Karl,
This misunderstanding with the Low Saxon speaking man didn't disturb me one moment. I was sorry that I couldn't understand the man, because I was curious about what he wanted to make clear to me or what he wanted to say/ It didn't spoil my day, but fact was that I was impolite and maybe irritated that I couldn't understand the man, while on many occasions I understood other low Saxon speaking Gelderland people (Betuwe- , Veluwe- , Liemers-, and Achterhoek Low Saxon, and the Low saxon dialects near Arnhem like the town dialects of Zutphen - a Achterhoek city-, Huissen, Zevenaar, Duiven speaking people and etc.). I know quite a few Achterhooks speaking people in Arnhem, they speak a variety of Low Saxon. And I know people over here who came from Groningen, Drenthe, Friesland (Duthc Frisia), and other parts of the Netherlands.
Fact is that there are not only heavy Low Saxon dialects in the Netherlands, some of the North-Holland, South-Holland, Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg dialects can be very heavy and difficult to understand, because they are very regional and local. Linguistically, culturally, historically, local people wise, bound to a specific region I do know little about, probably never have been and don't have a connection to. For instance I came from the Zeeland Peninsula Walcheren in which the farmer, fishermen and city (Vlissingen, Middelburg and Veere) dialects are understandable for me. But if you go outside that Peninsula, that Rhombus shaped island, you come into a different dialect world of the Beveland dialects of the Walcheren-Zuid-Beveland-Noord-Beveland peninsula. Zeelandic Flanders on the other side of the Westerschelde river is a completely different dialect and linguistic world than the Calvinist (*Gereformeerde and **Nederlands Hervormde -today ***Protestant church of the Netherlands-) Walcheren. Zeelandic Flanders is largely Roman-Catholic and it's dialect although different than Flemish is heavily inlfuenced by Flemish. Dutch people often mistake Zeelandic Flanders people for Flemish Belgians, while Flemish Belgians see them as Dutch, because they hear the different Zeelandic Flanders (Dutch) dialect of the Zeelandic Flanders people. The funny thing is that Zeelandic Flanders people can't pronounce the hard G or even the soft G. For instance the nice, beautiful South Beveland city of Goes, they pronounce as Hoes. The Dialectic differences are often subtle, but substantial for people who live in villages, rural towns or large cities with city dialects and differences within that city dialect, because in different area's, neighborhoods and suburbs of that city they can speak differently. The same dialect in a different version. In Dutch large cities you often have a North-South divide when a river crosses the city, and also a West-East divide, and the center is often different than the Southern, Northern, Western and Eastern parts of a large Dutch city.
*
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Churches_in_the_Netherlands**
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Reformed_Church***
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Church_in_the_NetherlandsLike villages in all major Dutch 12 provinces in the large Arnhem city neighborhoods Klarendal, Geitenkmamp, Het Broek and Malburgen they speak slightly different versions of the Arnhem dialect, and although workers, the workers often were connected to their hood, while being in competition with other neighborhoods. Ofcourse you will have the same thing in my other cities around the world. But fact is that regionalism, localism, neighbourhood, town, city and village identity was strong in the Netherlands. Today Standard Dutch is becoming more dominant, and the influence of dialects and regional languages is decreasing.
In the Netherlands most Frisians speak excellent Dutch next to Frisian, due to Dutch primary school education, highschool education, because Frisians study outside Friesland in Groningen, Nijmegen (Gelderland), Utrecht city (Province of Utrecht), Amsterdam, Leiden, Rotterdam and etc. The same for Low Saxon, Limburg, Brabant and Zeeland dialect speaking people. They learned Standard Dutch in their schools in Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel (Twente), Gelderland (Betuwe- , Veluwe- , Liemers-, and Achterhoek Low Saxon), Limburg, Brabant and Zeeland.
Due to the influence of Standard Dutch you also got things as different, light versions of these dialects. Standard Dutch with a Zeelandish, Brabant, Limburg, Low Saxon, Frisian, Utrecht and North-Holland and South-Holland versions. Often parents who want to give their children greater chances in life encouraged their children to speak, read and write in Standard Dutch. Today the Netherlands is such a dialectic mix, that you have for instance national meetings of journalists in Utrecht or Hilversum in which you hear all the accents and dialects I mentioned above here. The same with national meetings of for instance the Christian Democrats, the Labour party, the D66 social liberals, the conservative liberal VVD party, Geert Wilders PVV party, the Greenleft party, the ChristianUnion party, and the other parties.
