You should work for Hollywood giving accent lessons ! I've never heard a native English speaking person manage the Dutch accent as well as you did. It's interesting how, the few times, you did slip up slightly ,it sounded South African. ( Like when you said Cobblestones )
As a native Dutchman this was the first time I watched a video from you and at first I really thought you were some goofy Dutch vlogger with a 'bad' English pronunciation. Only until you made the conversation with (obviously) yourself in the hotel reception desk I realized that you are actually a real English speaker. This was so entertaining and informative to watch! #subscribed
I'm a native Dutch speaker living abroad. Your Dutch pronunciation is spot on. Even some of us Dutch enjoy exaggerating the Dutch accent, as it can be amusing. It took me some time to get rid of the Dutch 's' (sh-sound), as it sounded very "thick". Now, when speaking, I'm usually mistaken for Canadian. Interestingly, Dutch and English share many similar words, but they sometimes have completely different meanings, which can create some hilarious sentences!
For my 10th grade graduation trip, we went on a sail on the IJsselmeer. We were a group of German teens with very basic English skills, and two teachers that weren't good at any other language than German. Our skipper and 1st mate were Dutch and only capable of their native language. This was not a problem whatsoever! We've had entire evenings just talking and laughing together, realizing that Dutch is the cutest sounding interface between German and English, and with people able to speak any of the three to varying degrees, one can have proper meaningful and actually fun conversations! If it hadn't been for my discovery of severe sea sickness, this trip would have made the top of my list. I still adore the Netherlands and Dutch, and if I was ever forced to leave country, that would be my first pick by far. Embrace your native sounds - they're gorgeous.
One such pitfall we learned at school is that you 'apply' for a job instead of 'soliciting' for one... (Dutch word for "apply" in this context: "soliciteren")
There's lots of English and German in Dutch, so to speak. And words that sound similar in different languages but mean different things are called "false friends".
The last time I was in Amsterdam, I was at a restaurant and a waiter was so cordial and polite. His English was flawless, but he did encounter a problem at dessert time. He was trying to describe a cake they had on offer--but he couldn't think of the English word to describe the frosting on this cake, so I asked him for the Dutch word. He said, "Well, in Dutch, we call it marzipan." I laughed and said, "I can help you. In English, we call it marzipan!" He got a good laugh, too.
@renskee.jellema8697 Thanks. Since we were speaking and not writing, the pronunciation was close enough, and the spelling didn't matter, but thanks for adding this additional clarity.
OK, here's a good one, true story. In Scotland at the end of a meal in a restaurant I said to the waitress "I want to pay". She responded by giving me directions to the toilet.
Basically if you mix being enthusiastic and angry you get the basic Dutch personality type of assertively trying to be right about things nobody asked for.
I was once experimenting with accents, and tried to do two accents at once, as in, what someone from the Netherlands might sound like if they tried to do a Scottish accent. What came out was the only good Sean Connery impression I've ever done. Never been able to recreate it.
They way you said "medeklinkers" was absolutely impressive .... at first it made me think you were actually a dutchman ! Excellent channel and fabulous language skills !!
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Well, it still sounded as a speaker of (British) English mimicking a speaker of Dutch trying to speak English. I mean, there were too many correct English sounds in it!
@@weiareinboud6990 Correct. I also think that I must re-write my previous reply. By applying those 9 ways/different pronounciations one will ONLY sound MORE like someone who has been born and raised in the Netherlands. There are more subtle and not so subtle differences in pronounciation between english and dutch for a number of words. Any one who has been born and raised in the Netherlands will be able to spot these differences between english and dutch without too much effort. Nonetheless, it was good to hear a few of typical dutch pronounciations spoken by someone who wasn't born in the Netherlands. I am NOT a language purist but I sometimes get annoyed by the large amount of english words we're using here in the Netherlands.
FWIW, in Belgium and some Dutch regions near the border f and v get distinguished quite clearly, if not exactly the same as in English. Traditionally this was one of the few aspects of Southern pronunciation considered technically more correct, but that's mostly gone. For speakers of contemporary standard Dutch and the most common dialects spoken within the Netherlands, you are absolutely spot on.
