Sunday, April 13, 2008

Recalling Nederlands class back in 2006

I was in something like despair when I wrote the following about Nederlands classes:

'I' is an 'e' for me, and a Dutch 'e' is my 'a'.
'G' is a 'hee', and 'h' is an exhalation of air that creates a 'haa' sound.
'K' sounds like 'car' and 'q' sounds like 'coo'.
'J' is said 'yay'.

'U' involves me pursing my lips, pretending to blow someone a kiss then saying 'uu' while my lips are still kiss-shaped.
'Z' has a t on the end of the sound = 'zet',
'V' becomes 'vay' and 'w' become 'way',
(so www = waywayway is the way it is said)

and then 'y' ... well 'y' is 'ipsilon'.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol, you go girl :D

Did they ever teach you that d and b at the end of a word should be pronounced as a t and a p?

So you say: Ik hep, instead of ik heb and broot instead of brood.

Di Mackey said...

You know what ... they didn't but maybe they decided I was unteachable ;)

Did you see Paris to Roubaix????

Anonymous said...

I must agree Di, pronouncing Dutch is far from easy.

But imagine us, the poor Dutch speaking Antwerp locals:
we had to take classes in
Dutch (well, that's mostly the native language),
French (try reading a French newspaper, taking care to pronounce correctly, or having a conversation in high-speed French),
German (oh, the ultimate in guttural torture)
ending with English...
I tried explaining to my s/o how to write/pronounce simple words like 'enough' - he gave up :-)

Di Mackey said...

But I do adore Antwerpens for their multi-lingual abilities :)

I always think 'yacht' must be one of the nastiest English words.

Kay Cooke said...

I love this! It reminds me of the ad for the coffee - 'Mercano heft meer mmm' - or at least that's what it sounds like.

Di Mackey said...

Hmmm, I know that coffee ad don't I?

But Nederlands, that was the surprise that arrived with Gert ... I wouldn't have picked up as much as you did before him.

Even Diede's mocking didn't prepare me for Nederlands.