Hungry for more Dutch sayings and expressions? Check out the other posts in our Dutch Idioms series here.

Het kind/de baby met het badwater weggooien

Wait! Don’t throw the bathwater out just yet! (Photo by Elizaveta Dushechkina: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-s-hands-in-the-water-3727117/)

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater¹

Literally: to throw away the child with the bathwater

This bizarre uitdrukking finds its origins in a time long ago, when de douche (the shower) wasn’t invented yet. In a time when people would go for a week without washing themselves. In a time when the many benefits of zeep (soap) weren’t discovered yet. And in a time when warming up some water for a bath was quite an ordeal – get water, put it over the fire and keep that fire going, wait forever for it to get hot… And now find a way to wash all your family, including your annoying 7 children and loving grandma.

The hot water was filled in a teil (tub), and the ones that were deemed most important would go first – that would be the father, the oldest zoon (son), all the way to the youngest zoon. With people not washing much, you can imagine that the water would get filthy, and quick. So by the time it was the little child’s turn, the water was troebel (cloudy) and gross. Yuck. We gotta get rid of that grossness, and immediately!

You take the tub and throw out the water – but you forgot to take your last child out! There it goes, your pride, out with the bathwater.

If you’ve heard of this uitdrukking before, you might know what it means: throwing out the baby with the bathwater means that something good, favorable (the baby) is thrown out together with the bad, unfortunate (the bad). Because you were so focused on the gross water, you missed the good that you’re also getting rid of.

This can also be interpreted as overreacting, acting without thinking first, and not valuing the good that you had.

It goes back to the German das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten, which was first recorded in 1512!

Here’s an example of how the phrase can be used in Dutch:

Ik heb echt geen zin in dansles vanavond. Het is wel een leuke les, maar Peter is zó irritant! Ik denk dat ik er maar mee stop.

– Gooi nou niet de baby met het badwater weg! Je vind juist deze les zo leuk, negeer die Peter gewoon en focus op de danspassen.

(I really don’t feel like going to my dance class tonight. It’s a fun class, but Peter is SO annoying! I think I’ll stop.

– Now don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! This is just the class you like, simply ignore that Peter and focus on the dance moves.)

I actually don’t hear this expression that much, but I do like it! And people generally understand it, so that’s good.

Have you used this expression before? What is it in your language? Let me know in the comments below!

     

Related Stories

• Dutch Idioms 27 – Is it the truth?
• Dutch Late Night Host Arjen Lubach Is Back!
• Dutch Terms – How Drinking Makes Agreements Dutch

 

Previous posts in this series:

Curious Words In Dutch

 The work of monks

Photo by Gioele Fazzeri: https://www.pexels.com/photo/light-fashion-man-people-4496725/

When you think of a book, the last thing you probably think about is its price – unless you’re studying at university, in which case I wish you luck. But in general, books aren’t expensive, thankfully. And that’s because it’s super easy and quick to copy and print a book these days.

But that wasn’t always the case. Back in the Middeleeuwen (Middle Ages) before the advent of the drukpers (printing press), boeken (books) were hard to come by. A lot of knowledge was simply communicated through speeches and stories told from one generation to the next. Most people could not read and write, as there simply wasn’t a need. Even if you managed to find the time to learn reading and writing, where would you even come by things to read and write?

Abdijen (abbeys) and kloosters (monastry) had vast libraries and taught how to read and write. And so in these places of study, books and copies of these books were in demand. But without a machine that could easily and quickly copy or print books, how could you duplicate them so that more than one person could store the knowledge and how could it be spread?

Enter monniken (monks). Some of them had an ill fate. Day in, day out, their job was to copy entire books, entire libraries, letter for letter, word for word front to back. That was the only way to actually get a book copied – just write what you see written on the page.

As you can imagine, this kind of work is incredibly saai and eentonig. And to do this kind of work for such long periods of time, you really do need a lot of geduld! That’s where the word monnikenwerk comes from.

Why only one k in monniken?

Photo by Yuval Levy on Unsplash

As you might know, we get a second medeklinker (consonant) in Dutch when we want to make the klinker (vowel) before it sound short. So, for example:

prik, prikken

If we left that second k, it would sound like prieken.

But this is not the case with monniken – that i still sounds short, this doesn’t become monnieken. Why?

It’s because the second lettergreep (syllable) of monnik doesn’t have a nadruk (stress) – that lies on monnik.

That’s it, basically. It might feel weird, but there’s a whole host of words like this. For a more complete list and a bit more of a deep dive, check out this excellent post by Onze Taal.

Have you dealt with monnikenwerk yourself? How do you call it in your language? Let me know in the comments below!

