Languagle #67: Dutch
De laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst
"The last little weights are the heaviest."
What it means
The last part of a job is the hardest to get through. Literally 'the last little lead weights weigh the most'. Said to encourage someone who is nearly finished but flagging, such as a student in the final week of exams.
How to say it
duh LAAT-stuh LOHT-yus VAY-khuh ut ZVAARST
Dutch g is a throaty sound, like the ch in Scottish loch, and w sits between an English v and w. The n at the end of wegen is usually dropped.
Word by word
- De laatste duh LAAT-stuh: the last
- loodjes LOHT-yus: little lead weights (lood, lead)
- wegen VAY-khuh: weigh
- het zwaarst ut ZVAARST: the heaviest
The -je ending makes things small, like Luxembourgish -che.
Where it was written down
A traditional proverb, in Dutch a spreekwoord, passed down by word of mouth.
How to recognise Dutch
Dutch is full of double vowels (aa, ee, oo, uu), the pair ij (which can look like a y), and sch at the start of words. Small words like de, het, een and van, and endings like -tje and -je, are everywhere. Afrikaans looks similar but uses die for 'the' and puts nie at the end of a sentence. West Frisian uses û, â and ô. German has ß, ü and capitalises every noun.
About the Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken as a first language by around 25 million people, in the Netherlands, in Flanders in northern Belgium, and in Suriname. Afrikaans, spoken in South Africa and Namibia, grew out of the Dutch of 17th-century settlers. English has borrowed many Dutch words, especially from the sea, such as yacht, skipper and deck. It uses the Latin alphabet, and treats ij almost as a single letter.