Dutch Subtitling Service

Everything you never needed to know about the Dutch

You’ll need a bigger piece of paper
If you’re translating from English into Dutch, it is likely that the text will be up to 35% longer and so if you’re producing a leaflet you will need to redesign it from English to accommodate the Dutch language.

No insults please…
It is thought the phrase double Dutch which means nonsense and the term Dutch courage which means you don’t have any real courage were insults to the Dutch from the English. During the Anglo-Dutch wars which took place between 1652 and 1884, English sailors would use these terms to upset the Dutch.

The Netherlands could be under the sea
The Netherlands means the lowlands and one third of the country lies below sea level. Amsterdam is 2 metres below sea level and most of its older buildings are constructed on top of wood pilings deep down into sand, clay, and rock.

Dutch people are tall
The Dutch are said to be the world’s tallest people. Men have an average height of 182.53 cm or around 6 feet. Women are on average 169.3 cm or 5 feet, seven inches. English people on the other hand have an average height of 178.2 cm or 5 feet, 9 inches and woman are 161.54 which is 5 feet, 3 inches.

Tulips from Amsterdam
Tourists come from all over the world to see the tulips in bloom in the Netherlands. The country is one of the biggest suppliers of bulbs (they produce 80’% of the world’s bulbs). Where to go to get the best view of the tulips? Visit Keukenhof Park in Amsterdam. There you’ll find about 800 varieties of tulips in the largest flower garden in the world.

The Dutch have a sweet tooth
A Dutch person’s favourite sweet is liquorice. There’s around 80 different kinds on sale and each person eats about 2 kilos a year. That’s good news if your partial to liquorice allsorts.

The Dutch want a low carbon footprint
Not only is Holland famous for its windmills (you can see 19 of them if you visit the UNESCO Heritage Site at Kinderdijk, but they also like the modern type. Dutch electric trains are powered 100% by wind turbines.

Orange is the official colour of the Netherlands
The Netherlands official colour is orange and people wear orange clothes on the day Kings day is celebrated. It’s said the Dutch bred carrots to be orange to honour William of Orange (King William III) but how true this story is, is hard to say.

A Dutch cow lived at the White House in the USA
A Friesian cow called Pauline Wayne lived on the grass outside the White House so that President William Howard Taft could have fresh cow’s milk every day. In the Netherlands they used the cow’s milk to make Gouda and today they produce more than 800,000 tonnes of cheese which is much more than the UK.

Try and pronounce this if you’re learning Dutch!
There is a word in Dutch that has 53 letters, and it was in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1996. The word means preparing things to do for a children’s carnival and the word is … Kindercarnavalsoptocchtvoorbereidingswerkkzaahedenplan.

Dutch has over 20 million speakers and is a West Germanic language. You will hear it spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is also the official language of the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten, all of which are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The language is also close to Afrikaans of South Africa, which was colonised by the Dutch.

Dutch is said to be the very similar to German and English and has words from both languages in its vocabulary. It has various dialects, the most well- known are East and West Flemish, spoken in Flanders, Brabantian spoken in Antwerp, Flemish Brabant and North Brabant and Limburgish, spoken in Limberg.

The Dutch were present in Indonesia for more than 350 years and there are many Dutch words to be found in the Indonesian language. The Dutch didn’t ever force the Indonesian people to speak the language, although well- educated Indonesians did learn Dutch for business purposes. Malay has now replaced Dutch as the official language of business.

In the West Indies, the Dutch colonised Suriname, where slaves spoke Dutch to each. Suriname has been independent since 1975, but most of the population still use Dutch as their mother tongue and those who don’t, speak it as a second language.