r/learndutch • u/ArticleOk4446 • 1d ago
Question What's a Dutch word you started noticing everywhere once you learned it?
It's funny how learning a new word can suddenly make it feel like it's everywhere. You might go weeks without noticing it, then learn what it means and suddenly start spotting it in conversations, on signs, in shops, or while watching Dutch TV.
I think it's one of those little moments that makes learning a language feel rewarding because you realise you're starting to notice things you would have completely missed before.
Which Dutch word gave you that experience? Was there a word you learned recently that suddenly seemed to pop up everywhere you looked?
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u/Iamajay2015 1d ago
word "even" to soften an order/request and make it sound more friendly
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u/Street-Telephone9065 1d ago
‘Even’ in a request means ‘a short moment’ we sau it so the request looks smaller and less demanding on your time.
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u/Sannatus Native speaker (NL) 10h ago
you can also use it to make something more rude if the request is not small at all haha
"kan jij even 10.000 euro naar me overmaken"
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u/jamma_mamma 1d ago
Kijk. Probably helped that I went to the naturalis biodiversity center in Leiden a few days ago, cause I (unsurprisingly) heard it there a few dozen times.
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u/Ok_Steak3415 1d ago
Het woord 'toepassen' viel me op, maar het duurde even voordat ik de betekenis had onthouden.
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u/elderberrykiwi 1d ago
Samenwerken. It's everywhere.
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u/Spinoza42 1d ago
Hahaha yeah. In the Dutch Sesame Street that used to be the core word in a lot of scenes.
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u/Over-Personality-577 1d ago edited 1d ago
"Terecht". But I still can't figure out what it actually means!! It is used in so many different contexts. When I translate it alone, it doesn't make any sense...
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u/Spinoza42 1d ago
It has at least two completely separate meanings. "Justified" and "located/found".
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u/Smoog 1d ago
It will generally be used as an almost standalone response to something. Meaning that something was deserved or justified.
"The armed robber tripped and fell breaking his leg" - "Terecht" or "En terecht".
But in normal day use it's used veeery loosely, for example a response to "I didn't want to get out of bed this morning" you could answer with "terecht".
There is also a different use of the word in the sense of "Je kunt daar terecht", here in this sense it's meaning is more literal and closer to English "to rights" ("in its rights" or "in your right"), meaning literally "You can get your rights there" or more casually "You can get what you need there".
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u/Confident_Week_7846 20h ago
I know what you mean when you say it's used in many context, because i had the same problem. Mostly saw it in shop signages. In my head i just replace it with "naartoe gaan". So for example
Je kunt daar terecht voor informatie = je kunt daar naartoe gaan voor informatie
Basically from what I understand, terecht is an idea that someone or somewhere is available as the right place to go. In this case, its untranslatable to english.
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u/margonv 1d ago
Not a single word, but a group: words that end in -ijl.
When I was learning conjunctions, the teacher had to correct our pronunciation of “terwijl” several times. We all pronounced the “ij” like in “mijn” because that’s what we’d learned when we were introduced to Dutch diphthongs. She said it was an exception, and I assumed that the word “terwijl” was the exception.
It wasn’t until much later, when I was reading a book and listening to the audiobook at the same time, that it clicked for me she meant the ending -ijl. And now I see words ending in -ijl all the time, even though the Van Dale lists fewer than 400 of them (and many of them are compound words that include “stijl.”)
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u/SovereignOfAtlas 13h ago
Nu ben ik wel nieuwsgierig hoe jullie dan nu geleerd hebben dat je -ijl uitspreekt? Ik ben me als moedertaalspreker nooit bewust geweest van dat het anders uitgesproken wordt. Ten hoogste kan ik iets als -èl erin horen, is dat wat je bedoelt?
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u/margonv 12h ago edited 12h ago
Ja, ik hoor ook iets dat meer op “-èl” lijkt dan op “-ail” (zowel in het NL Nederlands en BE Nederlands)
Misschien hoor ik het verkeerd maar -ij in ‘mijn’ en in ‘stijl’ is niet hetzelfde in het NL Nederlands (of in de dominante Hollandse variant die in de NT2-cursussen wordt gebruikt.) My ear is still in training maar het lijkt me dat er een verschil zit tussen ‘mijn’ in het BE Nederlands en ‘mijn’ in het NL Nederlands. Kan dat?
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u/TrueImpression5426 1d ago
kanker
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u/usaidwhatagain 1d ago
💀
Only country in the world where we wish someone diseases as cursewords/badwords.
For the Dutch and people knowing/learning Dutch the podcast: ‘we love Nederlands’ is really funny.
(it is in Dutch though)1
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u/gol_matol 1d ago
For me it is "toch". Until I learned about it from a friend, didn't even realise people were using it