Migration and thus migrants also brought new versions and dialects of Dutch. You have some Moroccan Berber Dutch accent which amazingly often is mixed with for instance Amsterdam city dialect, The Hague city dialect, Rotterdam city dialect, Utrecht city dialect and the dialects of the Brabant and Limburg cities. It is because these Moroccan youth switch between Dutch and Moroccan berber all the time. The Family speaks Moroccan berber or Arabic at home, and the Moroccan youth speak Dutch with Dutch friends, colleagues, acquaintances, their employers, fellow pupils, fellow students, fellow soccer players at the soccer club, in Dutch supermarkets, in shops and in Dutch horeca. The same counts ofcourse for Dutch Turks, Dutch Kurds, Dutch Afghans, Dutch Iranians and etc.
Also in the Dutch language Berber, Arab, Turkish, Iranian farsi, Kurd, Afghan, Bosnian (Southern slav) and Indonesian (Malayan, Javan, Sumatran, Aceh, Bali and Moluccan -Ambonese-) and Chinese words have entered our language next to older latin, French, German, English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese influences.
Words we have adopted
Sisha (water pipe)
lounge, shisha, hookah or Nargile are 3 different words for water pipe.
Shoarma (
Shawarma or
shaurma),
doner kebab,
Falafel, North-African (Maghreb) Moroccan, Algerian or Tunesian
Couscous,
Nasi Goreng,
Bami Goreng and
Nasi Rames,
Tjap Tjoy,
Babi Pangang,
Loempia,
Saté,
Gado-gado (
Lotek), and
Indo-European rice table.
Traditional
Bosnian food shares similarities with Turkish and Mediterranean cuisine, a legacy of 400 years of Ottoman rule. Typical dishes include organic meat, usually lamb or beef to meet Halal requirements, slow-cooked in their juices with a seasoning of spices. Meals tend to be light with a generous portion of vegetables.
The Dutch words for sugar(suiker), coffee (koffie), Alcohol, Lemon (citroen), Orange (Sinaasappel) and Syrup (Siroop) have Arab roots.
Checkmate (schaakmat): First from the Persian Shah, king; and secondly from the arab mât, mate) ‘he has passed away, he is dead’.
Caravan sis the Arabic karawan: movable home.
Admiral (Admiraal): Is a short term for the Arabic amīr-al-baḥr.
Petrol (
Benzine fuel in Dutch): Benzoë acid was harvested as resin of the benzoë tree, which grows in Sumatra and Java. This smelly resin in Arabic was called lubān jāwī (Javanian Incense), a woordcombination which landed in the 15 th century Catalan language. In the Catalan language they saw lu- as the indigenous article lo, and thy removed it. This created the word benjui, which became latinised as benzoë. And there the Dutch word for petrol, the car engine fuel, Benzine comes from.
Ogange (oranje) comes from the Persian Farsi narang, which means Orange (fruit) (Sinaasappel in Dutch). The word orange entered via Arabic into the Spanish language, and via our Spanish occupiers into the Dutch language.
The word
Piekeren (to fret, to worry, to rack one's brains) entered the Nederlandsfrom our colony Nederlands-Indië (The Dutch East Indies). Piekeren is a loanword of the Malaysian and Javanese pikir (yo mull over, consultation, thought), which in itself is a indigenous speak version on the Arabic word fikr (to think).
Racket: a hit instrument at ball sports like tennis and badminton. Comes from the Arabic rāḥat, a hidden form of rāḥa: the hand palm.
Alcohol distillation product. Via Spanish alcohol from the Arabic al-kuḥl: ‘very fine powder of the antimoon to smear the wimpers with’. In Spain they pronounced it as al-kuhúl. Since the 16 the century the the name was used to decribe the distillation of fuels and alcoholic distillates.
Mafia: Possibly Arabic, but not 100% sure.
Safari: wildernis journey. Goes back to the Arabic safarī (belonging to a journey).
Algebra mathematic: anatomy. Originally it meant medical anatomy: from the Arabic al-jabr: ‘the fixing of broken bones’ and derived from that ‘to bring under one denominator of numerator’.
