Why do Dutch and Scandinavians speak English so well?

<<I'm German and I'm currently learning some Dutch. I think it's sad a lot of people in Germany - esp. on the border to the Netherlands - don't much care about learning leastwise basic Dutch, to be able to get talking to our Dutch neighbors, but instead expect them to respond in German.
It's not that Germans don't like the Dutch, on the contrary I feel our relations have much improved. It's nothing but pure laziness which can be misunderstood for arrogance or rudeness. I hope that in the future more Germans will be rather more attentive towards our Dutch neighbors!
Sorry for getting of the track now...>>

I completely agree, and this is kind of what I was trying to say. I have a few relatives in Germany, and I think I heard that in school you can choose to study either Dutch or Latin. Is this true?

I like German though and I can adjust quite easily (although it is hard in the beginning since I don't speak German that often).

>>I completely agree, and this is kind of what I was trying to say. I have a few relatives in Germany, and I think I heard that in school you can choose to study either Dutch or Latin. Is this true?<<

You'll get this possibility only at the border to the Netherlands. I live further south near Luxembourg, and there you can only choose between French and Latin.

>>I like German though and I can adjust quite easily (although it is hard in the beginning since I don't speak German that often).<<

:-) Same here. Dutch and German do have so much in common which actually makes it very easy to learn for both sides. It should be another reason for us Germans to learn some Dutch.

Tot ziens!

Yeah. The main thing that makes German spelling (writing) hard for me is the capital letters. I guess this is one of the reasons why many people refer to Dutch as 'German lite'. :p

Dutch are lazy, mean, short sighted and always ready to complain. For the last 3 years they have grown xenophobic too. Their muslim fanatics went around killing dutch movie makers, so they prefer closing up borders with Europeans. Dumb Dutch. The violent immigrants are within their bothers while dutch women are marrying immigrants from the strangest nationalities all the time. They are religious fanatics. They think they are liberal only because of their drugs free areas for tourists. I couldn't find anything more tasteless. They think they are liberal because they legalized euthanasia, but we all know they just did it to save on medical costs with terminally ill people.
Then they brag about democracy but let's not forget how great the Dutch were in South Africa until just a few years ago. And trust me, being Dutch, they finally abolished Apartheid, but probably because they were losing too much money from sanctions. In fact, in the whole 20th century history, that was the only case even that sanctions resulted in change. The Dutch of course.Now they still operate a diamond business which is among the most disgusting in the world. Not only are they among the largest polluters in Africa, but they know very well how they are exploiting slaves and children. The fucking Dutch.
And I even chose Philips over a couple of Korean products to help European industry. Sure enough they all broke down. Philips sucks so much they didn't even make in in the US. Only Europeans buy their shit. They used to have a car company called DAF. The cars sucked even more than Philips, were breaking down the same day you buy them. Now they are out of business. Dutch cheese? Please. Like I would even miss their cuisine.
That's a very shitty country there, and the sea should have taken over already if it wasn't for their stupid walls. My deepest hope is that global warming will fix that geopolitical entity once and for all.

Sandro: Am I a boring monolingual Brit, you ask.....well, if you ask my friends and colleagues I don't really believe they will think I'm boring at all, although I say it myself....on the contrary many would think I'm totally out of the loop and off my rocker most of the time, but there you go, pal!

Let's just assume for argument's sake that I'm not boring, but as for the monolingual bit - well, first and foremost I am pretty adept at both correct English (I did read it at uni for a start and I was taught to speak it from the cradle age of zero more or less...amazingly I think "mamma" was my very first clearly spoken word but I can't attest to that ) and also Scots when I feel it's to my advantage to "go native"....something I really, really miss down here in this metropolis of a melting pot of all kinds and all sorts.

As for the wider sphere of Languages I took French in school up to the higher stage of education prior to university and I really don't think my conversational skills are necessarily bad at all, and I have taken most opportunities available to me to practise it, both here in the UK with the few french people I've met over here as well as just over the water in France itself, but at times the French really can be quite irritating....well, some of them - nearly always the older people who, to my mind, are more pig-headed and sniffy if I make any kind of cock-up whereas people around my own age or younger don't really didn't give a toss about that as long as they goit the gist of what I was saying.

Parisians generally are a breed all of their own in many ways and some of them can be amazingly sniffy and snotty, like the guy at reception in this Paris hotel - he was about 28/30 at a guess - who loooked down his nose at me when I asked in what I bloody well knew was word perfect, grammatically correct French if they locked the front door of the hotel at night and if so, at what time, and instead of a nice smile and a reponse back in French all I got was a haughty: "Yes, we do lock zuh door at one of clock!" and that was that.

