I moved to the Netherlands in 2000 and over the years I have learnt Dutch the best I can. And now I have to contend with understanding Achterhoeks.
My New Life Needs Subtitles
In 2017 I moved to the Achterhoek and suddenly faced the issue that this part of the Netherlands doesn’t speak the same Dutch language as the West of the country. You know when people speaking Dutch on TV are subtitled because their regional dialect is so levend it is incomprehensible to those speaking only standard Dutch? Well that’s my new life. Subtitles would be great.
Regional Dialects
The Netherlands as a country may be small but that fact doesn’t stop it being diverse. Language is definitely a large part of that diversity.
Friesland has its own language (the only Dutch province to have a separate recognised language) but officially the rest of the country speaks standard Dutch. However, don’t let theory fool you; the Dutch language is not identical throughout the rest of the Netherlands. There are massive regional differences.
Each area of the country has its own language quirks, sayings and words. And that includes the Achterhoek.
Dutch Low Saxon
Unbeknown to me when we were house searching, we moved to an area (east Netherlands basically) with a Dutch Low Saxon dialect.
The Dutch government recognises it as a regional language but its use is officially in decline, especially amongst children. It’s a dialect influenced by our German neighbours but similar enough to Dutch to be classified as Dutch by some linguistic experts.
Achterhoeks is a subgroup of Dutch Low Saxon.
Speaking Achterhoeks
Achterhoeks is the regional language spoken in Gelderland. And I can confirm it is alive and well amongst the older adult population around me.
There are sounds in Achterhoeks that don’t exist in standard Dutch. There are umlauts. Seriously. Leven is laeven. Praten is praoten. Waaien is waejen.
Suddenly I find myself, once more, linguistically sticking out because people have to switch to standard Dutch to communicate with me. Yep, after however many years of struggling to have conversations in Dunglish when I first moved here I now find myself looking as confused and blank when someone Dutch talks to me as I did seventeen years ago.
Learning the Hard Way About Dutch Language Differences
Like last week when a fellow mother told me I may as well wait where I was instead of going into the school grounds because my three were heading out already. I saw her lips moving, I heard her making noises but I had no clue what she had just said to me. My brain was processing madly but I could make no sense of a single word she had uttered. Achterhoeks.
“Ach ja, ik moet natuurlijk Nederlands praten,” she said laughing as my blank face told her everything she needed to know. She repeated her sentence in Dutch and I waited on the spot for my kids.
Dutch Skills No Longer Enough
A few weeks ago we were invited for a borrel by newcomers to the street but they addressed the invitation using names that were not ours. I explained the error to our neighbour and she looked at my kids and asked if they could translate. It had been many years since my language skills were insulted to that degree. You could have knocked my eldest son down, he was so flabbergasted. Oh how we laughed. Afterwards. A little. Oh hang on, how my Dutch husband laughed.
Our builder (when he was actually coming to the house regularly and doing the work he promised to do and not flitting in and out for an hour at a time completing projects months later than he said he would – bee in my bonnet? Moi?) talks to his colleagues in Achterhoeks. I have no clue what they are talking about most of the time. Luckily he switches to Dutch with me, and even then I have to use my best concentration face to have a conversation.
We had a local tiler here that I swear just made noises. Incomprehensible noises.
The older a person is the more likely they are to speak Achterhoeks and the less chance there is of me ever understanding a word uttered.
Wat zegt u? Or rather Wah blief?
*Sigh*
Just when you think you have this turning Dutch thing sorted, you discover this integration lark just never ends……….
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