Cijfer (figure/number) borrowed from the Arabic sifr (‘nul’, ‘empty’, ‘insignificant’). From 1500 other words for nul entered the Netherlands (like zero, also from Arabic by the way)
Arsenaal (Arsenal) weapen house. Via the Arabic dār aṣ-ṣinā’a (house in which nothing is made) it entered the Italian language as arsenale.
Mummie (Mummy) from the Arabic mūmiyā: embalmed corpse.
Gaas (netting) Came via the Spanish word gasa which was borrowed from the Arabic qazz which means: ‘vlokzij’ of ‘row silk’. There is possible a link with Gaza in Palestina. There is no proof of industrial textielproduction in Gaza, but Gaza was maybe the most important harbour for trade in this fabric. This theory is supported by the fact that in 1279 in a medieval Latin message of Crussaders there is written about a fabric which is called gazzatum in that time. But the word qazz borrowed by Spanje seems more logiscal because this link shows no void and because the word could very well stem from a in Arabic-Spain sproken dialect, from which the /q/-sound could become a g in a Romance (Romanesque) language.”
Vizier: dignitary. Via the Arabic wazīr it entered the Turkish language as vezir = (first) minister.
Elixer: medicinal beverage. In Arabic al iksīr, ‘stone of the wise’, an term of alchemists and those pointed at the substance whereby people could transfer base metals into gould. In the same time the Elixer was middel (drug) with whom one could cure all alle illnesses and strenghen the body and even to make it younger. Ofcrouse that proved to be fake and exlixer was a Liquor with whom one could mix many alcoholic beverages.
Giraf: Comes from the Arabic: zuraf. Possably a loanword from an African language borrowed by the Arabs.
Fanfare: From the Arabic farfār ‘blabber/ blabbing, light-headed/frivolous’ or farfar ‘to move back and forth’.
Oase: Fruitfull place in the desert. From the Arabic wāḥa.
Gitaar (guitar): Arabisch: qītāra (via Greek).
Tarief (Tariff): Borrowed from the Arabic: taʿrīf, taʿrīfa which means ‘announcement, declaration/the statement/notification, list of costs which must be paid’.
Andijvie (endive lettuce/escarole): Borrowed from the Egyptian-Arabic hindibā.
Varaan (monitor lizard): Borrowed from the Arabic waran.
Katoen (Cotton): Borrowed from the Arabic quṭn.
Amber: Borrowed from the Arabic anbar.
Sorbet (water ice): Borrowed from the Arabic šurba(t), šarba(t) what means ‘drink’. Olso the Durch word stroop (sirup/syrup, molasses) is borrowed from this word.
Gazelle: Borrowed loanword from the (Nord-African Maghreb)-Arabic ḡazēl.
Azuur (Azuur): blue color sort. Via the Arabic lāzuward or lāzaward borrowed from the Persian farsi Lāžward, the name of a city in Turkestan where the lazurestone is found and produced.
Spinazie (spinach): This word developped itself from the classic Arabic isfināḥ / asfanāḥ, which is borrowed from the Persian farsi aspanāḥ / isfināḡ.
Kabel (Cable): Likely originating from the Arabic ḥabl.
Averij: (sea)damage. Arabic: awārīya, a very young derivative from awār (damaging).
Magazijn (storeroom/storage) in the 13th century the magazenum stood in Latin for ‘warehouse in an Algerian coastal town’. It was borrowed from the Arabic maḵāzin, the plural of maḵzan ‘warehouse’.
Luit (lute): From the Arabic al-ud which means ‘the wood’. The Engelse word wood (forest) is is derived from that. Via that road the luit became what it was, and it was the forerunner of the guitar.
Koepel (dome): Possibly from the Arabic: al-qubba = the dome, the arch over or roof in.
Cheque (the bill): written payment order or transfer order. Possibly via the Arabic ṣakk ‘contract’ or via the Turkish chek borrowed from the Persian Farsi čāk: ‘written pronouncement/statement/verdict, contract’.
Almanak (Year book, calender book): Goes back to the 13th century, from al-manāḵ, which means ‘the calendar, astrological table’.
Karaf (carafe/decanter): This notion goes back to the West-Arabic ḡarrāfa, in the Arabisc verb ḡarafa ‘sludging, to pour out’.
