Hans van Zijst

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

Professional nerd and grammar nazi, writes in Dutch and English. Can read some German, French and Spanish too. Learning русский.

Location:: Netherlands

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 11:06:52 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

In addition to this, cinemas don't dub foreign language films, so even from a young age children are exposed to the English language.

Of course we don't dub, that's more expensive than subtitling :innocent:

Dutch once again named best non-native English speakers in the world

For the third year in a row, the Netherlands has nabbed the top spot in the EF English Proficiency Index, beating the likes of Denmark and Sweden.

show all 17 comments

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 11:11:44 +0100

Hans

hans@federate.hopto.org

I know a lot of Dutch that would not be able to understand if they did not provide subtitling :-)

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 11:17:35 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

Absolutely. But if you need subtitles because you don't understand English, you're still exposed to English. Hearing English while reading the Dutch translation means you're learning on the job.

And although I think my English is OK, there are programs for which I need subtitles. I tried watching "Lock Stock" (the TV-series) without it, but I couldn't understand half of it. Vocabulary and grammar is one thing, but idiom and slang can complicate things.

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 11:33:27 +0100

Andreas Geisler

andreas_geisler@pluspora.com

"... beating the likes of Denmark and Sweden" This wording somehow casts us Danes in a suspicious, almost unsavory light :D

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:00:29 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

Hehehe, indeed. Even when it's clearly meant as praise, it comes off as demeaning.

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:17:30 +0100

Wilco Roos

wroos@diasp.org

I love to watch 'Live are the Apollo' (stand up comedy) but some have accents that make it almost impossible to understand what they are blabbering about. That is the moment I wish subtitles were a thing (Tmobile IPTV has no option for Teletext), also some German series (Tatort for example) playing in the deep south of Germany, Munich accents are so thick you need a chainsaw to get through them ;-) Then again, some Dutch regions also are in dire need of Dutch subtitels, Friesland, de Achterhoek, Limburg, they use words to communicate, so much is true, but it is nowhere near Dutch ;-)

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:20:30 +0100

Hans

hans@federate.hopto.org

I can agree that I have a problem with certain parts of German too. It reminds me of our youngest who had a lady friend over during the local festivities. He was nog even able to understand her Platt :-) Weird situation at the breakfast table

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:27:04 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Wilco Roos# Stand-up comedy is difficult, yes. Apart from accents and idiom, it often revolves around cultural things that outsiders don't know about. I attended stand-up comedy shows in America and the UK, and many times the audience burst into laughter and I didn't have a clue as to why.

The one in Edinburg was particularly tricky, because many performers where Scottish and had a very thick accent. Charming, I really like it, but it does make it hard to understand if you don't get the time to process what someone just said.

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:30:09 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Hans Tried to have a conversation somewhere in a small village in Switzerland once, very difficult to understand what those people were saying. "Ah, du sprichsts Hochdeutsch?" Well, yes, that's the only German taught in our schools :joy:

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:34:03 +0100

Wilco Roos

wroos@diasp.org

I recognize that, a comedian comes on stage, says a few (seemingly unrelated) things, chants a name, the audience laughs, not a clue. Cultural Disconnect, on Netflix you have this stand-up show that showcases folks from all over the world, and in that series the Indian comedians gave me the worst case of CD. Really, not a cue about what they were on about. Ok, a lot of those so called stand up comedians were simply not funny, but that is a taste thing, for example a South African guy, his humor, i just did not get, went straight over my head, not one iota of fun to be had for me.

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:42:04 +0100

Wilco Roos

wroos@diasp.org

Swiss German is a language on its own, coupled with the sing-song way they speak it, for an outsider without a lot of practice hardly understandable, 1 in 5 words sounds familiar ;-D My wife has lived in Switzerland for almost 10 years and speaks and understands it, but even she has trouble to pick it up again after so many years without hearing or speaking it We have been to Switzerland a few years ago, my jaw dropped over prices of simple things, an Swiss-Italian Salami some guy was pushing in a shopping mall, after a taste, i did a conversion from swiss to euro cash in my head, the damn thing came to 100,- for 750gr. House costs, and even renting a place is staggeringly expensive, but then again, so are the average wages over there. You see whole wagon trains of swiss crossing the border to do their daily shopping in Germany, that and gas prizes pays for long long trips to still be profitable..!

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:24:30 +0100

Tanja

tanja@hubzilla.lazyteddy.eu

@Hans

I can agree that I have a problem with certain parts of German too.

I have problems with certain parts of German :-D. Some of the dialects in this country...

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:32:55 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

Hahaha, same here. Years ago I was at Pinkpop, a music festival in Limburg, near the German border. Lots of German visitors too. I got to talk to a few of them, and one of them said "I can usually understand Dutch, but I can't understand the dialect they speak here".

My reaction was "that makes two: I can't understand it either" :-D

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:39:52 +0100

Wilco Roos

wroos@diasp.org

Yep, not a clue, and i get really annoyed when you talk to one, and he then turns around and starts chatterboxing in his dialect with someone else, i always suspect he is bad mouthing me or some such thing.

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:47:19 +0100

Wilco Roos

wroos@diasp.org

France? A strike, what else in France, it is their favorite pastime :-D

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:55:22 +0100

Peter Oram

peteroram@joindiaspora.com

@Wilco Roos# "they use words to communicate, so much is true" This really made me laugh...

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 01:01:43 +0100

Peter Oram

peteroram@joindiaspora.com

Here's another example of Cultural Disconnect... I taught in South Korea in 1996-1997. American movies had Korean subtitles, not dubbing, so I often went to the cinema. I remember seeing Fargo, which has a character telling a joke about personalised number plates. (A man couldn't afford personalised number plates, so he legally changed his name to ZMO498.) I was the only person in the entire cinema who laughed (and I laugh loudly!). I think Koreans didn't have (don't have?) personalised number plates. Another problem - watching comedies at the cinema in Korea - was if the audience read the subtitles and started laughing loudly before the matching audio started, I would often miss the joke because I couldn't hear it over the audience's laughter. C'est la vie.

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 09:51:27 +0100

Wilco Roos

wroos@diasp.org

That, Peter, is one of the things we do very competent here in Holland, subtitles are so exactly synchronous with the spoken language it just works across the language barrier. I can attest because i never read them, just listen to the original (be it German or English) and we laugh at the same moments. Still, jokes about 'local' famous people, specific historical happenings, politicians and such just do not work.