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| When I was in 's-Hertogenbosch this week |
1. Not many people speak Dutch.
Only 28 million people in the world speak Dutch, mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium (with a small number in France, Luxembourg and Germany) - that's not many at all. When you speak a language like English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic or French, you have well hundreds of millions of people in the world who speak your language. You can access everything from books to magazines to websites to TV programmes to films to music in your language. But if you speak a language like Dutch and nothing else, then you are restricting yourself to a fairly small amount of media and reading material - hence that is why many Dutch people feel the need to learn English out of necessity as they do not want to limit themselves to the Dutch speaking world in this modern age.
2. Dutch is close(-ish) to English.
Well, geographically, it is close to England - a flight from London to Amsterdam takes just 40 minutes. You're more likely to be spending a lot more time waiting around in the airport than actually airborne if you are flying to Amsterdam from London! Linguistically, the two languages are part of the same family: the Germanic family and once you have learnt the rules of Dutch pronunciation, you will see that many of the words sound remarkably like English when read out aloud. Have a look at the photo which I took in 's-Hertogenbosch by the train station: that could almost be English written by someone with dyslexia. It is far easier for a Dutch person to learn English than a language from a different family, like Welsh, Italian or Polish. Allow me to write a few sentences in Dutch below to show you just how close to English it is, bear in mind that when read out aloud, these sentences sound incredibly close to their English versions.
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| Regionaal Instituut Dyslexie in 's-Hertogenbosch |
Tijd voor de test = "tide foor de test" (Time for the test.)
Wat is jouw naam = "what is yow naam" (What is your name?)
Mijn naam is Peter = "Mine naam is Peter." (My name is Peter.)
Waar is het toilet? = (Where is the toilet?)
Dank U = (Thank you)
3. The Netherlands wants to be connected with the world.
The Dutch are anything but isolated, they have plenty of neighbours in Europe whom they have trading with for many centuries and they needed to speak other languages in order to facilitate the trade. Loads of people come to the Netherlands for everything from tourism to education to business and the Netherlands welcome these people with open arms: business meetings are conducted in English if there is even one person in the meeting who cannot speak Dutch. There are courses in Dutch universities which are conducted in English just to make them more accessible to foreign students who aren't fluent in Dutch and don't want to be at a disadvantage. Even the signs in Eindhoven and Schipol airport were in English only - they didn't even bother putting them up in Dutch as the virtually all Dutch people speak English anyway. They didn't worry about Dutch people getting lost in the airport because of the English signs.
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| Note the sign says 'Airport' not 'Luchthaven' |
4. The use of subtitles instead of dubbing
The Germans may speak English pretty well but not as well as the Dutch and there is a key difference: in Germany, all English-language TV programmes and films are usually dubbed into German. In the Netherlands, they are subtitled in Dutch whilst retaining the original English-language soundtrack. Many Dutch people pick up a lot of English through watching American TV in a way the Germans never did - the Germans learn English at school but English doesn't really make it into the living room of your average German family the way it does with a Dutch family, the moment they turn on their TVs in the evening. This also goes some way to explain why some Dutch people do have a bit of an American accent, if they are mostly picking up English from American TV programmes.
5. The Netherlands is a rich country
The Netherlands is one of the richest countries in Europe, so that does mean that the quality of the education in the Netherlands is extremely high and the Dutch schools have the resources to teach English (amongst other subjects) very well. Being this rich means that a large number of Dutch citizens can afford to travel around the world and this increases their need and motivation to learn English. Being affluent also means that parents can afford to buy their children English books, get Wifi at home so their children can access English language internet sites and of course, travel abroad for holidays. Being a rich nation means that children do remain in full time education for a much longer time than in poorer countries, where many people are compelled by their poverty to drop out to enter employment.
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| By De Blob shopping centre in Eindhoven |
6. The Dutch education system and English
English is introduced very early in the Dutch education system unlike other countries: primary school students are introduced to English early in the process and it is compulsory for all levels of secondary education. There is even a Bilingual Education programme available, which aims to make students equally fluent in English and Dutch. Indeed, many Dutch students use English when doing research for their studies as that Google searches yield far better results in English than in Dutch. Most Dutch teachers will expect their students to be able to access material in both Dutch and English - compare this to the situation in France where English is taught as a foreign language but really, it is possible to get through your entire formal education in France through to degree level without actually being able to speak any English at all. Those who steadfastly refuse to learn or speak English are not discriminated against in the French system, unlike in the Netherlands, where everyone is just expected to learn English if they want to get a decent education. In fact, in France, English is simply seen as a rather useful foreign language to learn but in the Netherlands, English is compulsory and an essential and very important part of the Dutch education system.