     

Related Stories

• Wat móét ik nou hiermee? Accents on Dutch Words, Explained
• What the heck is “grass duning”? – Curious Dutch Words
• Our 5 Best Posts On The Dutch Blog In 2021

 

Tanken in the Netherlands

Photo by Jesse Blom on Unsplash

Before we look at any vocabulary, let’s talk about the process of tanken in the Netherlands.

It’s most common to enter the shop (shop) of the tankstation to pay for the benzine after you filled up the benzinetank (gas tank). However, you will also find electronic payment methods, especially at tankstations without a shop or servicepersoneel (service personnel).

Regardless, it’s pretty rare to find a tankstation with a fill-up service. In almost all cases, you’re gonna have to do the filling up yourself.

The rest of the process is pretty much the same as anywhere else.

One interesting thing is that the Dutch word tank comes quite obviously from the English “tank”. We made our own verb tanken from it, and that’s where tankstation comes from, as well. A tank is identical to the English tank – it’s a perfect anglicism!

Vocabulary

Photo by Wassim Chouak on Unsplash

So what is the kind of vocabulary and sentences useful for tanken? Here’s a list:

de benzine – gasoline (also used as a general term referring to car fuel)

het benzinestation – gas station

de benzinepomp – gas pump, fuel station

de benzineprijs – gasoline price

de dieselprijs – diesel price

de tankdop – fuel cap

opladen – to charge

de wasstraat – car wash

een volle tank – a full tank

de parkeerplaats – parking spot, parking area

Ik zoek de luchtpomp om mijn banden op te pompen. – I am looking for the compressor (air pump) to inflate my tires.

Kun je hier ook een elektrische auto opladen? – Can one also charge an electric car here?

Waar is het volgende LPG-station? – Where is the next LPG station?

Ik wil graag pomp 5 betalen. – I would like to pay for pump 5.

Waar is de WC? – Where is the bathroom?

Een kopje koffie, graag. – a cup of coffee, please.

Ik zou graag willen pinnen – I would like to pay by card.

Kan ik ook contant betalen? – Can I also pay in cash?

     

Related Stories

• Curious Dutch Words – Monnikenwerk
• You Heard Of Dutchman Aldies Ghoet-Koper? Neither Has He.
• Wat móét ik nou hiermee? Accents on Dutch Words, Explained

 

Aldi is cheaper

It’s no secret that supermarkten (supermarkets) fight for our attention with ever lower prijzen (prices) and better kwaliteit (quality). So when Caz! decided to call Albert Heijn, a dominant supermarktketen (super market chain) in the Netherlands, they wanted to get them to admit a truth that we’ve all known for years: German supermarktketen Aldi is cheaper than Albert Heijn. But how could you get them to say this? They found a pretty funny way. Here’s how the call went, that you can listen to above.

Goedemiddag, Albert Heijn XL Alkmaar, u spreekt met (no idea what her name is).

Dag, met Hans Koper! Zou je mijn zoontje kunnen omroepen?

Hoe oud is uw zoontje?

Acht jaar, blond koppie.

Hoe heet uw zoontje, voor- en achternaam?

Mijn zoontje… Aldies is zijn voornaam – A-L-D-I-E-S, en zijn achternaam is – hij heeft een dubbele achternaam, van zijn moeder en vader – Ghoet – G-H-O-E-T, en een streepje, Koper.

Aldies Ghoet-Koper?

Ja!

Ik ga hem even omroepen. Momentje.

Aldies Ghoet-Koper, Aldies Ghoet-Koper, wil je je even melden bij de servicebalie?

And the English translation:

Good afternoon, Albert Heijn XL Alkmaar, you’re speaking with …

Hi, it’s Hans Koper! Could you call for my son?

How old is your son?

Eight years, he’s blond.

What’s your son’s first and last name?

My son… Aldies is his first name – A-L-D-I-E-S, and his last name is – he has a double last name, of his mother and father – Ghoet – G-H-O-E-T, and a dash, Koper.

Aldies Ghoet-Koper?

Yes!

I’ll call for him now. One moment.

Aldies Ghoet-Koper, Aldies Ghoet-Koper, could you come to the service desk?

It then takes her a little more to figure out that ze haar in de maling hebben genomen (they fooled her). At the end, the radio host says Zegt u nou dat Aldi goedkoper is? Dan ga ik daar wel heen! (Are you saying that Aldi is cheaper? Well, then I’ll go there instead!)

After all, Aldi is in speech could become Aldies.

A little mean, a little funny, just a joke with a name. Though this one is quite crazy, as neither Aldies, nor Ghoet nor Koper are common names in Dutch.

But there are other versions, of course.

Peter and Connie

Peter, is that you? (Photo by Ezra Jeffrey-Comeau on Unsplash)

There are similar jokes out there. For example, there’s the joke of Peter Selie. Peterselie means parsley, but Peter is also a very common Dutch first name.

So you get something like this:

Je krijgt de groeten van Peter!

Welke Peter?