@@gerardvanwilgen9917 I agree, it defnitely feels like a characteristic of the more Hollandic dialects to delete the distinction between /f/ and /v/. I've lived in Limburg and Brabant for the biggest part of my lives and in different varieties of their local languages, I've rarely heard anyone not voicing their /v/'s whereas in all of North Holland /v/ and /f/ are just the same sound.
@@timv17True, I am a Dutch speaking Belgian, and we do make a clear distinction between the f and v, unlike in the Netherlands. But there are also regional differences, like for instance in Limburg they also have no distinction between the h and g sound, they sound exactly the same. Whereas if you are from Antwerp, there is a clear difference between the two.
my opa is from vechta and moved to america when he was 16 so he now speaks english with a heavy german accent and german with a heavy american accent - both of which have become thicker as he aged. I noticed it especially when we visited his family in germany and I heard his german compared to theirs. hearing you say "for my fviolets!" made me smile, it was the same exasperated way he'd defend the fviolets in his garden
Nice! but remember we're talking about the Netherlands here 😉Did you know that many english (american) speaking people can't tell the difference between Dutch or German language? To my Dutch ears, that is unbelievable..
Nice work - from an in the Netherlands living Greek (& linguist). Shall we make it even more complicated? In the north of the Netherlands, especially in the province of Groningen, f and v are both pronounced as v. "Kovvie he'm?" = "Koffie hebben?" = "Would you like coffee?". 😂☕
As a non-Groninger myself, the hardest thing to understand is their habit of inserting the word "ja"(yes) in the weirdest places. It seems completely random, but when I try I'm told I'm doing it wrong. So clearly there must be a rule that I can't figure out.
Quite brilliant. I’m a Brit living in cloggieland and my Dutch is progressing. Your pronunciation is exceptionally good. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the difficulty the Dutch have with the /æ/ sound, as in ‘happy’. They seem to err towards ‘heppy’.
The /æ/ British sound is difficult for anyone in Europe. It happens with other dipthongs too, but you'd have to move inside Britain to get a taste of it: I'm a Scot, the /æ/ sound is just a straight /a/ sound for us and all northerners, it gets closer to an /ɛ/ sound down south... then if you consider the /ai/ sound here in Scotland it's actually an /əi/ sound, in Nothern Ireland it can stretch into an /ɛi/ sound, then you move to the North of England and you'll get an /a:i/ (sometimes even an /a:/ sound!), further south you'll tend to get to things like /ɑi/ or even /ɒi/ and /ɔi/ (in Birmingham especially). Now move to the /əʊ/ sound: to us Scots it's simply an /o:/, the Northern Irish might get to /ʊə/ (same as the Geordies), in the North of England it approximates to /oʊ/ or /ɔʊ/ (in Liverpool, i.e.) or even simply an /ɔ:/ sound in Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire... as you move into the Midlands it starts developing into an /ɐʊ/ sound, its exaggeration might lead you to hear something like /ɑʊ/ especially in Birmingham and London.......... And how 'bout the /ei/ one? In Scotland it's just a straight /e:/, in Northern Ireland and Newcastle it can move to /ɪe/, in the North of England you'll get the correct /ei/ sound (very stressed in Liverpool) but also an open /ɛ:/ in Lancashire and Yorkshire... move to the Midlands and you'll start hearing the usual /ɛi/ or /æi/ sounds you'll also find in the South of England. These dipthongs can make it hard for us Brits to understand each other: what to a Southerner or a Midlander is 'A BOAT' is definitely 'ABOUT' to me!!! What to them is a 'LAKE' is 'LIKE' to me!!! And what to me is 'RIGHT' is simply a 'RATE' to them! What to them is a 'VICE' is a 'VOICE' to me... If these sounds can't help even us Brits understanding each other, well, what might happen to a foreigner? So tough...
I was so confused at the start because it obviously was a Dutch accent but then some vowels sounded so British (like the O in rotation at 0:25), but I guessed having English parents before a skilled linguist, great stuff, compliments!
As a native Dutchman, I always struggle with the differences between the pronunciation of scent, sand, sent and send. Thank you for this special contribution.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Thanks. The soft "a" and "e" (sand and send as in sandpaper and sending a paper) remains a challenge. There was a moment when I thought: that guy is Dutch. Take that as a compliment.