7. A cultural affinity with the British and the Americans
Ironically, the Dutch language is even closer to German than English. My Dutch friends who have never ever taken a class of German can easily understand and follow a conversation in German - the two languages have a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Dutch people can read a German website without having to use Google translate to figure it out - but after the German atrocities of WW2 when so many Dutch people died at the ends of the Nazis, well let's just say that relations between the Dutch and the Germans were very cold after WW2. After WW2, the Dutch turned to Britain and America as their friends and consumed a lot of British and American pop culture in the decades after WW2. Thus the Dutch have always had a cultural affinity for the British and the Americans, this makes the Dutch people consume a lot of pop music films, TV programmes, literature and magazines from the UK and US and this is a cycle which reinforces itself, making the Dutch people more and more confident in their English language skills. In fact, I made a huge cultural faux pas when I was in Eindhoven: I had tried to speak Dutch to a local man, only to have constructed a sentence that was mostly in German. Ooops, he was not impressed at all. Het spijt me, I shall stick to English then.
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| Obligatory photo with a windmill whilst in Heusden |
8. A willingness to embrace the English language and make it their own.
This is evident from the way Dutch people speak Dutch amongst themselves: not only do they use plenty of English loanwords, they even lapse in and out of English, making entire phrases or sentences in English. In fact, there is the term"Dunglish" (Dutch + English) which describes this hybrid language/patois. There seems to be two modes of Dutch used. There is a purer form of Dutch (devoid of English loanwords) which is used for formal writing (exams, essays, official government documents, etc) and then there's Dunglish which is used in everyday, less formal situations. This means that Dutch people are regularly using a large volume of English on a daily basis even amongst themselves - it is not a language they use only when they meet foreigners. Dunglish has evolved a lot over the decades: it used to be a derogatory term used to mock the bad English spoken by Dutch people, but now it is also used to refer to Dutch people who choose to mix their English and Dutch for fun, showing off the fact that they are effectively bilingual.
Finally, given how well Dutch people speak English, does it make Dutch an easy language for English-speakers to learn? The answer is no. I actually watch Dutch TV regularly, I am a huge fan of the show Wie Is De Mol (a reality TV game show) but I watch it with English subtitles. Despite having followed many seasons, I still don't understand enough Dutch to follow the show without subtitles. Thankfully, they tend to use a huge amount of English in the show and this is even when the contestants are speaking amongst themselves: note that this is not a programme meant for international broadcast outside the Netherlands, yet they are still using entire English phrases like, "the devil is in the detail" when speaking with each other. I'm sure there is a phrase which express the same sentiment in Dutch, but they just use the English version instead. Whilst the vocabulary is rather similar to English and German, Dutch grammar is different enough to confuse me thoroughly. Take the simple phrase "turn left" - that becomes three words in Dutch: "sla links af". Links is left, but the word 'turn' becomes sla + af and it has to be split into two before and after links. My Dutch friends just said to me, "well, that's just the way Dutch grammar is, I can't explain why turn becomes sla + af."
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| Maastricht, Netherlands |
My Portuguese ex-boss told me the same thing about Portuguese vs Spanish people. Since Portugal is quite small and the number of Portuguese speakers are far lesser, they need another language in order to communicate with the rest of the world. Also in Portugal all Hollywood movies come subbed vs dubbed like in Spain.
ReplyDeleteWhich means you are far more likely to find someone who understands English in Portugal vs Spain.
Well at least for Portuguese speakers - they have all of Brazil to speak to, that's 200 million Portuguese speakers, a lot more than the number of people who speak Dutch. But yes subbing vs dubbing makes a big difference.
DeleteAlso, just like the way the Dutch don't like the Germans, the Portuguese don't like the Spanish, hence whilst it makes complete sense for them to learn Spanish as a second language given how close the two languages are, they tend to opt for English instead as the preferred second language.