I've never felt the need to attempt Dutch in the Netherlands - the attitude there is totally different to that in France when it comes to the English Language - the Dutch are far, far, far more disposed to speaking English than are the French, and by and large are much better at it. In any case, I find French a very pleasant Language both to hear and to speak, especially if you try your best to get the sounds as correct as you can, as close to the native's accent as you can, but Dutch is a different matter altogether. Although it has close roots with English the Dutch Language is much harsher and far more guttural than is present day English. I just don't feel inclined to chance my luck at it, and in any case virtually all Dutch people are conversant with English to some degree at least, and mostly they are happy to use it, in my experience anyway.

I very much like the Netherlands and I like the Dutch people generally, end of.

To paraphrase Damian's post:

"Yes, I am a boring monolingual Brit"

Ok, I get it!

hatedutch Sun May 31, 2009 9:48 pm GMT
Dutch are lazy, mean, short sighted and always ready to complain. For the last 3 years they have grown xenophobic too. Their muslim fanatics went around killing dutch movie makers, so they prefer closing up borders with Europeans. Dumb Dutch. The violent immigrants are within their bothers while dutch women are marrying immigrants from the strangest nationalities all the time. They are religious fanatics. They think they are liberal only because of their drugs free areas for tourists. I couldn't find anything more tasteless. They think they are liberal because they legalized euthanasia, but we all know they just did it to save on medical costs with terminally ill people.
Then they brag about democracy but let's not forget how great the Dutch were in South Africa until just a few years ago. And trust me, being Dutch, they finally abolished Apartheid, but probably because they were losing too much money from sanctions. In fact, in the whole 20th century history, that was the only case even that sanctions resulted in change. The Dutch of course.Now they still operate a diamond business which is among the most disgusting in the world. Not only are they among the largest polluters in Africa, but they know very well how they are exploiting slaves and children. The fucking Dutch.
And I even chose Philips over a couple of Korean products to help European industry. Sure enough they all broke down. Philips sucks so much they didn't even make in in the US. Only Europeans buy their shit. They used to have a car company called DAF. The cars sucked even more than Philips, were breaking down the same day you buy them. Now they are out of business. Dutch cheese? Please. Like I would even miss their cuisine.
That's a very shitty country there, and the sea should have taken over already if it wasn't for their stupid walls. My deepest hope is that global warming will fix that geopolitical entity once and for all.

__________________

Well said. I can't stand them either. Characters like Mork remind me what I disliked so much when I lived there: that aggressive, unpleasant, rude manner.

Interesting you mentioned the euthenasia, because that's exactly what it is: saving money. Hospice care would be much more expensive, so the Dutch prefer to kill 'em off quickly. Dutch doctors are terrible.

I don't know about the Dutch being religious fanatics, but I agree about them claiming to be liberal when they are in fact particularly intolerant. They're the most intolerant nation I've come across, except for drugs - and BTW they've got a HUGE drugs problem, even though they pretend they haven't.

Dutch cuisine is dreadful. Most restaurants serve tasteless muck.

As for Phillips I don't really know as I haven't bought any of their stuff as far as I can remember. I don't know about diamonds either.

I simply don't get it why so many people believe the Dutch propoganda about themselves - that they're tolerant, liberal, friendly etc when quite frankly they're a nasty lot.

The guys above me are kinda funny. I'm sure they've never been here.
The Dutch don't have a drugs problem. None of my friends nor family use drugs. The persons who make the problems here when it comes to are usually English and Americans. They use drugs combined with alcohol mostly and well, that doesn't help to get a good trip.
I know what drugs do, how to use them, how not to use them. But I've never used it. Because drugs are allowed the abuse is much less, except by foreigners who don't follow the unwritten laws.

Dutch cuisine is boring, that's true.

Euthanasia, I think you'd rather have a lot of pain and die with pain instead of dying while sleeping. Or not?!
If I had the choice to die with bone cancer and having pain, or to die with bone cancer just before the real pain starts I knew what I would do! The fact the person who wants to have euthanasia has to write down the signature himself is something you apparently didn't know. If the person wants to die like 'God' would've wanted that is also his choice. There's no pushing to put down the signature at all.

I would like to ask you to know something about a subject before writing down nonsense.

Religious fanatics, another thing that's not true. The Netherlands have among the lowest amount of religious persons. I think Islam is bigger than Christianity now.

We didn't have any relationship with Apartheid in South Africa. Most Afrikaners are from Germany originally. Also South Africa was it's own country not even owned by the Netherlands, and they had their own government with no link to us. The Afrikaners are Afrikaners, they're not Dutch.

What has Philips' strategy to do with us? Absolutely nothing. i don't care about Philips tho'. It's not my business. And DAF-cars were very wel constructed. The fact a lot of them are still operate and not crunchy like the German cars of that time. A DAF is usually better built than a VW. But the looks of the DAF-cars are not my taste. Just too grandad like. Cars from other countries used to look better in that time.