Razzia (raid/the swoop/the round-up): the man-hunt, from ghazw, ghazwa: military expedition, raid.
Soebatten (to plead ; to beg): To converse someone continuously in a complimentary way. From the Malayan sobat ‘friend’ it entered the Dutch language. The Malayan word was derived from the Arabic word ṣuḥba(t), ea plural form of ṣaḥib ‘
friend’ or a derived form which means ‘
friendship’. The meaning came to existance because someone begged by another person, the one who again and again spoke to that person with sobat.
Mokka( mocha): coffee aroma, names after the harbourcity Al-Muḵā in Jemen, vfrom which excellent Arabic coffee was shipped to other destinations in the world. In more languages a special brand of coffee is named after this harbourcity: French moka, English mocha, German Mokka.
Douane (Customs): From the Arabic dīwān which means ‘register, state council, toll service’.
Masker (Mask): The Arabic masḵara means ‘a clown/zany, buffoon, object of mockery’ and belongs to the verb saḵira which means ‘ laughing, to violate ; to desecrate, to ridicule, to jeer at’.
Kappertje (Caper): berry of the Caper bush, Arabic: qabbār.
Sjorren (pull, tug, fasten): This verb is derived from ǰarra through Spanish and Portuguese (dragging, for example, a ship).
Matras (mattress): underbed, taken from the Arabic al maṭraḥ 'the seat cushion', or literally: 'the thing thrown down'.
Kaffer (kaffir): the bastard ; the scoundrel ; the louse ; the blighter ; the rotter ; the pain in neck from كافر
The word kāfir is the active participle of the Semitic root K-F-R "
to cover". As a pre-Islamic term, it described farmers burying seeds in the ground, covering them with soil while planting. Thus, the word kāfir implies the meaning "a person who hides or covers". In Islamic parlance, a kāfir is a person who rejects Islamic faith, i.e. "
hides or covers [viz., the truth]".
Kaffir (alternatively kaffer; originally cafri) is an ethnic slur used to refer to a black person. In the form of cafri, it evolved during the pre-colonial period as an equivalent of "
negro". In Southern Africa, the term was later used as an exonym for Bantu peoples. The designation came to be considered a pejorative by the 20th century.
"
Kaffir" is derived from the Arabic word (Arabic: كافر
kāfir) that is usually translated into English as "
disbeliever" or "
non-believer", i.e. a non-Muslim or "
one without religion".
The word was originally applied to non-Muslims in general, and therefore to non Muslim black peoples encountered along the Swahili coast by Arab traders. The
Portuguese who arrived on
the East African coast in
1498, encountered the usage of the term by
the coastal Arabs, but not
the Swahili who used the term
Washenzi (meaning "
uncivilized") to describe
the non-Islamic people of the African interior. The poet
Camões used the plural form of the term (cafres) in the fifth canto of his
1572 poem
Os Lusíadas. This interpretation was probably passed on to other Europeans in succession, the Spanish, English, Dutch and French. From the Portuguese the term was passed onto their Asian possessions and exists in several Asian languages including Konkani in India as "Khapri" and in Sinhalese as "
Kaapiri". The terms are descriptive of the pagan natives of Cafreria, but are not considered offensive in either
Western India or in
Sri Lanka.
Luís Vaz de Camões (Portuguese pronunciation: [luˈiʒ ˈvaʒ dɨ kaˈmõjʃ]; sometimes rendered in English as Camoens or Camoëns, e.g. by Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, /ˈkæm oʊˌənz/; c. 1524 or 1525 – 10 June 1580) is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads). His collection of poetry The Parnasum of Luís de Camões was lost in his lifetime. The influence of his masterpiece Os Lusíadas is so profound that Portuguese is sometimes called the "language of Camões". Arab traders adopted the term to refer to non-Muslim people. Variations of the word were used in English, Dutch, and, later, in Afrikaans, from the 17th century to the early 20th century as a general term for several different people of Southern Africa. In Portuguese, in French and in Spanish, the equivalent cafre was used. The term acquired a distinctly derogatory meaning in the context of South African history, especially during the Apartheid era. In Afrikaans, the term is more commonly spelled kaffer.
