One great way of boosting your Dutch is to simply walk around and see which words you already recognize.
Certainly publicity works really great. Just have a look at the picture on the right. Probably you already guessed that ijsjes means icecreams, right?
Just for your information: het ijsje is one icecream. But.. het ijs in Dutch means both ice and icecream. Therefore in Dutch, cola met ijs could both mean cola with icecubes and cola with icecream. You may already have discovered that many Dutch words can have more than one meaning….
This is why looking at signs, names of shops and publicity can be really interesting… you’ll often see the usage of puns. You can also see it in this picture. Gelukkig van ijs means two things… Luckily, this icecream is made of fruit and… if you use your imagination, you could also read that icecream makes you happy.
You see? Even a simple sign for icecream can have more depth than you imagined in first instance. That is the fun of it… if you love speaking Dutch, there is a lot to discover!
Here is another word that you can learn… ik eis ijs. You must have heard of a very bad pun in English I scream for icecream…. This pun is more or less the same… You pronounce eis exactly in the same word as ijs. Only now it means: I demand icecream.
Therefore make sure that you know the difference between these two sentences: Ik heb ijs & Ik heb een eis. The first sentence means that you have ice or icecream and the second one means that you have a demand or a claim… Now you can say: ik eis 1 miljoen euro en een ijsje… You never know… this kind of sentence could come in useful one day…
By the way, if you look at the black board in the picture above, you see another funny word: ijspret
The word pret in Dutch is extremely important, because it means great joy or pleasure and then you can combine it with many other words… If you say ijspret then it means that you are having great fun while eating icecreams and… also in winter it makes sense. If you skate while having a great time, you could also call it ijspret. Therefore a last question for you… which kind of ijspret do you love most?
