Dutch is easy, een eitje (a little egg)

Dutch is easy, een eitje (a little egg)

Sure… many people love to believe that Dutch is hard. Quite often it seems that everything in Dutch is difficult and that it has nothing to do with English. No wonder that many people complain if they see the Dutch word eieren (eggs) for the first time. Doesn’t it look like an alien word that must be difficult to pronounce?

But…. contrary to what you may believe, eieren is much closer to English than you think…. In the 14th century eyren was a normal word. But then, all of a sudden an old Norse word came up from the North of England: eggs. Probably this was how the Vikings used to call them, but somehow the new word egg got very popular and then after the 14th century the word eyren died out, everyone started to say eggs instead of eyren and they lived happily ever after 🙂 

So here is the moral of the story: once you start to see Dutch as an outlandish form of ancient English, all of a sudden you will notice that many things make sense, even to an English mind. The only thing is that now and then you have to go back, sometimes a couple of centuries.

Dutch and English belong to the same family!

The fact is that Dutch and English are like brother and sister, they belong to the same family. Once you understand this, you will see that both languages have a lot in common with each other and then learning Dutch will become a lot easier. And who knows? One day you may call learning and speaking Dutch een eitje (a little egg) and this means that it is really easy!

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Sue
By

Sue

on 21 Apr 2015

I do see the similarities between Dutch and English. I think learning Dutch will be fascinating. Thanks for your website. I live in the U.S. but have friends with whom I speak on Skype that speak Dutch.

Albert Both
By

Albert Both

on 21 Apr 2015

That is great to read! And who knows.... one day you might come to Holland :)

Eve
By

Eve

on 23 Mar 2017

Hey Sampson, Hey Delilah, Jet here. Hi Miss Jodi.1. Yippee you’re going to do this…2. Thank you for doing this.3. We would buy one for sure, maybe a few more.4. We understand the need to vote, however, Mom won’t let me use social media yet, so, we will have less exposure. We don’t have a better idea at the mo3e0t&#82mn;we will ponder…5. To help more rescues, wonder if you would consider 1 K9, 1 feline photo/month?

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