Okay, so after all these years making fun of Japanese and “Engrish”, I thought I’d share some “Denglish”. There just isn’t an accent worse on the planet. It’s probably why we try so hard.

You must see these two videos; it’s an American explaining the differences between English/ Dutch and vice versa.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVPGDanwUoI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnUO6tFqdHU

At half of the first video, I had to laugh really hard when she talked about combining “sch” – “r”.

She shouldn’t feel sad about not speaking Dutch with only one Dutch parent. My canadian relatives (niece and nephew) both don’t speak Dutch and my aunty and uncle are both Dutch…. top that. lol.

In the second video she didn’t say “flat” right. Technically maybe she did for a Belgian. Just like the difference between the Belgian “snackbar” and the dutch “snackbar” (ours sounds more like sneck). The double or prolonged “uu” sound in “huren” was not her problem speaking Dutch, it was the “ren”. It’s more like “run” very softly.

How to have some TH-fun with Dutch people. The best words for Dutch people to FAIL on are indeed words that have a “th”. So when we’re talking about “tree” and it doesn’t make sense it’s probably three. If I were a native speaker I’d get a kick out of asking me what time it is every day at around 3pm. lol. Most of the time I get it right, but I’m sure 3 out of 7 days I’d fuck up. XD.

My accent is not that that bad (the clog maker is an exaggerated example), but you can still hear it and know where I’m from, I’m sure. Sometimes you don’t notice how much people really hear though. I’ve had Dutch people say “Hey, you come from down south from this and that village now don’t you?” when I was speaking my own language (no dialect). I was shocked.