Stekt dieje zen verstaand inne vogeltje ent vliegt achteroat.
If you put his brain in a bird, it would fly backwards.
To be used when talking about an idiot.
Kzal men zakke mor al toenaje zeker.
I'd better sew up my pockets.
To be used when someone is being so nice to you that it's clear that they want something from you.
't schoenste on iel Brussel? Den iersten traain nor Antwaarrepe.
The best thing about Brussels? The first train to Antwerp.
4 comments:
When one tries to link the meaning in English of these local Dutch dialect expressions with their phonetic representation it really sounds like inhabitants of Antwerp must be related to some Eskimo tribe :-)
However, in spite of all the unusual diphthongs and guttural sounds, Dutch and English are very closely related.
If anyone feels like taking a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages
The bottom of the page shows a relationship overview and a timeline on how they changed.
To be even more precise: there are only three related major "West Germanic" languages": Dutch (along with the Afrikaans spoken in S-Africa), German and English.
German and Dutch are siblings, with English being a cousin.
But I know how hard it can be to learn a language, no matter how close their relationship.
I had this idea that the inhabitants of Antwerpen maybe spent long hours sitting at the bar on cold winter nights making some of this special stuff up. It's delicious to listen to ... startingly amusing. I think Gert was as entertained by my reactions as I was by his words. Clearly we're a couple who are easily entertained.
Thanks for the info, I'm so tempted to put this up as an addition to the post, as it is interesting.
Cousins they might be but this has to be the one time in my life when I might be labelled as a 'special' learner ;)
Ha ha! Using my combined English/German/teeny tiny bit of Dutch language skills I almost (but not quite) got the first one, failed the second one completely and sailed through the third with no problem. Just don't ask me to pronounce any of them. :-) Thanks for the fun!
Proficiaat!!
Gert smiled :)
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