Talking Dutch: One man’s hesp is another man’s ham

You sometimes don’t realise you are speaking bad Dutch until a Dutch person tells you. Take the word solden – sales. You see this in every shop window in Flanders and Brussels during the sales periods in January and July. But it looks wrong to a Dutch person. The right word, they will tell you firmly, is koopjes.

There are other examples, too, of words we use in Flanders that Dutch people consider wrong. We talk about the autostrade, the motorway. But they say autosnelweg up in the north. We spread confituur on our toast, but the Dutch tell us we should call it jam.

A survey into attitudes on using Flemish expressions was recently organised by the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in collaboration with local media and the language organisation De Taalunie. The aim was to find out how language experts felt about the use of common Flemish expressions.

More than 3,000 people were given 50 sentences to read, waarvan veertig met typisch Vlaamse woorden of uitdrukkingen – of which 40 were typical Flemish words or expressions. They were asked a simple question – “Vindt u deze zin aanvaardbaar in de krant of in het journaal?” – Do you find this sentence acceptable in a newspaper or a news report?

“De resultaten zijn verrassend" – The results were surprising, said Johan De Schryver of KU Leuven; "58 procent van de Vlaamse taalprofessionelen heeft niets tegen meer Vlaams in de standaardtaal” – 58% of Flemish linguists had no objection to more Flemish expressions being used in standard Dutch.

But not everyone was so pleased with the results. One Dutch writer said that it was “een zwarte dag voor het Nederlands” – a black day for the Dutch language.

Maybe. But then who is really speaking correct Dutch? When you order bottled water in the Netherlands, you have to ask for een Spa blauw or een Spa rood, depending on whether you want normal water or sparkling. But no one in Flanders would ever say this. Here you ask for niet-bruisend water or bruisend water – much clearer than Blue Spa and Red Spa, which refers to a brand, after all.

The same goes for orange juice. The Dutch use the French term jus d’orange, whereas the Flemish insist on using the more correct Dutch word sinaasappelsap.

Sometimes the differences can be quite striking. We ask for a broodje hesp – a ham sandwich – whereas the Dutch call it a broodje ham. We take our clothes to be dry cleaned at a droogkuis whereas the Dutch use a stomerij. We pay for stuff with a bankkaart, whereas the Dutch use a Pinpas.

It sometimes makes you wonder if anyone knows what is correct Dutch and what is not.

Photo: Handige Harry/Wikimedia Commons