Dutch Language Blog

Flickr/League of Women Voters of California

Tens of thousands of Dutch citizens are in an uproar over something so heinous that they’re threatening to leave the country if something is not done about it.

What could be so utterly terrible, so unfathomably unjust, so unpatriotic that it would evoke such a strong reaction among the Dutch people?

It’s tyranny! No, it’s ridiculously high taxes! No, it’s…..

Het Koningslied!

Dun, dun, DUN!

Yes, the Dutch are all up in arms over a song.

Not just any song, mind you. But the King’s Song (koning = king, lied=song).

If you haven’t been living under a rock or on a deserted island, you should have heard by now that the Netherlands is getting a new monarch: a king.

“Yeah, yeah,” you may be thinking to yourself. “Big deal. The Netherlands is a monarchy, of course they’re getting a king.”

Au contraire… I mean, on the contrary… I mean, integendeel!

This is a huge deal for the Netherlands. Why? Because the Dutch haven’t had a king since Willem III… one hundred and twenty-three years ago!

On January 28th of this year, Queen Beatrix announced that she would be abdicating, making room for Willem-Alexander to take the throne accompanied by his beautiful Argentinian-born wife Maxima.

It was decided that the abdication/inauguration shindig would take place on April 30, 2013 to coincide with Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day).

Now, Koninginnedag is a major holiday in the Netherlands. I would even go so far as to say it’s the biggest and best-loved holiday in the Netherlands. There’s drinking, music, flea markets, and orange, orange everywhere as the Dutch go crazy with patriotic pride.

Add to that, the fact that this year marks the last Koninginnedag for quite some time (Willem-Alexander has announced that, beginning in 2014, the holiday will be known as Koningsdag and will be celebrated on April 27th as part of his birthday celebration), and we here in the Netherlands are in for a wild party!

The Dutch are going all out to show their love for their outgoing Queen and their support for their incoming King. That includes coming up with a song to mark the occasion.

That rather significant job fell to the hands of Dutch-British composer John Ewbank. And the result was Het Koningslied – a five-minute-plus long combination of traditional and choir music with a dash of rap, which was released on April 19th and included the collaboration of 51 Dutch artists. Hundreds of thousands of school children were charged with learning the song to be sung for their new king and an elaborate music video was shot to accompany the song.

Shortly after the song’s release, a petition calling to do away with the the ‘imbecilic’ anthem or they’d leave the country had gained almost 40,000 signatures. Ewbank was heckled via Twitter and Facebook to the point that he decided to withdraw Het Koningslied.

Unfortunately, a replacement could not be found on such short notice, so the event organizers have decided to stick with Ewbank’s submission.

Ridiculous lyrics, too Disney, bizarre combination of music styles, anti-egalitarian, overproduced… the list of criticisms is long.

Is it as bad as all the naysayers say? I’ll let you be the judge of that:

Photo Credit: China_Crisis

On July 28th the Skûtsjesilen Championships will take place. Have you never heard of the word Skûtsjesilen? I hadn’t. So here is what I found out via the Holland.com website:

“Skûtsjes are typical Frisian ships that were originally used as cargo ships by Frisian farmers. Skûtsjes have a long and flat structure with which they could reach Frisian farms through shallow water. Sometimes farmers used them in sailing matches to earn some money. Due to new rules decreed by the water sport associations and the arrival of motorboats, interest in the skûtsjes declined. It wasn’t until after World War II that some skûtsjes fans started promoting skûtsjesilen again and turned it into the sailing event that it is today.” 

Each year sailing championships are organized so that skippers of these historical ships can fight for the honour of becoming the skûtsjesilen champion. The event is the perfect opportunity for you to combine water sports, practising your Dutch (or Frisian/Fries/Frysk) and enjoying the Frisian heritage.

If you would like to learn a little more about the Frisian language, the following video has some interesting information:

A few Frisian words to help you out:

**alternatives exist

Other events also happening in the Netherlands (and there starting dates) during July:

• Over het Ij Festival (July 5th)
• North Sea Jazz Festival (July 6th)
• Sensation Amsterdam (July 7th)
• Four Days Marches (July 17th)
• Black Motorcross (July 20th)
• Summer Carnival (July 27th)

What is one of the things many people learn first when they learn a new language? Go on, you can say it – we won’t blush. As much as language programs seem to always start with numbers, greetings or even colours, for many people the first word is a swear word.

You might have noticed that some of the other Transparent Language blogs have started to cover swear words and now we’ll go ahead and learn how to swear in Dutch. This is of course by no means an exhaustive list but it should give you a better understanding about swearing in Dutch.

If this isn’t your type of thing, you may wish to stop reading now.

Let’s start at the beginning:

• swear words = scheldwoorden
• swearing = schelden

Swearing in Dutch isn’t pretty. Although to be fair, in what language is it nice? In Dutch, swear words often fall into categories, however, it is very common to combine one or more of the categories to come up with an extra strong swear word. Here are some examples of both singular and combined swear words with their rough translations:

Diseases

Whether you shout the disease when you stub your toe or suggest that someone has the disease, disease related swear words used to be very popular but have started to go a bit out of fashion, especially kanker (cancer).

• kanker/kankerlijer (cancer/lijer means someone that has, so kankerlijer is someone that has cancer)
• tyfuslijer (someone that has typhoid)
• tering (tuberculosis) –> e.g. if your foot gets stuck under the rug as you pass and you almost fall, you might shout out “tering, kutkleed!” –> “tuberculosis, c*nt rug!” (doesn’t really have the same ring to it in English)

Occupations

• hoer (wh*re)
• kuthoer (c*nt wh*re)
• tyfushoer (typhus wh*re)

Genitalia

• kut (c*nt)
• lul (penis)
• klote (scrotum)

Animal Species

• vuilehond (dirty dog)

Appearances

• dikke (fat)
• schele (cross eyed)

Last but not least, we come to a very popular, if not slightly odd, Dutch swear word. This swear word is often used when something is not going right, similar to how in English we might say f**k .

In Dutch the word is verdomme or godverdomme. If you break it down god = god, verdom = damn and me = me.

This was in fact the first swear word I learned when arriving in the Netherlands.