Dutch finding Germans among them after WWII

Greetings to the teeming millions!

I just recently returned from Eindhoven in the Netherlands from a training course for my employer.

On the drive from Amsterdam, the driver of my Schphol taxi had a rather amusing story to tell. He told me that after WWII, the Netherlands wanted to round up ex-military Germans that tried to blend in with the population to avoid procesution for their war crimes. He told me that one method they had of spotting Germans among them, was that supposedly there is a word in their language that every self-respecting Dutchman can pronounce, but a German cannot. So as soon as they found someone who was struggling with the word or saying it with a typical German tinge, they knew they had their man.

I cannot remember what the word is, it was fairly complex, at least 5-7 syllables. Maybe something along the lines of “Sasgledachijnego”, I can’t even begin to guess.

OK, now is this even possible? Is there a word or phrase that Dutch can pronounce, but Germans, because of the differences in the languages cannot?

Aod for the record, to his Delight, being Polish I was able to pronounce that word just fine on my first attempt :slight_smile:

So, he’s claiming there was a shibboleth used? Wouldn’t be the first time.

The word my mother’s group used (during the war, AFAIK) is something I can’t replicate, but I recall that it has a “-sch-” combination, which the Dutch pronounce differently from everyone else), and it had that “-ui-” diphthong which the dutch pronounce differently from the Germans. Frankly, I’d be surprised if your cab driver wasn’t humoring you – I’m sure you can pronounce it, but pronounce it like a Nederlander?

This page says the shibboleth was ‘Scheveningen’. Native Dutch speakers pronounce <sch> with separate s and ch sounds (IPA [sx]) while Germans pronounce it with a single sh-sound (the integral symbol in IPA, [S] in SAMPA).

Well I’ve been studying the Dutch language for a while, so I know how to pronounce “ui”, “ij”, “aa”, “ee”, and the guttural “g”.

I just never heard of a reliable way to identity spies and counter-spies by virtue of pronouncing a single word or phrase before :dubious:

The word is scheveningen. And it’s true. I am German and I was recently tested by Coldfire. I couldn’t even hear that there was a difference between what I said and what he said but to him it was obvious.

I’ve heard that about scheveningen.

As an American who was once nearly fluent in German and also studied a bit of Dutch, the way we’re usually taught to pronounce the Dutch sch is as a soft ‘s’, like at the beginning of an English word, followed by a sound like ch in German Ich. In other words, it’s two distinct sounds in rapid succession.

Is that not correct? mlk12’s comment makes me wonder if the Dutch sound isn’t a single sound, namely a voiceless fricative which is articulated somewhere between an English s and a German sch. Interestingly enough, I learned recently that the ch as in Ich does exist in English, in the way that some people pronounce h in huge.

Also, while the difference between standard High German and Dutch is well marked, wouldn’t there have been Germans living near the Dutch border who would have spoken Plattdeutsch dialects similar to Dutch, and would have been able to enunciate schevening in the Dutch manner?

I didn’t see this before I posted. So it is two separate sounds in Dutch after all. Now I’m really confused. To me, not a native speaker of either language, the difference between Dutch and German with regard to sch is clear, principly because the German sch is almost exactly equivalent to my sh, but the Dutch sch sounds do not exist together in my language.

I beliieve they do. like the English word “school”. This is how I understand they pronounce the “sch”, such as the name of their world-famous international airport, “Schophol”.

Ah yes! That’s the word! Scheveningen! Thanks everyone!

And it’s not just about the “sch” either. The Dutch and Germans have a different way of pronouncing the “g” in that word as well.

:smack:

Er, that should be “SCHIPHOL”!

It is two sounds. When I tried to proonounce it, it tried to use the dutch pronounciation. The German pronounciation is very different and I can easily hear the difference between it and the Dutch pronounciation. The Germans hiding in the Netherlands probably would have tried to do that, too.

Of course I only meant that it is difficult for Germans to say that word. I have no idea about the test for war criminals.

No less a person the POTUS J.F.K. referred to Cuba as Cuber!

No, ‘school’ is pronounced as if it were written ‘skool’. That’s not the same as the sequence of consonants represented in Dutch by sch.

What is the proper way to pronounce it then? As far as I can tell, words such as Schiphol are pronounced “skeepohl”, with a plain-jane s-k sound.

That’s the American usage – at least some English and Canadian speakers say “shool” as though it were a Yiddish shul.

Heck, I remember lots of WWII movies where the American sentrys had a password to detect Germans trying to sneak into there camp. Always had a word starting with the W sound, which everybody knew Germans would mispronounce as V!

School, Schiphol, Scheveningen, etc. have a hard G. Try to pretend you have something stuck in your throat. Then say SGGGGGGoal - it’s the closest I can desbribe it for you.

The German sch is much softer, more like sjjjjj

Schiphol is pronounced: SGGGGGG hip oll - no eeee sound, no sk sound.

ntcrawler, The story is supposedly true. :slight_smile: Scheveningen is a seaside resort and was used during WWII by the resistance to smuggle people overseas to England.

[I hope you had a great time in Eindhoven, have you seen A’dam? :)]

So no one has an idea what my mother’s word might be? It might actually be a phrase, but it wasn’t Scheveningen, because that’s not got the “ui” sound in it. Does it?

Do a Bible search for ‘shibboleth.’ ;j

There’s a similar tale about the Norman rule of Sicily. The Sicilian Vespers rebelled in 1285 and hunted down the remnants of the Angevin French, killing anyone who could not pronounce “ciciri” (bean).