Nametag, There’s an old saying that goes:
“Ik zag de zon in de Zuiderzee zakken”
(I saw the sun go down in the Southern sea) - the Zuiderzee is now the IJsselmeer (lake).
Could that be it? The several ‘zzzzs’ and ‘ui’ sound would make it hard for a foreigner.
Just ask them to give our bicycles back.
The full expression (in Dutch) is “Crooked shoes at Scheveningen.” This uses the guttural “sch” sound three times. Sorry I don’t have the full Dutch on this, I’m but a poor American with an appreciation of history.
Perhaps those Dutch speakers out there could enlighten me?
Zombie, but still:
‘Scheve schoenen in Scheveningen’
I can see how this would trip up any non-Dutch speaker.
I don’t think this has been posted (but I may have missed it).
How to say Scheveningen : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Nl-Scheveningen.ogg
But keep in mind that “German” is a language with many dialects, and it forms a dialect continuum with Dutch. I would be suspicious that speakers of Plattdüütsch (so-called Low German) could easily be tripped up.
This was a plot point in Soldier of Orange.
It sounds like a lot of the WWII legends I read. Like a camp discovered a spy because he knew the words to the second verse od the Star Spangled Banner. And a real American would not
And, of course, he’s a spy because he didn’t know who played short stop for the 1923 Yankees.
My last name is Dutch(Flemish acutally) starts with a SCHR…my cousins in Belgium pronouce it “SKR” while the US cousins pronouce it SHR.
Family story about WW2 in Belgium about my father and his extended family. My Grandfather was fluent in Flemish, Dutch, German, and English. When they were fleeing Antwerp, he and another man were arrested as spies by the British expeditionary forces because he had maps of the area. Only thing that saved him from being shot was British nurse who was travelling with them. She was married to a Belgian and lived in Antwerp.
Anyway I’m sure Bonpa could say the sentence:)
Just by the way, I just discovered a Muslim/Christian shibboleth in Arabic, the word tomato. Just like English, Arabic has both toe may tow and toe mat to!
ISTR reading that they really did something like that during the Battle of the Bulge, when the Germans had some infiltrators in American uniforms infiltrating the U.S. lines to wreak havoc and commit sabotage.
Soczewica, koło, miele, młyn was the shibboleth used to root out the German speaking burghers of Krakow after their rebellion in 1311-1312
Has everyone forgotten about Skorzeny’s commandos in the Battle of the Bulge (or not seen the movie, which’d be a gr8 one for remake)? They had Germans that spoke perfect English, right down to Southern/Boston/Brooklyn/Chicago accents. They were very effective in sabotage, ambush, & sowing panic in the American lines. German and Dutch are very close, and in fact many Dutch thought the annexation of Holland into Germany as a natural thing (addressed in the movie ***Zwartzboek ***[Black Book] ). The overwhelming majority of Dutch spoke German, so if Germans could speak English without accent convincingly, surely a German who spoke Dutch & was stationed there for a while could pass. The story sounds like an urban legend - are there any (English-language) news accounts from say 1945 verifying this phenomenon?
P.S. My Mom was German, spoke it exclusively until age 10 - then after escaping to England in 1939, learned English, and had a British accent until coming to America. By the time I heard her speak 25 years later, she had a flat neutral MidWestern accent - people who didn’t know her thought she was from Ohio or Indiana. Until she spoke German (with my grandma) - then she sounded pure Katzenjammer kid. It was dizzying listening to her switch back & forth, sounding like a native in each language. She didn’t know Dutch, but I have no doubt that she would’ve sounded like an Amsterdammer if she did.
Can’t say I’ve ever heard that in England.
those were called collaborators and their treatment affter the war was not gentle(also addressed in Zwartboek)
I am not sure if the story is true, most Dutch know it from the movie Soldier of Orange, probably including the cab driver. Why take a cab to Schiphol anyway? But that’s another story. It might very well be true, for all I know, but I don’t think a lot of Germans would be trying to pass as Dutch when they had Dutch collaborators who could do the job for them. Very few Germans would have spoken Dutch, for one thing because there was no requirement, for another because many of the Dutch spoke German, and for a third reason because they don’t learn Dutch in school, while all the German-speaking Dutch would have taken it in school. Also, there was not exactly a lot of fraternizing between the Dutch and the Germans, as the German occupation was not perceived as a good thing altogether (and that’s putting it mildly). So no, even Germans stationed in The Netherlands would probably not have been able to pass for Dutch. I bet your mother would not have sounded ‘like an Amsterdammer’ either - but who knows. The difference between that and Katzenjammer is minute, anyway, and an Amsterdam accent would have antagonized about as many people against her as a German accent 
Perhaps towards the end of the war, when Germans were retreating, it might have been a strategy for a select few of them, but even at the end of the war, repercussions were largely directed at Dutch collaborators, not at German soldiers or other officials, who after all were still an armed force, much in contradiction to the Dutch at the time.
As regards the Dutch collaborators, while Dutch WWII history is not quite as heroic as many Dutch like to believe (eg on the basis of a movie like Soldier of Orange), that “many Dutch thought the annexation of Holland into Germany as a natural thing” is a complete falsehood.
I can’t give an exact cite, but remember learning and hearing again on a History channel show that the biggest number of foreign volunteers to the S.S. were Dutch (as portrayed by Derek de Lint in Soldier of Orange, and the black=uniformed collaborators in Zwartzboek). NOT the army, mind you, but the S.S. - hardly normal army unit. Holland was occupied until the very last day of the war - something that wouldn’t have been possible without massive collaboration. Yugoslavia liberated itself, and even the French acted once the Allies were close by. Yes, there were heroic Dutch who helped in Operation Market Garden - but they were far outnumbered by their countrymen in German or Dutch police uniform, actively opposing or reporting on Allied movements. The Dutch record, much like the Belgians with their Rexists, is not a proud one. Many of them felt natural affinity for the Germans which manifested in collaboration or outright absorption into the German war machine. Witness the Anne Frank tale - in the end, her family was betrayed by a longtime neighbor. The heroes of the Resistance stand out so sharply in contrast precisely because they went against the grain.