I can hear perfect English in my head but can not make it sound that way by a lack of muscle memory. I must speak English more often to improve this but there aren't to many occasions to do that. But on the other hand, it's pure esthetics so why bother?
@@laurabasola4081 Yeah. Hun a's klinken als e's, hun e's klinken als i's en hun i's klinken als ij's. Degene die ooit bedacht heeft dat het wel eens lollig kon zijn om klank en schrift één letter te verschuiven mag wat mij betreft vooralsnog postuum gekielhaald worden.
Pretty good attempt at a Dutch accent. As a Dutchman I can still hear you're not actually Dutch, but you did do a better job than most other non-Dutch people attempting to do a Dutch accent I've heard so far. If you like to 'improve' your Dutchness, I think you should concentrate a bit on your vowel sounds. They still sound too 'English' for a real Dutch accent. For instance in the line "This doesn't happen in Dutch" the word 'happen' sounds too native English for a typical strong Dutch accent. A Dutchman would pronounce the 'a' as the Dutch 'e', and the English 'e' as a Dutch 'u'. Phonetically in Dutch it would be "Heppun". If you put that in Google translate as Dutch and listen to the Dutch voice, you'll hear a 'perfect' Dutch accent for the English word "Happen" 😂 But anyway, I did enjoy your fun video!
I don't agree at all. I know literally not a single dutch person who talks speaks like that. I speak English on a daily bases. Maybe that is the difference. The people i interact with? It sounds more like people from the east or northeast of the Netherlands maybe?
The initial f- for v- and s- for z- depends on the Dutch dialect. In Amsterdam it is really f- and s-, but many other Dutch dialects only partly do it that way, in fact they say fv- and sz-. It depends on when during the sound voicing sets in. But there are also dialects that make perfect z- and v- at the start of a word. And by the way: Frisian is the sister language of English and it has no v- and z- and so when speaking Dutch they say f- for v- and s- for z-.
I was going to point this out as well. Nearly all Dutch speakers outside of Amsterdam do distinguish F and V, it's just that the V is a bit closer to an F than it would be in English. Same with W and V.
I'm Dutch. I thought this was hilarious. One thing I learned while learning to speak English is the fact that Dutch has no words that end in a "z", while the English "has" is pronounced (usually) as "haz". A Dutch person will most likely prounce "has" ending with a sharp "s" sound like "hass". So softening your "s" sounds makes a world of difference for Dutch people trying to speak English.
@@shdon I didn't realise there were Dutch people who pronounced "Showbizzquiz" with actual z's. I have some colleagues from the deep south of Limburg. I'll do a little test :)
Some important ones you missed: the Dutch don't have an /æ/, and use /ɛ/ instead, and don't have vowel lengthening, so also sounds like , which is ferry bet! Oh, and the plural of "klank" is "klanken", with an (although it's hardly ever pronounced).
No vowel lengthening? I think the oe in poes is distinctly shorter than the oe in boer. Try saying boer with the oe from poes, you'll sound like some foreigner. Am I making sense to you?
@@kilianhekhuis ja da' laatste hatikal begrepe' Kujje meschien ook uitlegge' waarom ik bij 't schrijve' bijna nooit g en ch door mekaar haal maar wel regelmatig niet meteen weet of 't ij of ei moet zijn?
Wow - this is quite something. Native Dutch here, spot on! Been watching the videos for a long time. Love the explanations you do about English accents. "Going Dutch" was quite a surprise.
im a native dutch speaker and i only realised at the end of the video that youre actually english and not dutch. I was amazed at how good your english accent was 😂 this video is highly underrated at how good it is. +10 also thanks for making me more conscious about my bad dutch accent. Bedankt he
I didn't know about 'Trochaic. I wonder if this explains why people things Welsh and Finish sound similar. I've done it myself. I have have seen people debate about an angry man being Finnish or German. I personally can tell spoken Dutch apart from every language. You probably know that the Irish say Filum and Miluk. This video was brilliant. Very funny and informative. I work with a Belgian man who has immense enthusiasm when he speaks and tells stories. He is a financier and floats around the continent and Britain and brings back tales. I am always in awe when he speaks in his booming 'fFemmish' dutch voice. Nuances in speak and language intrigue me and your wisdom hit the note.
