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Trust me, Russian can be equally hilarious for us Dutch. Its just that Dutch is a less widely spoken language.

Blyat for example almost reads like blaat which to us is the sound a sheep makes. It also refers to blaten, talking nonsense.

The English word cunt sounds like the Dutch kunt which means can (je kunt means you can). Kunt gets censored in a popular game, even if the rest of sentence is Dutch.

Then we have German where an English listener might think bisschen means bitch, and generally an English speaker might think a German is angry while its just the sound of the language (in contrast to, say, French).

Recently, some Dutch song (I think it was Belgian?) went viral in Ukraine as well.

Anyway, as a native Dutch speaker with autism, gezellig is equal to Orwellian double speak like Russian pravda (theres other examples, too). If its gezellig for others, it might very well not be for me. Or its tokkie level (tokkie = white trash). In other words, not a word I value when others use it.

EDIT: I believe you might find this song by a comedian weird for different reasons than intended: https://youtu.be/ATdRtTtzZ3c (he is singing good morning, good afternoon, its like this: I am a customer).



> Kunt gets censored in a popular game

Ahhhh a distant cousin to the "Scunthorpe problem" - English and Dutch are not so dissimilar after all!

Related problem I saw recently, guy called Nasser had the "ass" in his name in some game's chat replaced with the string "***" taking a very common name and making it look like he named himself perhaps the worst word in the English language. Very unfortunate.


Had this problem in a Star Trek game.

Pakled is a specific race of aliens in the game and universe (TNG Samaritan Snare), but would get caught in the filter (Assuming due to Pakistanis?)


I remember them from my recent (~2 yrs ago, wow) re-watch of TNG! Their strategy was to look helpless to trick bypassers into helping them out, since they were not clever enough to do engineering work etc themselves.


Im a native English speaker and spent 2.5 weeks in NL, by the end i was getting nauseous from all the "oo's", "ieu's", and words that my head could almost understand but not quite.


I'm from the US. I was in Amsterdam on a business trip, and I felt the same thing, but a lot faster than in 2.5 weeks. Fortunately, I found a Uruguayan steak house. I went there for dinners. The waiters were speaking Spanish, and I thought, "Yes! This feels like home!"


Spanish in Amsterdam? That sounds refreshing. Whenever I eat at a restaurant in Amsterdam, I get served in English about 80% of the time.


This started in Amsterdam in the 1990s but now also happens in regional cities. Restaurants in Breda of all places has English speaking staff. At least there is still a head waiter who speaks Dutch. I personally don't mind much. Whenever someone on Reddit says the Netherlands is xenophobic it makes me laugh.


It’s interesting, thanks. I played in Gran Turismo with Dutch folks and they taught me to swear a bit.


Equally funny to me, The French add an 'e' to Putin when referring to him, probably because Putain sounds like Putin, which is basically the french F-word, especially in its ability to be swapped out for effect like the F-word. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/putain


Rather than risk confusion with putain (whore), the French opted to spell Putin's name phonetically in French -- and settled on "Poutine".

And the Canadians giggled.


Ha! What do they do in Quebec?



No, I know that, I meant how do they refer to Putin?


Apparently he's called Poutine in Quebec as well which leads to a literal "freedom fries" situation as Quebecois restaurants that serve the dish avoid mentioning it by name to avoid controversy: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-diner-drops-poutine-from-...


Ah, I'm sorry - I misunderstood your question :)


Dutch can also sound exquisitely hilarious to an English speaker, hoor.


Or a German speaker–or any other language speaker I guess...


Ja, hoor!~




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