Dutch Voice Over Agency

Everything you never needed to know about speaking 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.

A short history on the Dutch language

Dutch belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is closely related to English and German, and shares a common ancestor with them – Proto-Germanic. The modern Germanic languages began to move away from Proto-Germanic from the Early Middle Ages onwards.

Modern Dutch is derived from Old Dutch, which was spoken (in various closely related dialects) from around the 6th to the 12th centuries throughout the present-day Dutch-speaking region (chiefly the Netherlands and Belgium). The language evolved, and by the 16th century there was a standard written version.

The establishment of the Dutch Empire, from the 17th century onwards, took the Dutch language global – from the East Indies to the West Indies. Most notably, following colonisation in South Africa, this resulted in the development of Afrikaans, which today is different enough from its parent to be considered a separate language.

Which countries have Dutch as a national language?

Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, and one of three official languages of Belgium (along with French and German). It is also the official language of Suriname, although the country gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975. The Dutch language has official status in the Caribbean island nations of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, all parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Dutch is an official language of the European Union, and the Union of South American Nations.

How many people speak Dutch as their first language?

Over 23 million people speak Dutch as their first language. Around 96% of the population of the Netherlands and 59% of Belgians speak Dutch as their native language. In Suriname over 60% of the population speak Dutch as their first language, and another 24% as their second. In Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten less than 8% of the population speak Dutch as their first language, even though it is the official language of the islands.

Did you know…

• The Dutch language has had no official status in Indonesia since it gained independence from the Netherlands in 1945. The Dutch didn’t try to establish the language within the colony, preferring it to be spoken only by the ruling elite. Today only a minority of Indonesians can speak Dutch fluently.
• Although English speakers usually refer to the language of the Netherlands as Dutch and the language of Belgium as Flemish, they are in fact widely agreed to be the same language, and its official name is Nederlands, or Netherlandic. The word neder means low, and refers to the region’s geographical position, downriver at the mouth of Rhine, on the lowest dip of the Northern European plain.
• Many Dutch words have been incorporated into the English language. These include booze, cruise, frolic, gherkin, gruff, landscape, snoop and yacht.
• In terms of the size of its vocabulary, Dutch is one of the richest languages in the world. The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (The Dictionary of the Dutch Language) is the largest dictionary in the world in print.

The Dutch economy

The Netherlands has an open economy, the fifth largest in the eurozone. Characteristics include stable industrial relations and relatively low levels of unemployment and inflation. The country is an important European transportation hub, and depends heavily on foreign trade. Industries are concentrated around food processing, chemical production, electrical machinery and petroleum refining. The Dutch invented the Stock Market, through the trading activities of the Dutch East India Company. The Netherlands is a founding member of the European Union and the World Trade Organisation.