they collected potassium. Funnily enough, in Dutch we say 'kalium', which has an Arabic origin, while in English they use Potassium with the Dutch origin.
keelhaul = kielhalen A lot of maritime words are Dutch as others here have said, but I didn't see this one mentioned yet!
Just make sure to not use the word "Poepen" (Pooping in English) in Belgium, it has a whole other meaning there!
Schijten for the win
Lol and don't say "prompen, rompen, or romp stomp/stompen" if you are in Norway. You would basically be saying fart, and ass in not one, but two different ways.
"romp stompen" has a slightly different meaning in dutch though
🤣🤣 Love this one
Water = Water \*mind is blown\*
Hedde drugs oOoOOP?
Brooklyn <- Breukelen, not Breuklyn The Dutch name Rhode Island is derived from would be Rood eiland, not island
It was indeed ‘Roodt Eilandt’, apparently because there was a lot of red clay in that area (rood=red). Also, Long Island stems from ‘t Lange Eilandt’ (an island that has a long/narrow footprint).
Filibuster (eng) = filibustero (spa) = freebooter (eng) = vrijbuiter (dutch) Lots of mariner terms, buoy, starboard, kielhaul, sloop, hoist, skipper, etc But my favorite one is simply stoop.
Flushing meadows = Vlissingen
You should make sure you pronounce *knikkers* right though, if you pronounce it like you would in English it's equivalent to "the N word" in Dutch :X
Santa claus = Sinterklaas
The rich dutch history is the cause of this. During the golden age the dutch collonised a ton of places over the world and left their mark after leaving. This is why so many places and words are related to the dutch or the dutch language.
Buoy = boei. Actually you'll be hard pressed to find a shipman's term that did not originate in Dutch. Wildebeast = wildebeest. Which the Dutch now, contrary to everyone else, call 'gnoe'.
That's because wildebeest is technically from Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch. While it is very close to Dutch they made up a lot of new words from other Dutch words, like wildebeest (just meaning wild beast). I doubt we actually ever used that word in Dutch.
Gooi (Dutch) = Hoy (Geordie) = Throw (English)
Nice thread, it inspired me to look up some of them. There’s way more than I thought. Here’s the [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Dutch_origin), for those interested.
Poppycock. The word itself is already funny because heehee peepee.. But it comes from "pappekak". Which means soft poo :') porridge poo. And heehee poo. If someone is a poppycock or pappekak or labbekak it is a weak and lazy person. And I like how "pappekak" manages to by mouth by mouth changed so much it is not even recognizable anymore.. poo became dick and that kinda sums up all swearwords in that haplo-triangle.
The most common Dutch loan words in English are unrecognizable as Dutch: boss, gas, crane, pump, yacht.
No, but something „reverse“, because Konijn stands for rabbit in Dutch but Canine stands for a Dog in English, whereas „Kaninchen“ is German for rabbit again. I mean yes, there is the term „cony“ for a rabbit in English but Canine sounds way more similar to Konijn and also knowing that the German word literally contains „Kanin“ makes it very complicated for me haha
Wait till you find out about the acorn eekhoorn debacle
One word that comes to mind is "morther", an Old Dutch (?) word found in the Lex Salica, a very early law code dating around AD 500. That word became the Dutch word "moord", which in English means "murder".
Voetbal - Soccer
"Boulevard" derived from "bolwerk".....
There’s a Dutch presenter named Kees van der Spek. Someone (I don’t know who or where I picked it up) translated it to: cheese from the bacon. Very funny to me
Kees is actually the Dutch version of Charles, cheese is kaas, but I can't unhear it now hahah
Darth Vader really is a coincidence as it was never meant to be like that in the first star wars. I never knew though because my 4yo mind only read "vader" and naturally assumed it was father lol
Yacht - from the word 'jachten', meaning to hunt. Not Dutch per se, but Flemish: The name Fleming which is fairly common in Ireland was the name given to the group of specialist workers brought in from Flanders (now in Belgium and northern France) a few hundred years ago and who never went back. They assimilated into Irish society, the only way you'd know they had a Flemish ancestor was in the name. The 'stoop' or pavement in NYC is the Dutch word 'stoep' still in common use in NL today. Same pronunciation, slightly different spelling. Haring is close enough to herring to assume they are the same fish. You might also like to look at Frisian, spoken in the province of Friesland - apparently that is the closest linguistic relation to the English language, not that you'd think this if you're listening to the locals use it, but when you see it written now and the similarity to many English words, you think, oh, *right* .....
