I’ve been to Holland many times.
I have yet to find a Dutch person who didn’t speak English. They all enjoy practising their English with me - and never correct me when I say ‘Holland’.
Some anecdotes:
I used to ask at Amsterdam station for a one-way ticket to Beverwijk in English; they would tell me the price in English.
Once I learnt by heart the Dutch for ‘single ticket to Beverwijk’. When I reached the ticket window and spoke my piece, without hesitating they told me the price in English! :eek:
there’s a chess opening variation named after a town in Holland (Scheveningen).
In conversation with a Dutch family I mentioned this. They just looked blank. When I spelt it, they laughed and pronounced it with an indescribable guttural throat noise. :smack:
My grandparents don’t speak English. PM me next time you come over so I can introduce you to some genuine non-Englishspeaking Dutch
I actually think this is pretty rude, I wish we didn’t do that so much. Most foreigners here don’t bother investing in the Dutch language the least bit, but those that do should at least be replied to in (simple, slowly pronounced) Dutch. This never happens, though, and many expats I know complain bitterly that they’re never going to learn Dutch if the Dutch won’t let them practice.
Thanks for the correction. I was given “Vlaamings” for the language by sources I thought reliable; I was misinformed. (I came here for the waters, anyway.)
Švejk, this may be as good a place as any to ask; where did you learn to write English so well? You are native Dutch, right? Please tell me it isn’t just highschool English.
Not really. While the official - and more popular - name is “Nederland” (the Netherlands), “Holland” is commonly used too, especially when football (soccer for you Americans) is involved. I guess because it’s easier to shout.
Part of the reason may be that the North- and South-Holland provinces (together with Utrecht) are quite influential culturally. Another part may be that the name “Holland” isn’t commonly seen as denoting any particular region (probably because there isn’t a single “Holland” province).
Im from Maastricht as well,(the city not the Doper) so maybe I can help
The southen provences are mostly Catholic, so they celebrate carnaval, which involves a lot of drinking, partying and dressing up in colourfull clothing. The Northern provinces are Protestant and not aloud the celbrate carnival, so they use queensday to have their own party, involving drinking partying and dressing up in colourful clothing (only orange but still), and being born traders they added freemarkets,
Some Limburgers celebrate queensday, but the most of us have a hangover from carnival
One million? I guess yet another massive exaggeration by enthusiast supporters of the local language. Flemish is almost extinct in France. They must count everybody whose grandmother once used a Flemish word…
Well of all the countries in the AmericaS, the United States is officially the United States of America. Other countries don’t use the word America in their name. So it makes sense to use America to refer to the United States OF America.
The Czech government has tried to popularize Czechia, with some success in other languages such as French, Russian, and German. For some reason, though, it hasn’t caught on in English yet.
