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**What Happened:** One day, I decided to assemble my new shelf using the instruction manual that came with it. But as I read the steps, the words seemed to twist in my mind, sounding oddly like an overzealous Aussie trying to explain how to catch a wave instead of a flat-pack shelf. “Lift the shelf up, mate,” it said, which was fine until I realized I wasn’t picturing a shelf but an entire kangaroo with a tinny tucked under its arm! I ended up calling my friend for help, but instead of a second opinion, I got a full-blown Sunday barbecue in my living room.
**Why It’s Funny:** I could barely recognize the instructions by the time my friend arrived. I had glued three shelves together, inadvertently made a charmingly lopsided table, and set my pet cat atop it for a regal touch. As we tried to decipher the “instructions” while catching our breath from laughter, my cat stared down at us like we had just failed an exam in IKEA design, and I started to wonder if my future furniture should come with subtitles.
S
it is hilarious to read dutch as a native english speaker lots of the sentences are incomprehensible but the ones that are are glorious
R
It’s even funnier when you speak both English and German. It’s kinda a mix between English, German, some German dialects, and what happens to one’s mind if you live in a country with no mountains for too long. (Greetings from Switzerland to all my Dutch friends.)
K
>what happens to one’s mind if you live in a country with no mountains for too long. As a Flemish person, I’d like to add my suspicion that whoever started speaking Dutch drank too much seawater
I
And what caused you guys to call fucking “poepen”?
5
Bunch of airsick lowlanders
H
I miss lunamor
5
He deserves his own side quest novella. Plus we’ve never actually seen the Peaks, so that would be doubly cool.
R
In case you were not aware. This is from the dec 2024 state of the sanderson. “That said, I have scheduled the Horneater novella (about Rock, taking place during Book Four) to be written in about eighteen months, to give us another taste of Stormlight. “
J
Thank you, this gives me hope!
L
Best place to see this reference thank you
N
Exactly, if I come across Dutch when I’m not expecting it I feel like I’ve had a stroke or something and forgot how to read
M
I have that when I hear Irish Gaelic.
L
Ah, so THAT’S what happened to the Danes. We other nordics have wondered.
Q
I’m German with a South African partner and immediately wondered whether this was Afrikaans !
P
The easiest way I personally find to distinguish the two at a glance is the use of “ij” vs “y”, the former being Dutch and the latter being Afrikaans. Of course there are many differences in overall vocabulary but if you speak neither, that’s a reasonable rule of thumb for texts at least a few sentences in length.
S
Never expected to get called an air-sick lowlander IRL
P
I’m British but I speak German as a 2nd language, and around the time I was getting pretty fluent with German, I started learning a little Dutch and encountering more Dutch media. I barely studied any Dutch but I can still understand some and every time I come across text in Dutch I’m thinking “what the hell even is this” while still somehow getting the gist of what it’s about. Very strange feeling, and a very amusing language to anyone who speaks English and German lol Also gonna say it’s so much easier for me to understand Dutch than Swiss German. The Germanic languages get weird up in the mountains, I was dumbfounded when I first encountered Swiss German lmao. I’ve also had friends in the south of Germany so I can kinda see the transition from, say, Schwäbisch to Schwiizerdütsch, but still, the language feels weird to me the higher you get (but I like it, the Alemannic dialects are cool). Grüezi us Britannien!
R
>The Germanic languages get weird up in the mountains Not sure whether you mean Austrian, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic or Scots :p Damn, really all Germanic languages up in the mountains are weird, aren’t they. Well, luckily I come from the Swiss plateau and speak a High Alemannic dialect, not one of the weird Highest Alemannic mountain dialects :p >I can kinda see the transition from, say, Schwäbisch to Schwiizerdütsch, but still, the language feels weird to me the higher you get It’s actually kinda funny and interesting, how it gradually transitions from North Frisian to Highest Alemannic >Grüezi us Britannien! Cheers mate
L
Recently I came across a video that had a computer voice reading a text, but the text was in German and the computer thought it was reading English. It took me half a minute to realize it wasn’t Dutch.
C
I had this experience. Native English speaker, fluent German speaker. I was living in Germany and went to Amsterdam with friends. After a few visits to the coffee shops, I could understand 90% of the Dutch I heard, but I could probably never learn to speak it.
A
Itsa meeeee!!
A
This is, I agree, glorious if you speak English and have a basic understanding of German.
–
Dutch is what happened when someone tried mixing English and German while actively fighting anaesthesia. We received glorious words, such as: Telefoon Hondenfokker
J
Airsick lowlanders, they wouldn’t know what to put in a stew
K
I love that a kettle is called a water cooker
B
We’re just descriptive. Pannenlikker is a spatula but the literal translation is pan licker.
S
If something is really good aren’t we all gonna be a pannenlikker.
D
Fun fact, our local word for that is a preutelekker
G
Around here it’s a stekespade (frying shovel)
K
This sounds like a really terrible insult
K
I’m going to call spatulas ‘pan lockers’ from now on.
P
In Afrikaans, which is an old dutch derivative language in South Africa. The word for binoculars is verkyker. Which is literally translated as “far looker”. Love that.
B
Interesting. The Norwegian word is “kikkert”, Which literally translates as “looker”. Seems to have the same root as “kyker”.
P
That is interesting! Amazing how similiar we all are. I remember as a child playing quake online in the 90s, at 11pm when my parents went to bed, on the office pc. The only people online were Asian and despite my parents insistance that anyone different to us were heathens, right wing Christian obvs, I found out we all have the same interests. The same worries and the same thoughts. Was a great lesson for young me.
S
Yea, the Dutch for “look” is “kijk”, Afrikaans turns that into “kyk”. In proper Dutch spelling, “binoculars” is written “verrekijker”, also far looker. I have noticed, as a native Dutch speaker getting into Norwegian, that there are quite a few oddly similar words between the languages.
G
Verrekijker in Dutch.
E
You could tell colleagues about it while gathered around the water cooler.
F
I think my water is undercooked. Am I going to die?
R
I was at a friend’s house the other day and was pouring myself some water. I was human.. until I read the label out loud “mineraaaaal water” and we all turned into sea gulls
R
Why am I reading this like Count Orlok?
D
mineraalwasser
D
Genau
S
I don’t want Aal in my water. That’s fishy. Sorry. ICNR
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T
It’s “centraal station” only difference is one more A
M
Yeah why can I read this? It feels weird and I don’t like it.
C
English and Dutch (among others) are Germanic languages, so they share quite a few similarities. Same phenomenon that allows speakers of Italian and Spanish (Romance languages) to understand each other vaguely.
A
When speaking of the romantic languages, Portuguese is in a really weird spot if you already know some Spanish–you can read some of it, but you can’t understand someone speaking it to your face lol.
S
You get used to it. But c’ome. It’s great to understand a diffrent language.
A
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