Peter Selie! Haha!

(Peter says hi!

Which Peter?
Peter Selie! Haha!)

Here’s a more elaborate version that’s pretty good, actually.

But there’s another person: Connie Veren.

This is a joke I found from all the way back in 2008.

The colleague of the poster worked at Intratuin, a garden center. They asked for Connie Veren, in a similar way as Caz! asked Albert Heijn about Aldies Ghoet-Koper.

So she asked her colleagues, who couldnt’t stop laughing. Connie Veren!

After all, coniferen are conifers, and Connie is a pretty normal Dutch name.

Are there jokes like this with names in your language? Do you know other Dutch ones? I would love to know, so please comment below!

     

Related Stories

• What the heck is “grass duning”? – Curious Dutch Words
• Why You Have To Watch The Most Popular Dutch TV Show
• Our 5 Best Posts On The Dutch Blog In 2021

 

De Avondshow

On February 21, 2022, it was time – the first Avondshow met Arjen Lubach (Evening Show with Arjen Lubach). It is basically the same concept as before, but with a few tweaks. Now that there are guests in every episode, it feels more like The Daily Show or Conan than Last Week Tonight. And that’s also because it’s cadence changed from weekly to 4 times a week.

Guests so far have been Bekende Nederlanders (famous Dutch people) including Ronald Goedemondt, Brigitte Kaandorp, Maarten Keulemans and Kim van Kooten. While the interviews still feel a little awkward, I’m sure with time it will all be smoothened out! And it does give space to one-on-ones with these people that are less common in the Netherlands. You are more likely to see tafelrondes (“table rounds”, talk shows where people sit at a table and have conversations), like De Wereld Draait Door.

However, there are things that have stayed the same. An introductory monologue, akin to Stephen Colbert’s, discusses what happened in the news. This is followed by a single more in-depth topic. The final part of the show is the aforementioned interview.

The Topics

Photo by Brandon Nelson on Unsplash

The oorlog (war) in Ukraine could of course not be avoided, so the very first and second monologue, linked above, discuss it, and it was a topic all week. But in-depth topics are diverse, like cruiseschepen (cruise ships) and how vervuilend (polluting) they are for the natuur (nature). Or how Dutch broadcasters aren’t handling the Olympische Spelen (Olympic Games) held in stomme landen (stupid/dumb/shitty countries – stom is a word that probably deserves its own post!) very well.

Overall, it looks like Lubach is back with more wonderful satire (satire), and with even more than before! You can follow the fragments of the show on the YouTube Channel (which is the same one as Zondag met Lubach, it was just renamed) or the full episodes at NPO Start.

Have you watched the new show with Arjen Lubach? Do you like it? Let me know in the comments below!

     

Related Stories

• Dutch Idioms 28: Throwing the Child Away
• Dutch Idioms 27 – Is it the truth?
• Why You Have To Watch The Most Popular Dutch TV Show

 

Hè? Wat is dít nou weer?!

In Dutch, we have three different accents, adopted from French. There are a number of words we adopted from French, and so they sometimes keep their accent to indicate how they’re pronounced. So in this case, they DO change the way the letter sounds!

One of the most common examples is hé, these days often simply written as hee, and hè, which these days is pretty much synonymous to he. Because these simple exclaims are used so frequently, the loss of the accent makes sense. After all, the accent is a rather unusual thing in Dutch, so a lot of people avoid it or forget it was even necessary. While the double e in hee does the trick, just like in other words like mee, he has a different problem. To get the sound, you’d have to write heh – but an h at the end of a word is even weirder than the è. Why some modification of he is necessary becomes clear when you say it. Here’s what they sound like:

hé/hee

hè/heh

he

Regardless, like I said, he is seen as synonymous these days to hè, because he as you can hear above doesn’t exist in Dutch anyway.

A wonderful explanation is the song above by School TV, which also comes with a quiz and song text!

The streepje (line) to the right (é) is called the accent aigu, the one to the left (è) is the accent grave. There are words where the accent grave is mandatory, such as:

de première (premier)

Ampère (Ampere)

de barrière (barrier)

de crème (cream)

de scène (scene)

à (each) – as in pak suiker à 5 euro (pack of sugar each 5 euros)

The accent aigu is also seen in English, in many of the same words as in Dutch! Here are a few:

het café (café)

het cliché (cliché)

het decolleté (décolletage)

If this wasn’t enough, there’s also the rare accent circonflexe, which is often simply known as het dakje (the little roof): â, ê, û. This is really only French words where we see it. And they indicate a French pronunciation:

gênant (awkward)

de crème fraîche (creme fraîche)

de enquête (inquiry, poll)

And here’s how we say those three French accents in Dutch:

Now you might ask yourself: “Cool, Sten, but what about the dít in the heading of this section?! That’s not a French loan word.” And you’d be asking rightfully. What is that?!

