Dikker or Dichter?

Thanks to Flanders Today (p.16), I'm reminded of the need to know vocabulary well and throughly!

 “The Gentse Feesten bring people fatter together” Prime minister Elio Di Rupo confuses dichter (closer) with dikker (fatter)

This could be of course not that Di Rupo didn't know the word, rather than he didn't pronounce the soft 'ch' sound /dɪxt/ but made it into a hard 'k' sound: dikkter sounds more like dikker than dichter!

From Middle Dutch dicht, from Old Dutch *thīht, from Proto-Germanic *þinhtaz (Note that English took a different evolutionary route: thiht became thicce became thick.).

Graag...

'Graag' (more or less 'gladly') is a tricky word for me to pronounce and I'm guessing it's tricky for lots of native English speakers. The switch from an whispered 'h' sound (ɣ) to an r then back to ɣ is tricky so I asked my Flemish buddy what his tongue was doing. Mine goes from being flat in the mouth to the top of the mouth (as English speakers tend to do when pronouncing r) whereas his stayed flat throughout! He did warn me that his way of saying it may be a Brussels accent but it has to be better then mine!

From now on I'll try to keep my tongue down (and slightly back) throughout the pronunciation.

Out of interest graag seems to have the same root as 'greedy' in English:
Graag: From Middle Dutch gradig (“desirous, willing”), from Old Dutch *grādag (“desirous, hungry”)
Cognate withOld Saxon grādag (“hungry”), Old High German grātag (“greedy, thirsty, gaping”), Old English grǣdig (“greedy, hungry, covetous, eager”). (reference here)

Dutch column

Interesting column in a Flemish magazine for English speakers who are learning Dutch!

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/dutch

Unlike my 'column' though, the above 'Flanders Today' column is written by someone who seems to have mastered the language!

Spirou: Journal d'un ingénu in 'Bruxellois'.

I recently bought this Spirou 'BD' as I was attracted by the wonderful illustrations of Brussels, the rather dark take on this very Belgian character and the fact that this version is in Bruxellois. Sometimes called 'Marollien' this dialect has been described as part French, part Spanish and part Dutch (http://belgafiles.com/brussels-speaking-marollian/)

So let's see for ourselves shall we? In the marvellous lexicon at the back of this book there is an exhaustive list of Brusselair words, some of which seem somewhat familiar…

Bruxellois / Dutch / English

doon / doen / to do
koemer / kamer / room
gebrauken / gebroken / broken
kozaain / neef (although I have seen kozijn used-poss archaic?) / cousin


In my own experience of learning French, first in France and then in Brussels, there are Dutch words I use in French without realising! Particularly:

'il fait douf'
'il drache'
and of course the beautiful: 'cheveux crollés'.

Present tense formation in Dutch (tegenwoordige tijd)

Good summary on creating the present tense in regular and irregular verbs:

http://www.dutch.ac.uk/beginners.dutch.grammar/present_tense.php

"tegenwoordige tijd: presens; drukt "heden" uit, d.w.z. de gebeurtenis valt gelijktijdig met het spreekmoment"

Geld Nodig? Afhalen.

'Halen' is a useful and much used word, it seems, in Dutch.

Here it's used as 'afhalen' which means to withdraw (it can also mean pick up, right Dutch speakers?).

But ophalen means to pick up (or collect)

Have fun with other composed words:

overhalen (to persuade)
inhalen (to overtake)
any more?

And of course we can't end the post without trying to give a tip on remembering this word. Well I associate 'halen' with the English verb 'to hail' (as in a cab). This works well to help me remember what halen means (linked to 'to fetch' or to command') but I don't know whether there is an etymological link.

Goedendag!

Well I've always been a bit confused with this phrase: logically it shouldn't it be goede dag? Well it seems that in use 'goedendag' is preferred but I don't know why! Any explanations gratefully received.

The sense of the word/phrase 'goedendag' I'd like to explore to day is when it is used as a noun. In this sense it is a 'mace' (a medieval weapon). See more of the wikipedia article here. When I was reading this article one of the explanations of this word is "good dagger" (the other one seems a bit spurious to me!) so this sent me off on a research hunt!

dagger = dolk

In modern Dutch this would be 'goede dolk', so where is the link?

dolk sounds more like the Scottish word 'dirk' for dagger or short sword and sure enough the etymology shows common roots for dirk and dolk: " the earliest spellings (of dirk) were dork,durk [possibly from] Ger. dolch "dagger.""

Ok so that's sorted out where dolk came from but why would a mace be called a goedendag then (if the theory of it referring to a dagger is true)?

More research shows that the English word 'dagger' comes from middle Dutch 'dagge' and would line up nicely with a mediaeval weapon that looks like the one pictured here: a good dagger indeed.

Good day!