Dutch influence on English

Wilmer Rivers rivers at seismo.CSS.GOV
Tue Dec 13 20:16:29 CET 1994


Come to think of it, there are no references in the English language
to the Dutch other than negative ones, at least that come to mind.
So political correctness will indeed have the effect of making the
Dutch be a non-nationality.  Well, maybe "dutch oven" or "dutch doors",
but in a modern household, who sees those any more.  If you ask school
children what do they know about the Dutch, they will tell you that
they wear wooden shoes.  Of course, the English word for a wooden
shoe is "sabot", and that in turn has given us "sabotage" (literally,
"the damage done to machinery by wooden shoes").  So Dutch is definitely
a dirty word in English!  By the way, I didn't know that Daan Jippes is
from Friesland ("the Lapland of Holland").  Does he therefore speak
Frisian as his native tongue?  Frisian is the language mostly closely
related to English of all the other Teutonic languages, and native
speakers of English thus find a Frisian accent disconcertingly foreign
and familiar at the same time.  Have those of you on the list who have
met Jippes found this to be the case?

Wilmer Rivers



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