The word "
Kaffir" is
the Arabic word for an unbeliever, i.e. non-Muslim, and was used by Arab slavers to refer to the indigenous black people of East, Central and West Africa, whence they acquired their slaves. It thence became a common word used by early European settlers to refer to the same people. Through time "
Kaffir" tended, in mid-20th century
Southern Africa (
South-Africa,
Namibia,
Rhodesia -today Zimbabwe-), to be used as
a derogatory term for black people, and in
South Africa today, the term is regarded as
highly racially offensive, in the same way as
black person in
the United States and other
English-speaking countries. Use of the word has been actionable in
South African courts since at least
1976 under
the offense of crimen injuria: "
the unlawful, intentional and serious violation of the dignity of another".
In
South Africa, the word
Kaffir was loosely used to refer to
native South Africans. It was adopted as a derogatory term after
1948 when
the Apartheid system was established. Under crimen injuria, the epithet
kaffir has been actionable in the justice system of
South Africa since
1976. In
2000,
the South African parliament also enacted
the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, which has among its primary objectives the prevention of hate speech terms such as
kaffir. When describing the term, the euphemism
the K-word is now often used instead of
kaffir.
Kaffir has also been used to refer to an ethnic group in
Sri Lanka, the
Sri Lanka Kaffirs, who are partially descended from
16th-century Portuguese traders and
the slaves that they brought from
their colonies in Africa to work as
labourers and
soldiers. Unlike in
South Africa,
the Sri Lankan Kaffirs do not consider the term offensive.
Kat(
Cat) from
خاتThe wikipedia encyclopedia has a different meaning and according to them the origin of the English word cat (Old English catt) and its counterparts in other Germanic languages (such as German Katze), descended from Proto-Germanic *kattōn-, is controversial. It has traditionally thought to be a borrowing from Late Latin cattus, 'domestic cat', from catta (used around 75 AD by Martial), compare also Byzantine Greek κάττα, Portuguese and Spanish gato, French chat, Maltese qattus, Lithuanian katė, and Old Church Slavonic kotъ (kot'), among others. The Late Latin word is generally thought to originate from an Afro-Asiatic language, but every proposed source word has presented problems. Many references refer to "Berber" (Kabyle) kaddîska, 'wildcat', and Nubian kadīs as possible sources or cognates, but M. Lionel Bender suggesets the Nubian term is a loan from Arabic قِطَّة qiṭṭa. Jean-Paul Savignac suggests the Latin word is from an Ancient Egyptian precursor of Coptic ϣⲁⲩ šau, 'tomcat', or its feminine form suffixed with -t, but John Huehnergard says "the source [...] was clearly not Egyptian itself, where no analogous form is attested." Huehnergard opines it is "equally likely that the forms might derive from an ancient Germanic word, imported into Latin and thence to Greek and to Syriac and Arabic". Guus Kroonen also considers the word to be native to Germanic (due to morphological alternations) and Northern Europe, and suggests that it might ultimately be borrowed from Uralic, cf. Northern Sami gáđfi, 'female stoat', and Hungarian hölgy, 'stoat'; from Proto-Uralic *käďwä, 'female (of a furred animal)'. In any case, cat is a classic example of a Wanderwort.
Sheik from شيخ (Encyclopedia Britannica
www.britannica.com/topic/sheikh Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh )
There are some 400,000 Moroccan Dutch people and the majority of them speak Berber. Maarten Kossmann, the only professor of Berber Studies in the Netherlands analysed the conversations on Moroccan-Dutch internet forums and the mixing of Moroccan words in Dutch. Surprisingly enough, young people with a Moroccan-Arab background also mix Berber words with Dutch and Berber speakers do the same with Arabic words. This means that all three languages are sometimes used in the same sentence: Dutch for the main message, Arab at the start and Berber at the end. 'These kinds of mixtures of Arabic and Berber would be unthinkable in Morocco and they constitute a unique creation by Dutch Moroccans.'
List of Dutch words of Turkish originMinaret from minare
Odalisk (odalisque) from odalık
Tulband (turban) from tülbent
Tulp (tulip) from tülbent
Vizier ( viewfinder/backsight) from vezir
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_Netherlandswww.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2017/11/the-unstoppable-advance-of-berberhistoriek.net/top-50-arabische-woorden-in-het-nederlands/63173/Cheers,
Pieter