On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 16:06 +0100, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
> Germand and Dutch are very alike, up to using the same words for
> different things. 

I was really surprised by that. On my recent trip to Europe I had a 7
hour stopover at Amsterdam. Hearing the dutch language spoken really was
a delight. While I certainly couldn't understand it fluently, my small
knowledge of German (and ever smaller knowledge of French) let me get
the "gist" of most things. Funny thing is at times I understood the
flight crew's Dutch better then their English (the Dutch accent is very
new to my ears, and I sometimes had trouble picking it up).

> So it is easy for a Dutch to say something that
> probably is well-formed German. But not alwasy what he wanted to say.  I
> think I mentioned this one before:
> 
> English   Dutch    German
> Sea       zee      Meer
> Lake      meer     See

Interesting, I never knew there were differences like that. I knew the
dutch PRONOUNCE "germanish" words differently, but I didn't know there
was a crossing of meaning like that! Cool.

> My favourite mistake was asking a German farmer for a place to set up my
> tent: "Haben Sie ein platz fur mich zum kampfen?" => "Do you have a
> place for me to fight?" (Dutch "Kamperen" != German "Kampfen").

Hehe, Wouter, you would have gotten a weird look for me to! :)

Of course, you would probably give ME a weird look if I tried a single
word of Dutch, so I guess it all balances out...

-----------------------------
Herbert's PIC Stuff:
http://repatch.dyndns.org:8383/pic_stuff/

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist