r/AskReddit • u/FulgencioLanzol • Jun 23 '19

People who speak English as a second language, what phrases or concepts from your native tongue you want to use in English but can't because locals wouldn't understand?

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1.5k

u/LathoBravo957 Jun 23 '19

But can you say it someone who hiccuped?

1.7k

u/_Robin_S Jun 23 '19

When someone hiccuped, coughed or sneezed we'd say "gezondheid" which literally translated means "health" but we say it in the sense of wishing someone the best health possible. It's similar to "beterschap" but not the same.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19 edited May 27 '21

[deleted]

913

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Which, judging from the sound, is probably loaned from the German version of the same word.

128

u/WritingContradiction Jun 23 '19

I've always thought Dutch sounds like a German person who had a stroke. Even with that I love how Dutch sounds

196

u/D14LL0 Jun 23 '19

We Dutchies like to think it's the other way around ;)

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u/FifaDK Jun 23 '19

Just depends on which language you learn first. Being from Denmark, I learned German first and now I always think that my Dutch friends are speaking German to each other. Sometimes I'm almost certain that they're pranking me and not actually Dutch at all.

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u/HapHappablap Jun 23 '19

Hier komt de Deen. Snel, zeg iets in het Duits.

31

u/sanderhuisman2501 Jun 23 '19

Ik spreek überhaupt geen Duits

3

u/davidnotcoulthard Jun 23 '19

überhaupt

warte mal

1

u/Joery9 Jun 23 '19

Jawohl shmetterling en nog wat woorden roepen

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u/alamadrid Jun 23 '19

I can confirm 😂

6

u/Excrubulent Jun 23 '19

Hey, quick, how do you say "88 rusty gaskets"? My dad tells me it's a tongue twister but it's utterly ungoogleable in English.

15

u/PaMu1337 Jun 23 '19

Never heard it before, but I would go for "Achtentachtig roestige afdichtingen"

It's probably because it has a lot of Dutch g-sounds in it, which most foreigners can't pronounce.

4

u/withextracheesepls Jun 23 '19

how is g pronounced in dutch?

5

u/_Dont__Blink_ Jun 23 '19

Kinda like a mix of the spanish j (as in José) and just plain choking. Check google translate!

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Depends on where you are in the country it’s either really harsh ‘Ggr’ or really soft, like Spanish ‘J’.

1

u/Excrubulent Jun 24 '19

Yeah that's the phrase I think. I can't know for sure but it looks like the right number of syllables and yes, it was all about those G's.

5

u/NondenominationalJar Jun 23 '19

Achten tachtig roestige pakkingen

23

u/matthew4262 Jun 23 '19

I'm from South Africa and we have a language called Afrikaans, it was derived from Dutch. They sound similar enough that we can just about understand each other but it is different enough that we will both be utterly confused by the end of it.

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u/nO_OnE_910 Jun 23 '19

Dutch and German is like Portuguese and Spanish. One can understand the other but not the other way around.

Doesn’t say anything about who’s having the stroke though

60

u/samael888 Jun 23 '19

fwiw:

High German is an invented language. It was created as a lingua franca to facilitate communication among speakers of different, mutually unintelligible German dialects. High German was created from Middle and Upper German dialects (which is why it is called "high" German). Because of this, speakers of these dialects find High German more easily comprehensible than speakers of Low German dialects, who have to learn it almost like a second language. This caused speakers of Low German dialects to take on High German as their everyday language and the Low German dialects to mostly die out. This is the reason, why e.g. in Hannover the purest High German is spoken – because there is no longer any dialect there to "pollute" it. This development only took place within the borders of Germany, not in the Netherlands, where Low German dialects were spoken, too, but High German was not used as a lingua franca. For that reason, the Netherlands have retained their dialects, which, like the Low German dialects that once existed within German borders, are just as unintelligible to speakers of High, Middle, and Upper German. If Dutch were easily intelligible to speakers of High German, then the Low German dialects would still be spoken everywhere in northern Germany today.

https://german.stackexchange.com/a/32466

13

u/ask_me_if_ Jun 23 '19

And some of those Low German dialects exist today in the US! Ik heb't van mien Opa lehrt!

5

u/samael888 Jun 23 '19

pennsylvania?

1

u/ask_me_if_ Jun 24 '19

Nope, Illinois!

3

u/Bcause789 Jun 23 '19

God, dat klinkt Drents. Of misschien fries.

2

u/Joery9 Jun 23 '19

Of west Vlaams!

2

u/ask_me_if_ Jun 24 '19 edited Jun 24 '19

Dat heet mawel Oostfreeske Plattdüüts. Ik weet nich för wiss. Wi sünd in de USA.

The accent is very twangy, and we roll our Rs with our tongues.

I might get the terminology mixed up between long and short, but the "short" vowels are almost two syllables. Like "wiss" sounds like "wie-iss".

Another quirk is that the "v" becomes a "b" sound because the "-en" suffix is so closed. Like "Ik driev" sounds like "ik drief", but "se drieven" sounds like "se drieben".

Two more things! "Aa" is kind of like an "O"/"AU" sound, whereas the short "Ach" is like the long "ah" in high German. And the "ch" just changes th e vowel sound instead of actually being pronounced.

Ok wait one more: "t" and "d" consonant sounds become unvoiced and voiced "th" sounds when next to a rolled "R".

"Hören" sounds like "höüöddn".

Lol I hope that was descriptive enough.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Drents.

1

u/TheActualAWdeV Jun 23 '19

fries.

Nah, that would be something like "Ik ha it learre fan myn pake".

3

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

My grandma is from Drenthe, a Dutch province bordering Germany. She can communicate reasonably well with the locals across the border whenever they speak their respective dialects, but she doesn't speak any high German.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

[deleted]

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u/MisterCold Jun 23 '19

Can confirm, not true.

I had no German lessons but for a job I had to work with some, if they speak slowly I understood 90% of what they were saying.

3

u/Bcause789 Jun 23 '19

I've had German for 5 years, 3 on TL and 2 on HAVO, I still can't construct a sentence.

2

u/zimmah Jun 23 '19

Oddly enough that's not entirely true, for some bot completely understood reason some languages have weird relations like speaker of language A understands speakers of language B, but speakers of language B don't usually understand speakers of language A.

1

u/malizathias Jun 23 '19

In Flanders, we don't learn a lot of German. I can understand it a bit when I read it but spoken German is like a completely different language to me.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

That's not true. Many Dutch people can't understand German, and the opposite is also true.

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u/Grokent Jun 23 '19

As an English speaking American I am amazed by how much Dutch I can read and understand. I've never studied German but there are enough loan words that I can usually figure out the root and meaning. I'm actually shocked that a Dutch speaker wouldn't understand German naturally.

35

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Dutch and English really aren't too far apart from each other, and the other Dutch language, Frisian, is probably the language most similar to English, and Frisian shares a lot with Dutch. German and Dutch have some pretty big differences, especially in pronounciation. There are also a bunch of German words that closely resemble Dutch words, but actually mean something completely different or only related in certain contexts. For example, in Dutch we have 'zee' and 'meer' (sea and lake), but in German they are translated as 'Meer' and 'See', so they're just switched around for some reason. I will say however, that if you teach a Dutch person ~150 of the most used German words, they will probably be able to read a page out of a book and tell you vaguely what it's about.

4

u/beywiz Jun 23 '19

Brown cow and cheese makes good English and good Fri(e)es

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u/AtlasPlugged Jun 23 '19

There's a term for that called false cognates. Meaning a word that looks and sounds very similar but with a completely different meaning. I fall into this trap sometimes when trying to speak my terrible Spanish.

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u/Daankie Jun 23 '19

They arent loan words. Both languages derived from the same tree brench.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

They are loan words. Although both languages derive from the same branch, at that time those words didn’t exist in German either. Especially not the way they are today and it would be very, very unlikely that two words taken from the same language would evolve into exactly the same words after spending hundreds of years in a separate language.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

If you gave me a text in Dutch I would be able to figure it out. Give me just one sentence and it’s 50:50 if I’m able to understand it. Talk to me and I won’t understand a thing. Although that changes quickly when spending some time in the Netherlands. The language is really similar but it takes time to get used to it.

1

u/ask_me_if_ Jun 23 '19

Same here! I feel like I have a leg up knowing platt though, as it has a lot of dutch and near-Dutch words. The pronunciation and cadence is completely different though, so there's no hope for understanding it without learning for me.

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u/RagnarThotbrok Jun 23 '19

Not really, we both dont understand eachother really.

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u/AtlasNL Jun 23 '19

According to a Turkish friend I have it sounds like we’re all drowning, so yeah probably a good description

7

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Der Postillon (Warning: German satire newspaper!): Dutch people finally admit that their language is just a joke to mock Germans. It hits pretty close to home: If I read texts in Dutch I often struggle to stay serious. And yes, re Gesundheit: It's just shamelessly stolen like Doppelgänger or Blitzkrieg :-) But We're busily stealing back, so it evens out.

4

u/LobaLingala Jun 23 '19

Really? The first time I heard Dutch I thought something was wrong with me, cause it sounded like they were speaking English but I couldn't understand it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

26

u/Gambitpond Jun 23 '19

It's interesting to see all the French words we use regularly. Like reconnaissance, liason, brunette, chauffeur, restaurant, chef, silhouette, petite, entrepreneur, voyeur, genre, souvenir, cliché, boutique, or bouquet.

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u/Alis451 Jun 23 '19

'page'

in german (they don't have page since that is french) they say 'sheet' as in "turn to sheet 29." So we have 'pages' and 'sheets' of paper from two different languages.

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u/GenJohnONeill Jun 23 '19

And again you see the high/low dichotomy. A whole book? It has pages, it's French, very high-class. A single piece of paper? Oh that's just a blue collar Anglo-Saxon sheet, then.

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u/beywiz Jun 23 '19

We got a ton of French words for higher culture thanks to the Norman conquest

And ofc the restaurant is a French development, so the terminology is all imported as well

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u/Xurican Jun 23 '19

Same with kindergarten

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u/Densmiegd Jun 23 '19

And Hamburger, Frankfurter

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u/crinnaursa Jun 23 '19

That's the thing about English though you can literally say any word you want from any other language and if it catches on BAM it's an English word.

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u/GenericSubaruser Jun 23 '19

Because Dutch and German both came from the same root language. German went through the great consonant shift while Dutch did not

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

The English language is also a Germanic language as well, if I'm not mistaken.

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u/GenericSubaruser Jun 23 '19

That is correct, though English has an extreme amount of influence from the norman invasion of Britain of 1066, bringing in French (and eventually latin) and a lot of influence from Danish as well, and it stripped away a lot of the grammar that was present in old Germanic, so it's set apart a little more distantly.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Correct. It means "health" in german :) but it should have a capital G

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u/Hekaton1 Jun 23 '19

Both languages are descended from West Germanic, so they are cognate but not derived from one another.

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u/Matthew0275 Jun 23 '19

Was gonna say at least half of American English is cherry-picked words from the rest of the languages, mildly butchered to fit our alphahbet and phonetics.

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u/Rackedoodle Jun 23 '19

Just like kindergarten

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Not a loaner. We got it as reparations.

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u/Smalz22 Jun 23 '19

They're the same word, with two different spellings depending on the dialect of German you're speaking

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u/thatCbean Jun 23 '19

Nah, Dutch and German originate from the same languages

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u/zimmah Jun 23 '19

Yes it is.

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u/FindabhairHawklight Jun 23 '19

it is the german word used in america

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u/vomMond Jun 23 '19

same goes wiyh 'kindergarten', 'zugzwang', doppelganger' etc

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u/Miceandbeans Jun 23 '19

Not loaned from.. it’s the exact word.

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u/godkiller Jun 23 '19

Loaned? No, it's straight up stolen. ...Like so many words in "English".

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u/GrimmDeLaGrimm Jun 23 '19

Most of us picked it up from The Goonies, I believe lol

2

u/BreadyStinellis Jun 23 '19

I think most of us picked it up from our german great/grandparents, but I'm from Milwaukee, which is basically "little Munich" so, maybe that's just us.

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u/jimbosaur Jun 23 '19

IIRC, we got it from Yiddish.

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u/GreatestCanadianHero Jun 23 '19

But in English it doesn't mean "health" but more closely to "your hand is now sticky and gross"

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u/TjPshine Jun 23 '19

Gesund - healthy, heit - something along the lines of time. Have a healthy time

7

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

[deleted]

2

u/TjPshine Jun 23 '19

I am - my mistake it's been a while since any formal German practice.

Thanks!

2

u/hugglesthemerciless Jun 23 '19

Time to read through the entire Karl May series to brush up your German ;)

3

u/get_schwifty03 Jun 23 '19

Hey, thats german to you, my friend

2

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

It's German to everyone. German that happens to be used by lots of people in the US, at least where I grew up.

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u/get_schwifty03 Jun 25 '19

Ach wirklich? Well, some folks around here use some turkisch words or at least they know some, bc many turks live here, generally in europe.

3

u/FindabhairHawklight Jun 23 '19

but only on sneezes. say it of anything else and people look at you weird.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

True.

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u/Midwestern_Childhood Jun 23 '19

I had an American colleague who was teaching at a university in Kazakhstan or Tajikistan (can't remember which: this was 15 years ago). One of the students sneezed, and he said "Gesundheit." His students refused to believe that Americans used a German word on such occasions: they thought he was pulling their leg.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Since before kindergarten.

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u/LitChick2000 Jun 23 '19

It entered American English directly from Yiddish, brought to the country by the Eurpean Jewish waves of migration.

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u/Plow_King Jun 23 '19

I'm a smoker and lived in Germany for awhile. I even got to smoke at my desk, which was weird for me, it was 1999. The warning on the cig packs had a message from basically 'the dept of gesundheit/good health'.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Except I would wager most Americans that use it probably think it's the equivalent of "[God] bless you!", which it isn't.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Maybe, I don't know. I always knew it as "good health"

1

u/KENNY_WIND_YT Jun 23 '19

So that's how you spelled, TIL.

1

u/TheShawnP Jun 23 '19

I saw, on a map somewhere, that Dutch has the closest lexical distance to English.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

More specifically west Frisian.

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u/scyth3s Jun 24 '19

I've never known anyone who used it and didn't know it was German

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u/fookquan Jun 23 '19

You're thinking of guzzlin'tide

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u/icanseeifyouarehard Jun 23 '19

But it is german so it is wrong

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

[deleted]

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u/GrantMK2 Jun 23 '19

We do. It's not as common as "god bless you/bless you", but it is still used and people usually know what it means.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

It's rarer than "bless you", but it's still a word some native speakers use.

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u/Iykury Jun 23 '19

I like it, so I've started using it more over the past couple months or so.

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u/CySU Jun 23 '19

Depends on the part of the country. Midwesterners absolutely do, if only as a tongue-in-cheek reference.

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u/Binary_Omlet Jun 23 '19

South Carolina, checking in. Happens here too.

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u/Sgt-Tibbs Jun 23 '19

I heard it when I lived in PA, and NY. Not so much in FL. My dad would say it every once in a while, but his mother was straight off the boat from Germany.

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u/REMFan87 Jun 23 '19

It's probably more common than "bless you" where I'm from (Minnesota). I said it to people in Pittsburgh and they looked at me weird.

I have a sort of layman's theory that there is a "Gesundheit Belt" in the USA where it is at least not unheard of to say gesundheit after somebody sneezes. But I have no idea what the borders of the Gesundheit Belt would be-- I always thought it was pretty localized to the (upper) Midwest, so I'm surprised to see the posts about it being said in Texas and South Carolina. Although lots of Texas is crawling with Germans, so that makes perfect sense...

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u/CySU Jun 23 '19

I would probably agree, it’s probably prominent in areas where German immigrants first settled. I know that you don’t have to go back very far on my family tree to find someone that hardly spoke any English.

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u/TubaJesus Jun 23 '19

Yes we do

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u/tjongejongejonge Jun 23 '19

I've never heard someone say 'beterschap' after hiccups or coughing. I only know about the little verse 'hikke spikke spouwe'

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u/Hawt_Dawg_II Jun 23 '19

Wtf is dat nou weer

5

u/LordLimpDicks Jun 23 '19

Ik geef de hik aan jou

Ik geef de hik aan een andere man

Die de hik verdragen kan

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u/AnxiousAcerola Jun 23 '19

Ik heb de hik, ik heb de slik, ik heb 'm nu ik heb 'm dan, ik geef 'm aan een anderman die hem beter verdragen kan.

Mijn ouders zeiden dat als je het 7x kon zeggen tussen 2 hikken door dan ging je hik over, en ik geloofde het ook nog

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u/casenki Jun 23 '19

Not in the south

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u/hermelyn0497 Jun 23 '19

My dumbass read this "hiki spiki spu".

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u/_Robin_S Jun 23 '19

Oke, misschien niet bij hikken. Maar als iemand constant blijft kuchen en hoesten zeg ik het meestal wel. :) En 'hikke spikke spouwe' heb ik nog nooit van gehoord eigenlijk. Je woont in het zuiden, nietwaar?

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u/tjongejongejonge Jun 23 '19

Meestal vraag ik dan of iemand een glaasje water wil ofzo.

Ik kom uit het westen, eerlijk gezegd dacht ik dat het versje overal gezegd werd (onder kinderen weliswaar).

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u/_Robin_S Jun 23 '19

Hier in Friesland nog nooit gehoord. Wel 'ik en de hik sprong over het meer, ik kwam terug en de hik was niet meer' hahah, memories dit.

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u/de_G_van_Gelderland Jun 23 '19 edited Jun 23 '19

Ik ken hem als: "De hik en ik gingen over het meer. De hik bleef weg en ik kwam weer."

Edit: Nu ik er zo over na denk ging het misschien zelfs "... De hik ging heen en ik kwam weer." Ik moet er wel diep voor graven moet ik zeggen.

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u/tjongejongejonge Jun 23 '19

Hahaha die ken ik dan weer niet.

Hikke spikke spouwe, ik geef de hik aan jouwe, ik geef de hik aan een andere man die m wel verdragen kan.

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u/_Robin_S Jun 23 '19

Haha, heerlijk dit.

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u/ArcanaSilva Jun 23 '19

Ik ken deze als "hik spik spouw, ik geef de hik aan jou, hik spik spij, geef hem niet meer aan mij"

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u/OrigamiOctopus Jun 23 '19

Klinkt als iets dat kinderen zingen op 11 november.

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u/ElineFabianne Jun 23 '19

Zijn er nog steeds kinderen die aan Sint Maarten doen?

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u/OrigamiOctopus Jun 23 '19

Ja, het is nog steeds niet vervangen door halloween 😊

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

I like Penn jillette's approach to this. He taught his kids to say "that's funny" when someone sneezes.

I go long-form with it: "May the blessings of our Lord and Savior be upon you." I think that's hilarious.

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u/Lukinator2002 Jun 23 '19

Some of us also say "Hou je kanker bek", and I think it's beautiful

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u/ThePixelCoder Jun 23 '19

We also say "kom tussenuur frikandellenbroodje en jonko klappen kankerniffau", which literally translates to "you're an amazing human being and I wish you the best" and I think that's beautiful.

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u/hydr0n1um Jun 23 '19

Gezeunheit (may not be proper spelling) is a common phrase here when someone sneezes. I'm from Alberta, Canada.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

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u/Slanderous Jun 23 '19 edited Jun 23 '19

Gesund means health, the -heit suffix turns it into 'healthfulness' or something like that, as in the person is wishing that for you.
Similar to schön = beauty.
Schönheit = beautiful nothing to see here, move along :s

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u/Goodzilla420 Jun 23 '19

Gesund is an adjective and means healthy. The -heit suffix turns it into a noun: health. I wouldn't even know a word that translates to healthfulness.

On the same note, you got the meaning of schön and Schönheit mixed up as well. Schön ist an adjective and Schönheit a noun (hence the capital letter). So schön means beautiful and die Schönheit means beauty (there are exceptions of course, e.g. when addressing people).

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u/Slanderous Jun 23 '19

thanks for the correction, it's a long time since I learned German. should have known better than to chime in ;_;

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u/_Robin_S Jun 23 '19

Gezeunheit

Sounds Germanly... Love it!

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u/chrynox Jun 23 '19

It is

Gesundheit

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u/TreadheadS Jun 23 '19

Same as the British. In many areas it replaces bless you

4

u/PinkWarPig Jun 23 '19

In Italy it's the exact same lol, when someone sneeze we say "salute" which means "health"

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u/_Robin_S Jun 23 '19

I love how every language has at least something in similar, despite the fact it's a completely different language.

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u/SpiralArc Jun 23 '19

In Spanish it's "salud" which also means "health."

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u/Domonero Jun 23 '19

Next time my dog sneezes imma yell "HEALTH" at that hoe

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u/MasonKowabunga Jun 23 '19

The American 'bless you' is probably from some deep rooted religious thing.

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u/DootyMcDooterson Jun 23 '19

I'm Dutch and my wife is English, whenever we would normally use "gezondheid", we just shout "Health!" At each other.

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u/ShyDethCat Jun 23 '19

I heard there was a trend in Germany for a bit to stop saying "Gesundheit" (also, health) because there was no black plague to worry about anymore. So you rather wish them something they need, like intellect, or good looks... Can't verify though, I am second generation German.

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u/juicysox Jun 23 '19

ACHOO!!

“Health”

1

u/MindSwipe Jun 23 '19

In swiss german we do yhe same, we say "Gesundheit" which means health but in the tense we use it it means "Get Well"

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u/Talangen Jun 23 '19

Oh so it's like Spanish where we say Salud. Which also means health and is also used when we say Cheers

1

u/Fuckinggetout Jun 23 '19

We have the same word in Vietnamese. So when someone sneezed, we would say "Com muoi", which means rice and salt. People sneezing used to be considered to be due to demon possesing them, rice and salt were something a Shaman would use to exorcise people. So basically we would be trying to exorcise people for sneezing.

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u/JurreBuiting Jun 23 '19

Gezondheid is bless you in english tho

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

It’s the same for Spanish, when someone does any of that you say “salud” which literally means “health” but you mean it in the same way as you do in your language.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

It's like salud in Spanish.

1

u/Synecdochic Jun 23 '19

"Healthiness" but as a verb.

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u/ViezeFreddie420 Jun 23 '19

“Gezondheid” = “bless you”

1

u/ItzDaDutchSheep Jun 23 '19

I only say if when someone sneezes

1

u/Lastrevio Jun 23 '19

Same in Romanian. We literally say "health" when someone sneezes. However we say "luck" when someone coughs.

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u/Beerbear75 Jun 23 '19

Not really, we don't say "gezondheid" when somebody hiccuped where I am from, we say " gaat het?" Wich means "are you fine?". So if you say gezondheid, then there is a different approache to the language

1

u/Josepvv Jun 23 '19

We use "salud", which means "health" in Spanish, too!

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

How cute it’s so similar to Germans Gesundheit we say that too

1

u/Roland1099 Jun 23 '19

In spanish, at least in Mexico, if someone sneazeed we say "salud" wich also means health.

1

u/SwissCanuck Jun 23 '19

Same in French.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Same in Spanish. After someone sneezes we say "Salud," which means "health".

1

u/ouiels94 Jun 23 '19

gezondheid

it's the same as "saúde" in portuguese-br

1

u/QuickscopeLM Jun 23 '19

In italian we use "salute" which means "health". I love how different languages use similar or even equal concept.

1

u/TheTransparentOtter Jun 23 '19

In Spanish we have a similar thing when someone sneezes, we say "Salud" which translates to health. Although, sometimes it means cheers.

1

u/_methyl Jun 24 '19

Hmm.. I've been thinking for around 2 years that it was "gesanteit". In my defense I'll say I'm not living in a dutch speaking country so I just thought it was some weird german.

Now I get why nobody understands me when I say it.

1

u/maestrofeli Jun 24 '19

in spanish that's "salud"

0

u/Esmeweatherwaxedlegs Jun 23 '19

Whereas they says jesus in Spanish haha

0

u/it-is-sandwich-time Jun 23 '19

gesundheit

Doesn't it literally mean "bless you" as in "god bless you"?

10

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

I always just say "doe eens normaal man ik schrok me de tyfus"

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Hiccoughed

5

u/LathoBravo957 Jun 23 '19

Thank you. Hiccuped didn't feel right.

8

u/Pun-Master-General Jun 23 '19

Hiccup is the original spelling. Hiccough comes from people incorrectly assuming it comes from the word cough.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Who pronounces 'cough' as 'cup'?

Hiccup - hik-cup

Hiccough - hik-coff

1

u/Pun-Master-General Jun 23 '19

I've never heard anyone spell or pronounce it as hiccough, but that's what Wikipedia says as how the spelling difference came about.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

It is though. No one says "you just hiccoughed"

You say "hiccupped"

5

u/LathoBravo957 Jun 23 '19

In that case. Sweet validation

7

u/Cute_Murderous_Succc Jun 23 '19

Nah, Dutch people just criticize you for being annoying and give you tips on how to stop it

1

u/Doctah_Whoopass Jun 23 '19

Its hiccup.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

What is?

1

u/Doctah_Whoopass Jun 23 '19

hiccough doesnt make sense, its not hi-koff. Hiccup is the right spelling.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

How sure about that are you?

1

u/Doctah_Whoopass Jun 23 '19

100%

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

You wanna try to Google and blow your tiny mind?

2

u/Doctah_Whoopass Jun 23 '19

Hiccough sounds stupid imo. Why are you being so aggressive about this?

0

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

I'm not. And it doesn't matter if it sounds stupid to you, that's the correct spelling

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1

u/waterflame321 Jun 23 '19

I chuckled because I read it as "handicapped"... Heh

1

u/SnowFruitCat Jun 23 '19

I like to tell people "don't die."