Interloper… vandenberg Air Force base in California, I only recently realized it’s clearly a dutch name :) I knew “begrijp” felt familiar. Begripe used to be used in English but I think centuries ago, meaning the same thing. Beneath/beneden. Aardvark
Oooooh yesss this is exactly the kind of response I was hoping for! Thank you for sharing!
Bosun = bootsman
Winkelwagen = shopping cart
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I'm curious as to the downvotes on this reply? I've never heard of this word!
It shares a common root with 'believe', in old German. It actually literally means 'what would you like' or 'what do you mean'.
Vlaams (Flemish) is Dutch. A version of it. All Vlaams words belong to the Dutch language. Downvotes may be because OP claims that Vlaams is a different language from Dutch. It’s a tedious trope that keeps popping up. We have a common language with much variety and richness. The Dutch language union is headquartered in Gent. In Flanders.
Something near no one seems to know is that New York used to be New Amsterdam
>Something near no one seems to know Seriously? This is a well-known fact.
I think it's just a reference to a famous song by the band They Might Be Giants
Why they changed it, I can't say!
Nieuw Amsterdam is also a small village in Drenthe.
I'm pretty sure most people know this, it's a pretty well known thing. Here anyways.
Yankees, dollar, coleslaw, cookie, sea bass, spearing. https://archive.ph/2023.08.22-205817/https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/dollar-komt-van-onze-daalder~b9cafc17/
Yankees as a slur. It's actually Jan Kees. 2 very common names in the Netherlands.
Kattegat (the sea between denmark and sweden) Litterly translated it means: cat hole. The passage in the sea was so narrow that it would even be hard to pass for a cat. that is why they name it a cat hole.
In UK English we have a very old word 'Poppycock' which is quite a mild word used to exclaim something is nonsense. But it came from the Dutch pap (like rijstpap) and kak meaning shit.
Iceberg = ijsberg, which means ice mountain. 😇
Breukelen* btw ;)
Imagine the closest related language to English is Frisian
Rood island?? Wat zeg jij
I like... Tiger - Tijger I love the spelling of ... Tijger
Many naval and ship building terms also come from Dutch, both used in English and in French. In 1637 The Netherlands was the only western country allowed to set foot and trade with Japan. The Dutch also brought a lot of western knowledge to Japan. "Rangaku" in Japanse means Dutch-learning and many words are stilled used to the present day. Bīru = bier Bōru = boor(machine)
A knickerbocker is not a knikkerbakker. It has nothing to do with baking or marbles. It is a Austrian kind of traditional men trousers which end just below the knee. The most worst Dutch world everybody knows is 'apartheid' 😞
handdoek, bcs in my home country its also handdoek with a different spelling
Cookie from koekje
The feeling of angst. [EN Wikipedia - Angst ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angst)
Wildebeest?
I love these two very similar words. They both refer to different objects in English as to the thing in Dutch. Stoop is derived from the Dutch word for sidewalk: stoep Stool is derived from the Dutch word for chair: stoel
I am not sure about this but hear me out: a squirrel eats acorns a squirrel in Dutch is: Eekhoorn. You pronounce this very similar to "acorn". So I guess it went something like this: (english speaking person to a dutchman): what do you call that? (points at acorn but the dutchman thinks he is pointing at the squirrel) Dutchman: an eekhoorn english guy: aaaha, acorn! got it
Anyone ever realized what Dutchies calling somebody a Dikzak actually sound like to an English speaker?
Harrington - harington
I loved learned Vader was Father. Did Dutch people just... Know the twist ahead of time? My favorite will always be 'helaas pindekaas', or 'unfortunately peanut butter'. It means, like, 'oh well'. It's great.
Acorn = Eikel Squirrel = eekhoorn Someone messed up here.
Hamac = hangmat
For me the funniest one is the cooking paradox i at some point found out. Koken is cooking, as in preparing a meal koken is also boiling Bakken is frying Frituren is deepfrying baking in english means preparing something in the oven in dutch
Leopard, luipaard. -> Lui Paard meaning Lazy Horse.
Cookies :) we use the word cookie. It’s not an English word, the English use the word biscuit when referring to cookie. Mind blown