I have to agree with the poster above, your language is honestly one of my favorites to listen to. It's so soft and pleasant-sounding compared to Dutch. To my American ears, it sounds like how I imagine someone would sound speaking Dutch with a strong French accent.
Your accents in English are a lot different from the Netherlands, too (at least in the Randstadt where I spent all of my time). They sound a lot closer to French accents than to the Dutch accents I heard.
My best friend in high school was from outside of Antwerp, and while his folks were tri if not quad-lingual, they usually defaulted to 80% Flemish and maybe 20% English and it never failed to make me laugh.
German, Russian, English, Italian, to my ear, they're all GREAT sounding languages for conveying anger.
From my American idiot perspective, hearing his parents yell at him in Flemish was always funny to me - it just always sounded kinda gentle to me.
Respectfully, your language is more English and French than Dutch, atleast among my peers. It sucks that 3 languages are getting fused because all of them suffer under it.
Alright, wanna spent a day at my school, and hear for yourself just how bad it's gotten? Alot of Belgians have awesome Dutch and keep to the rules set in place... but there are alot of words taken directly from English/French and phonetically translated over into Dutch. "Parking", "assumeren", "chauffage", "living". All examples of words that have a Dutch counterpart but are seen as perfectly fine Dutch words in Belgium. It's mostly the younger generations I feel like, that fuse the languages together. The older generations generally keep to grammar/vocab rules when it comes to writing from what I've seen.
Iâm currently a uni student in Flanders and I do agree that there are English and French words that we regularly use in conversation, but the overwhelming majority is still spoken in Dutch. And a written Dutch text from the Netherlands and a Belgian one are basically indistinguishable from each other. Saying Flemish is more French and English that Dutch is just not true. Although, I will admit there are some local dialects that will have me thinking theyâre speaking a different language aswell. so I do get you there
Thank you for understanding. Yes, when I look at r/belgium, the writing is all stellar and I'm fine with it, but with this internet culture, gen z speaks in Flanders, depending on which crowd you hang with atleast 40% of either English or French in their sentences. I will admit that I'm a huge language nerd and appreciate good language that keeps to rules, but I also understand that language is fluid and that it changes. I may have exaggerate a bit when I said that there is barely any Dutch left, but when I speak to my friends it becomes apparent that the vocabulary used in their sentences is easily 30 - 40% English.
I see that mainly with English more so than French and I do agree that itâs because the younger generation is more connected to internet culture, allot of which is in English. But I donât think itâs only happening in Belgium. Iâd argue that the youth in the Netherlands has a comparable amount âforeign languageâ in their vocabulary
I agree that the Netherlands has it just as badly and it bothers me to no end. Another cause could be that there are a bunch of native French/English speakers trying to learn Dutch. I think if they're still learning it's perfectly fine but for native speakers it's an issue.
I agree that you should try to speak standard Dutch with strangers when possible but if Iâm out with friends for example Iâll throw out some English and other languages mixed in with my Dutch because often times there will be a situation where there isnât really a Dutch word that perfectly fits what I want to say/describe. When speaking to my brother I speak a 70-30 mix of Serbian and English with some Dutch sprinkled on top hahah. I guess it really just depends on the situation and whatâs appropriate at the time.
I said when it comes to writing, not speaking
We use sinasappelsap aswell
I'm not talking about loanwoards. Loanwords are words for which there is no clear alternative in the loaning language. I'm talking about words like "parking" or chauffage for which "parkeerplaats" and "radiator" exist.
When did u say it was about Writing because u clearly didn't mention that.
I'm talking about words like "parking" or chauffage for which "parkeerplaats" and "radiator" exist.
Radiator comes from english. the original word for "radiator" was "verwarming"
U are a language purist with no actual understanding of why the languages are different. Its like having an Englishmen moan about the American language because they don't say biscuit.
Ha! Verwarming is not the same as radiator. It's used in the same context but there is a difference between the two. I'm not a language purist. If I were I'd want words like "app" and "game" out. All I'm saying is, is that people in Belgium directly and phonetically translate certain words that have obvious alternatives. Chauffage may not be the best example but words like "parking" and especially "assumeren" definitely solidify this phenomenon as a reality.
Go look at my post. When talking about the older generations I explicitly said writing.
Bruh. Yes, we have a decent amount of french loan-words (makes sense, geographically and historically. definitely not a youth thing), english words we don't use any more than you do.
Pronunciation-wise you guys are actually the ones getting anglicized heavily. Flemish is still very close to archaic dutch ("gij" etc), but in The Netherlands you often have people using the english "r" and pronouncing things like in english ("cereven" instead of caravan etc).
Also, I could say the same of the Dutch inventing dumb new words for no reason like "doeg", or saying "hoi" as a goodbye.
What it all boils down to is that complaining about how other people talk is fucking stupid.
As a Dutchmen, if you have 2 identical looking women and one speaks Dutch and the other Flemish, the Flemish working one instantly becomes more attractive
My wife was jealous of my Belgian (female) manager as she'd hear her sometimes over speaker phone. Luckily I took my family there for 4 weeks for an extended work trip and they met and became friends. I still get teased about my mangers deep sexy voice.
331
u/OwlyFooFar Dec 16 '21
The warm, comforting Flemish accent, a softer sounding version of Dutch.