I just stumbled upon this, as a Dutchman I say: Brilliant! As for the v/f and z/s: I'm form the southern part of NL, I do distinguish between them the right way. Those who don't... your misunderstanding sketches serve them right 🙂
I mean wow ... this is by far the best breakdown I've seen on the topic. As a Dutch-origin English speaker I have actually found it very difficult to break down for others ... but now I have a video to forward! Cheers
Thanks for the superb video! You had me wonder a moment if you were Dutch or English because you did the Dutch accent so incredibly well. Then I concluded that because of your orange shirt you must be Dutch. A real convincing finishing touch that one! Only to realize with the goodbye that you are English after all (very well done as well though!)
I'm spanish, but I lived in the Netherlands for 5 years. I went straight away from the Netherlands to UK and people thought I was dutch. I couldn't point out why, I think the cadence, the r and the sh sound (I tend to pronounce the "s" like that, I won't say it's typical Spanish) made the trick, thanks for the video!
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages The Netherlands has some shared history with Spain and Portugal 😊 The most famous 17th century Dutch comedy is called "De Spaanschen Brabander" (Bredero, 1617). It's a comedy with a big role for accents and dialects about a Spaniard who moved from Antwerp to Amsterdam in 1577 (after the Spanish Fury). About a third of the Amsterdam population in 1617 came from Flanders including a lot of Spanish and Portugese. A lot of that comedy is about the accents and daily misunderstandings, quite like the sketches in this video.
This is so amasing). Dutch people also have a very specific tone of voice, which is VERY NICE. The world is GREAT in its diversity. and only russians are condemned and will be.
You forgot to mention that a lot of Dutch people live in flets and travel by trem. They also seem to think that the French invented the railways, catching their trains from stahshons.
uhh.....that's because 'station' actually is a French word by origin (itself derived from Latin ofc) and predates the invention of railways by a good margin. I'd argue that the Dutch pronunciation is as close (or distant) to the original as the English version
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesmain dialects and one official language. Still, I'm from Schoonhoven and I have a hard time understanding people, if the go all out dialect, from neighboring village of Cabauw. Which is 3km away. Both are in the dialect region of Utrechts-Alblasserwaards.
Been living in Holland for many many years and I thought you was Dutch (lol) and helping people out to know about the differences in the language. Thx Dave a pleasure to watch you and fun too. Kindest M
I'm preparing an audiobook of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and I want to get Van Helsing exactly right. Your video was the first hit when searching "how to speak with a Dutch accent" and it's perfect for my needs. Thank you!
Very interesting! I actually learn Dutch through English as explained in my latest video. My only problem is nailing the Dutch sounds which you have great tips for. Bedankt!
It's interesting because many things in this video also help explain aspects of the South African dialect of English which is influenced by Afrikaans, which originates from Dutch.
I am an Englishman who has lived in ”de Nedderlandsh” for 7 years and now live in Belgium with my Flemish partner. I always do this sort of thing snd he laughs and says it’s “ofer de topp” but it’s so much fun. It really struck a chord with me. #subscribed :)
I'm an English voice-over for Dutch and I don't get it when some of them complain about my voice, they say it's almost not understandable. So I asked others here and they say they understood it. It's clear. Maybe it has something to do with the letters that you have mentioned here.
Prachtig! I'm painfully aware of our devoicing and non-aspiration tendencies, so I was happy to hear you start on a positive note. I'd never thought about intonation patterns, which probably means I speak like this all the time. But I'd have to check recordings of my own voice. People tell me I'm a vivid public speaker, and I thought this was a personal achievement... Could you tell us more about different intonation patterns? Do the French speak in anapests?
I missed the mention of the W sound, which is different in the word "jouw" and "wij". When it follows a U, it's fairly similar to the English W, but when it's anywhere else, it sounds more like the German W, except it's different still.
To me this was absolutely spot on :) However, even though the Netherlands is a very small country, there are many different dialects, like in the Hague, Amsterdam, Frisian (Yes, Frisian is a language, but also when Frisians speak Dutch, they also have a significant dialect) or the Belgian variant Flemish, so maybe the accent you are portraying does not fit to all of those people speaking English. In any case, for me it was super impressive and educational.
