hi Casey, by accident I came upon your videos which I enjoyed very much. Still, I also found some mistakes. For example, a “bouwvakker” is not someone who takes a “bouwvak” but a builder or construction worker. (So “vak” in bouwvak is not short voor “vakantie” but means field or trade.) Maybe your Dutch family already has pointed out such errors, but if not I’ll be happy to do so. Especially I like to share some observations about the etymology of “borrel”. :-))
Sincerly,
Sipke (Amsterdam)

Goeiemiddag, Casey!

Ken je het spreekwoord ‘Drie keer is scheepsrecht’? Als ik jou drie keer bij toeval tegenkom in de stad, dan moet ik je op koffie trakteren! Nu is dit mijn derde commentaar, maar jij zit aan de andere kant van de wereld, dus wordt het lastig om jou op koffie te trakteren.

In dit filmpje zet je op een rijtje welke fouten je na 2 jaar nog steeds maakt als je Nederlands spreekt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsU1PlCr16g

Streven naar perfectie is op zich goed, want een ander spreekwoord zegt: ‘Oefening baart kunst’. Toch wil ik daar wel graag een kanttekening bij plaatsen: Helaas is het talent om talen en grammatica te leren niet eerlijk over alle mensen verdeeld. Als we van iedereen eisen dat ze zonder fouten Nederlands leren, dan gaan sommige mensen zichzelf in hun hoofd blokkeren; Zij zullen niets meer leren als hun angst om fouten te maken hen in de weg zit. Ik hoor het echt wel als jij fouten maakt in het Nederlands, maar ik waardeer het heel erg dat je Nederlands leert en ook anderen probeert te overtuigen om Nederlands te leren, dus die fouten wil ik je graag vergeven.

Mensen met weinig talent voor talen moeten niet de moed verliezen, maar zich concentreren op het leren van woordjes, zodat ze zich in het Nederlands in elk geval kunnen redden zonder naar het Engels te grijpen. De grammatica ook meteen goed leren is iets wat ik aanraad aan mensen die echt goed zijn in talen leren, maar als dat niet lukt, dan is dat geen ramp, want hier is mijn derde spreekwoord, wat zegt: ‘In het land der blinden is éénoog koning’ Daar bedoel ik mee dat jij als Australische al best aardig Nederlands spreekt, zeker vergeleken met die stomme Amerikanen die denken dat ze hun halve leven in Amsterdam kunnen wonen zonder Nederlands te leren. Als dit YouTube was, zou je van mij zeker een duimpje omhoog krijgen! :-)

Goeiemorgen, Casey!

No, it’s not ‘goeyemorgen’ when you replace the d-sound. We would cite and write the spoken word as ‘Goeiemorgen’. I just explained to you why the phrase ‘vraag eens als’ is an absolute grammar catastrophy. So I’m afraid you will have to re-record this video of yours and take this version offline:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHcBmV-xx1M

Two other things I need to explain to you: Whether you do or don’t pronounce the ‘N’ on the end of a word also depends on your dialect and social class.

Please find ‘De troonrede’ on YouTube and listen to our old Queen Beatrix reading the plans of the government prior to her retirement in 2013. Queen Beatrix was percieved as high nosed, poshy and stiff by many Dutch people. The way Beatrix would read that yearly speech in De Ridderzaal, I could only describe as ‘goed verzorgd en zorgvuldig taalgebruik’, as Beatrix would pronounce a soft N at the end of words, whereas you tell your viewers to completely drop the N. Try softening your last N in stead of completely dropping it… You will be seen as upper class, ever though the Netherlands is not as much a class society like the United Kingdom is.

Please listen to King Willem Alexander as well. Especially this year’s ‘troonrede’ has raised many eyebrows: We pay that man over a million euros per year to read out aloud what the government is planning to do, but he still started out his speech with utter stuttering! I think Willem Alexander wants to be more on street level with his people than his high nosed mother, but being a king he should not try to read faster than he can. Also I would advise him to keep a deadline for changes to his text, so he can spend a day on practising a speech, without getting the added stress of last-minute changes, as was speculated on Radio 1, on Prinsjesdag, which is the third Tuesday of September.

Another thing about dropping the last ‘N’ you should explain to your viewers is that not all regions of the Netherlands do it that way. It’s the dominant rule to soften or drop that last ‘N’, but if you live in the east and you tend to speak the local dialect (Nedersaksisch), you would rather drop an ‘E’ than the last ‘N’.

Take Daniel Lohues, the leading singer of the former band ‘Skik’ as an example and please listen carefully. The word ‘leven’ would be pronounced as ‘leve’ in the Randstad area, but in Drenthe, they would pronounce it as ‘levn’ or even as ‘lebm’, the latter being closely relaten to the German worden ‘leben’.

Another speaker you should listen to on YouTube is Herman Finkers. You may need to slow down the playback speed to ¾, to get the gist of his jokes. Finkers is from Twente, part of Overijssel province. Finkers made popular comedy shows in the 90’s.

I woud also like to recommend you to find Ede Staal on YouTube. Ede Staal is world famous in the province of Groningen, where he used to be one of the home guests on Radio Noord in the 80’s. Ede Staal died rather young, but ‘Het het nog nooit zo donker west’ and ‘Mien toentje’ are 2 songs sung in the Groninger dialect that the more educated music fans of the Netherlands will certainly remember.

Last but not least, that harsh ‘G’-sound will make you stand out as a stranger from north of the big rivers, when you are in Brabant or in Limburg, those 2 catholic provinces in the south, where they used to celebrate carnaval, before the Corona-crisis hit them twice as hard as the rest of The Netherlands. Brabant and Limburg pronounce the ‘G’ in a soft way that I love, since I was born there. The Flemish in Belgium also dislike the harsh ‘G’ of their northern neighbours, but their soft ‘G’ does not stop them from being part of the Dutch language community. Around the cities of Brugge and Gent the ‘G’-sound gets replaced by a harsh ‘H’-sound, so people from the 2 provinces of West and Oost Vlaanderen would refer to ‘Hent’ and ‘Bruhhe’ respectively.

This just goes to say that the dominant speech of the Randstad area is not the only accent one could learn to become part of the locals. It just depends where in the Netherlands (or Belgium) you live.