Let me emphasize this

Dít, niet dat! (Photo by Brett Meliti on Unsplash)

While it’s often hard to stress or emphasize words in writing, the Dutch have a special trick up their sleeve – a second use of the accent aigu! We also use this accent to show the reader where the word is stressed. Here’s how a Dutch person will read the heading above:

Hè? Wat is dít nou weer?! (Huh? What on Earth is this now?)

Compared to that sentence without the accent on the i:

Hè? Wat is dit nou weer? (Huh? What on Earth is this now?)

As you can hear, there’s a difference in stress, and what the sentence says. With emphasis on the dít, it’s clear that the thing that surprises is the thing dít refers to, not the fact that there’s yet another thing happening.

With some words, it’s also really useful to differentiate between double meanings, and guide pronunciation. Voorkomen is a great example. Listen to the two ways you can read it:

vóórkomen (to occur) – het komt voor (it occurs)

voorkómen (to prevent) – het voorkomt (it prevents)

Normally, it’s clear which word is meant from context, but the accents can help in cases where context doesn’t give you enough information.

And that’s it! Have these accents puzzled you before? Are there other parts of Dutch language that confuse you or give you a hard time? Let me know in the comments below!

     

Related Stories

• Curious Dutch Words – Monnikenwerk
• Getting Gas in the Netherlands – Vocabulary
• You Heard Of Dutchman Aldies Ghoet-Koper? Neither Has He.

 

Previous posts in this series:

Curious Words In Dutch

From 1561 to today

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

When we go back to the original meaning of the word, it starts making a bit more sense. Grasduinen originally wasn’t a werkwoord (verb), but a zelfstandig naamwoord (noun) as part of the expression in grasduinen gaan (to go into grass dunes), which dates back to the 16th century: Hier is hy in gras-duynen (Here he is in grass dunes).

With the Netherlands being a country with many graslanden (grassy lands), grazende koeien (grazing cows) and boeren (farmers), we can derive what this means. When a cow enters a duin, which in its original meaning can also more generally mean heuvel (hill), with loads of sappig gras (juicy grass), it is sure to have the time of its life! The original meaning of de grasduinen ingaan is therefore also naar hartenlust toetasten (to dive in to one’s heart’s content).

We can take that meaning and generalize it – and then we arrive at the current meaning! Imagine you enjoy studying old books – being in an ancient library could make you feel like a cow entering a meadow with the best grass ever. Or a wine cellar with hundreds of wines to try and explore if you’re a wine aficionado. But it doesn’t have to be that. The Van Dale meaning is so general for a reason. Anything that keeps you busy while you’re having fun and feel comfortable can be grasduinen! So preparing a delicious meal, playing a video game, relaxing with a book… It can all be “grass duning”. I suppose in English, the closest thing to it is “the happy place”. So we can translate it as:

Ik was aan het grasduinen – I was in my happy place

And what a great metaphor that is!

Is the meaning of grasduinen doomed?

Image by author, with permission from Sten Ritterfeld

However, it seems that the meaning of this word is used less and less. It could be due to its confusing nature, where grasduinen are still a zelfstandig naamwoord and make more sense that way. After all, Ik heb gegrasduind (I grass duned) just doesn’t sound right. I think a revival as ik ging de grasduinen in (I went into the grass dunes) would be a lot more viable for this term – but I don’t think this is likely. Why?

Because the main reasons words are used less in language is that their meaning simply becomes redundant, loses relevance or is so obscure and specific that people forget it even exists. And the point that people no longer understand its meaning, a word loses its basic reason for existence – to communicate something effectively. And I think all of these apply to grasduinen. With fewer cows relying on grazing and with only a few people left that interact with cows and grass on a daily basis, the original meaning decays. And it’s redundant too. Instead of people saying Ik was aan het grasduinen, they perhaps would say ik heb erg genoten (I’ve really enjoyed it). Or, as you can hear increasingly, they might just go with the English expression, and say Ik was helemaal in mijn happy place (I was completely in my happy place). English-speaking culture simply is more pervasive in the Netherlands now than their own farm life.

Now, does that mean that you will NEVER hear grasduinen anymore? No. I’ve heard it recently, which is how I got to write this blog. I’ve never used it, but I can imagine doing so. It’s a wonderful word! In more rural contexts, the word obviously has more relevance, still. Or in literary contexts, where flowery or more obscure language often still has a place and flourishes (looking at you AP Lit), grasduinen could survive.

Have you heard of this term before? Is there a similar term in your language? How would you translate, and what alternatives are in use that you like? I’d love to hear from you, so please let me know in the comments below!

     

Related Stories

• Curious Dutch Words – Monnikenwerk
• You Heard Of Dutchman Aldies Ghoet-Koper? Neither Has He.
• Why You Have To Watch The Most Popular Dutch TV Show