That was very good, I'm Australian Born, with Dutch and German parents, The Dutch ask me if I speak English when I speak Dutch, the Germans ask me if I speak Dutch when I speak German. I have had Australians and Americans (where I now live) if I'm South African. In watching this I can understand why my speech is so confusing for people because I know I have a lot of Dutch intonation in my sentence structure, and probably influence from learning German which is different from Dutch intonation. I would really love a comparison of American to say Australian - as this is such a touchy subject for many expats.
hello sir! i must say thanks for how you've helped me. i was casted as dr van helsing for my school play. i was struggling with the accent, but this helped out
Very good analysis and very entertaining as well!. I'm Dutch ,studied English and like to think I came close to achieving near native RP. One thing that also does not exist in Dutch is the lengethening of certain sounds. This often goes hand in hand with final devoicing, resulting in 'sent' and 'send' being pronounced the same. Also, most of the English we hear is American English, which explains some of our 'r' pronunciations. I do have to say though that in your efforts to replicatie the Dutch accent, from time to time you came closer to a German one instead. Granted, they share many of the same patterns such as final devoicing, but they do sound very different.
I'm Dutch but I live in the UK. I've never had a terribly Dutch accent when speaking English, but with this guide I can sound proper Dutch like I'm meant to!
Closest I’ve actually come to learning a good Dutch accent in English. I already speak Dutch without American accent but can’t transfer that over to English very well
Nice one and surprisingly accurate! I'm from the more rural parts of the Netherlands and here we have even more epithetic vowels and an uvular trill as "r", so if you would like to imitate this you would pronounce "helping" as /ˈhɛləpɪŋ/ or "work" as /ʋəʀək/ to get beautitful sentences such as "hie is helleping mie wif mij wurruk" /ɦi: ɪs ɦɛləpɪŋ mi: ʋɪf mɛ̞i̯ ʋəʀək/
I have lived abroad since I was ten when my parents decided to work abroad, I was born in the Netherlands to Dutch parents but speak very good English and pronouncing the TH's and use the words starting with V & F's properly. Not trying to brag, I was young and learning a foreign language is easier at that age 😂. I have lost a lot of my Dutch English accent though and my colleagues were complaining that I couldn't tell them how the accent sounded. This video was perfect!
Something important you forgot to mention is that Dutch speakers don't distinguish /æ/ from /ɛ/, so they say both as /ɛ/. That's something Germans do as well. And if you have a particular bad case, pronouncing /ʌ/ as /ʏ/.
That was a brilliant choice of thumbnail for the video, Dave. Maybe even without the windmills in the background, the Dutch flag in the speech bubble and your orange-coloured training top I'd have guessed from the way you were holding your mouth that a Dutch accent would emerge therefrom! You also really should be a guest on a sketch show with your pin-sharp comic delivery. I'd seen the aforementioned thumbnail knocking about for some time, so I thought that I'd give it a click today after having been spurred into action yesterday by the amazing achievement by the Dutch Women's 4 x 400 metre Relay team on Sunday night at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, which got me out of my torpor at my 'Girls Of The Golden East' Blog as I'd missed something out over on the 'Sister Blog', 'Bananas For Breakfast' a couple of days earlier in any case. This may be going off at a bit of a tangent but at that latest 'Girls Of The Golden East' Blog post, as I write, I'd been making reference to the possibility that the Dutch 'oranje' was related, across the Indo-European/Fenno-Ugrian divide, to the Hungarian 'aranya' ('gold'), which is even more closely related to 'oranje' than it already looks in view of the fact that the unaccented 'a' in Hungarian is pronounced an awful lot like the Scandinavian 'å' to my ears. Do you think there might be a relationship? Oh, the Debbie Jenner (ie., Doris D) referred to at the end of that post speaks excellent Dutch and I heartily recommend the 'Een interview bij Debbie' RU-vid video, of her being interviewed at her house - in Warmenhuizen, north of Alkmaar, I seem to recall - on Dutch TV, even speaking Dutch to her pet dog!