There are no drug free areas for tourists, anyone can get in there. But an increasing amount of cities choose to regulate the drug availability to make it only available for Dutchies. Simply because foreigners oftenly don't know about the dangers and use alcohol and drugs together.

I didn't know about the polluters in Africa and those slaves. Are you referring to the 17th century? The past is the past and we can't change it unfortunately. I think the English guys have the same when it comes to their history. The Roman church has the same.
All of them have done bad things in the past. What about Nike? Nike is doing child labour in China and other poor countries.
Only difference is, Nike is NOW! Our history is 400 years ago! But well, Nike is US, so that MUST be good, ain't it?

All countries have weak and strong qualities. Everyone has to deal with them. The Netherlands are different than France and France is different than Armenia. So be it and so will it be. If you don't like it? Fine. But don't tell nonsense or conspiracies. I could also start about oil and a war.

Cheers.

The amount of trolls on this forum almost leave me to decide to leave this forum. Too bad this forum has gone this way.

I'm not sure you've read the about the same euthanasia cases that I have. I read of one case (not terminal, I believe) where the husband had cancer, but was coerced into euthanasia. He tried to back out at the last minute, but the drugs were injected anyway.

I don't want to look to the Netherlands for ideas in terminal care.

I don't hate Dutch people, though. I thought it was acceptable in Dutch society to be frank about one's ability in a language. If someone thinks he speaks a language very well, he may well say so.

I think some English speakers are very conflicted about admitting their abilities, but this varies from person to person in the US, at least.

K. T. Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:48 am GMT
I'm not sure you've read the about the same euthanasia cases that I have. I read of one case (not terminal, I believe) where the husband had cancer, but was coerced into euthanasia. He tried to back out at the last minute, but the drugs were injected anyway.

I don't want to look to the Netherlands for ideas in terminal care.

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There are specific regulations in euthanasia.
These are the open criteria:
1. The doctor must be sure the patient made his choice, from his own AND must have thought very well about it.
2. The doctor must be sure the patient has pain which will never be better or solved. Also this pain must be unbearable.
3. The doctor must have explained the situation of the patient and his prospects to the illness.
4. The doctor must be sure together with the patient there's no reasonable other solution.
5. The doctor must have spoken about it with at least one other doctor who has seen the patient and wrote a report about it with the same criteria 1 to 4.
6. The doctor must have helped the patient in a medically correct way.

These are only the open criteria. There are also others I don't know.
So the case you're referring to seems to be a case where the patient suddenly changed his opinion after commiting euthanasia.

Well abilities. I don't think my English is very well. My main problem is the word order compared to Dutch and well I will speak Dutch when possible. I'm not really sure in English.

But I understand the people who're frustrated in learning Dutch. I had the same in Sweden when I wanted to learn some Swedish. They all answered in English...

<<To paraphrase Damian's post:

"Yes, I am a boring monolingual Brit"

Ok, I get it! >>

I thought he was bilingual (English/Scots) or even trilingual (English/Scots/French).

<<I think some English speakers are very conflicted about admitting their abilities, but this varies from person to person in the US, at least. >>

In the US, I think many folks would question your patriotism if you knew any foreign languages. In fact, any book learnin' is often frowned upon around here.

(monolingual, and durned proud of it, too.)

Dutch people are cowards, 12345's post proves it:

<<Euthanasia, I think you'd rather have a lot of pain and die with pain instead of dying while sleeping. Or not?!
If I had the choice to die with bone cancer and having pain, or to die with bone cancer just before the real pain starts I knew what I would do! The fact the person who wants to have euthanasia has to write down the signature himself is something you apparently didn't know. If the person wants to die like 'God' would've wanted that is also his choice. There's no pushing to put down the signature at all. >>


The only thing important to Dutch people is physical pain! They are afraid of it so much they'd rather die. Historically, Dutch have always lost wars or been subjugated for the same reason.


<<Religious fanatics, another thing that's not true. The Netherlands have among the lowest amount of religious persons. I think Islam is bigger than Christianity now>>


More cowardliness. The Dutch are so afraid of offending people that they allow Muslims to take over their country. They don't care about their traditions. Muslims are allowed to go uncriticised because the Dutch are afraid of them, they just cross their fingers hope they'll leave them in peace. One Dutch is killed for criticising Muslims but the other Dutch are too afraid to protest, they don't become angry about it because they have no fighting spirit.


<<I know what drugs do, how to use them, how not to use them. But I've never used it. Because drugs are allowed the abuse is much less, except by foreigners who don't follow the unwritten laws. >>


Another example of cowardliness on the part of the authorities. They're too scared or maybe just lazy to fight against drug use that they just allow people to do whatever they want!