Oh dear,sorry....

[Praxinoscope]

Luckily they speak almost perfect english?

My first wife was a Dutch, bloody beat me at Scrabble every time, but the wierd part was her accent, she came from the Eastern part of the Netherlands and in Amsterdam the Dutch used to assume she was English because of her accent and reply to her in English.

 

[johnalison]

My first wife was a Dutch, bloody beat me at Scrabble every time, but the wierd part was her accent, she came from the Eastern part of the Netherlands and in Amsterdam the Dutch used to assume she was English because of her accent and reply to her in English.

We made friends with a Dutch family on a boat in Brighton. To pass the time they played Scrabble with us on our board. This was only partially successful since their children, who were allowed Dutch words, couldn't find enough Js.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Bill Bryson refers to Dutch in one of his books. He makes the observation that I have made: When the Dutch are talking among themselves, they make sounds that are vaguely similar to other languages, but when you ask one of them how to say a word they screw up their mouths into impossible shapes and an unintelligible gutteral sound comes out.

Like many Danes, Dutch can people get very intense about local variations in pronunciation, which would be like Britian teacher insisting that foreigners should speak with a perfect RP/Bristol/Geordie/Cardiff/Aberdeen accent. In practice good enough is fine and I have always found Dutch people pleased when I make an attempt to speak Nederlans. Which is actually one of my favourite languages, and I plan to have a good go at learning it. The written language is quite easy - I haven't yet found any Dutch I can't work out from knowing English, German and Scots. Spoken is harder, but we Scots are used to guttural "ch" sounds.

In fact, from a distance spoken Dutch sounds just like spoken Buchan Doric - the pitches and cadences are very much the same. During WW1, Doric speakers - it was even more distinct from English then - posted to Flanders found that their language and Flemish were mutually intelligible.

Tot ziens

 

[JumbleDuck]

We made friends with a Dutch family on a boat in Brighton. To pass the time they played Scrabble with us on our board. This was only partially successful since their children, who were allowed Dutch words, couldn't find enough Js.

Polish Scrabble has lots of Zs, worth 1 point each, I am told.

 

[Wansworth]

My wife does scrabble on internet,she does well in English and basque,which she makes up.........and wins?

 

[Praxinoscope]

JumbleDuck, re similarities in pitches and cadences, there used to be a joke told by Belgians that the Scots we're the Dutch thrown out of Nederlands for being too liberal with their money.