Archive for November, 2016
100 years of Schiphol Posted by Karoly Molina on Nov 30, 2016
For many of us, Schiphol has been the first piece of the Netherlands that we encountered. The vast size of the airport is felt on the long walk from the plane to the exit gates each time you fly into Schiphol. This year, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol celebrates its 100 years of existence as the gateway of…
Zondag met Lubach – The Dutch Daily Show Posted by Sten on Nov 29, 2016
Jon Stewart became famous for his satirical view on the news in his Daily Show, which has since been copied many times in different formats. Such shows tend to give real news information by breaking down a topic while at the same time entertaining with jokes about the sometimes ridiculous realities. They also tend to…
Quiz Night in Dutch Posted by Karoly Molina on Nov 27, 2016
Last week, the husband and I were invited to a quiz night to raise money for a camping trip. I was a bit nervous about how fast my thinking would be for a quiz night in Dutch. There are many questions to answer and you only have a short amount of time to do it…
Why The Dutch Government No Longer Uses The Terms Allochtoon/Autochtoon Posted by Sten on Nov 25, 2016
Earlier this month, the Dutch Rijksoverheid (government) – or, more specifically, the Raad voor Regeringsbeleid (Council for Government Policy) and the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (Central Office of Statistics) – decided to drop the use of the often used terms allochtoon and autochtoon. What do they mean? And why did the government decide to stop using them? And what do they use now instead?…
Sayings in Dutch Posted by Karoly Molina on Nov 23, 2016
I was recently at a quiz night and one extra round of questions consisted of finding sayings in a drawing. As most of you can imagine, I was very much useless for my team in this exercise. However, the drawing ended up being useful for me to start learning some Dutch sayings. There are more…
Schoon Vlaams: Dutch vs. Flemish Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 18, 2016
Dutch is usually associated with the Dutch. That makes sense, not everybody knows that Dutch is also an official language of Suriname and Belgium. Is Dutch the same everywhere? No, each country has its own variety. Let’s have a closer look at the Dutch spoken in Belgium. What’s it called? First, some terminology. Dutch is…
Learning Limburg Dialect Posted by Karoly Molina on Nov 16, 2016
Limburg is the southern most region of the Netherlands that borders with Germany and Belgium. It has slightly over one million people and ranks 6th in population size in the country. During the past three years that I’ve lived in Limburg, I’ve learned that it is a region set apart from the rest of the…