Dutch, Danish, same difference February 16, 2007
Posted by globalizer in Danish, Denmark, Language.trackback
Later update, October 11, 2009:
I just found one new, potential factor contributing to the confusion. I see that somebody found this blog post by searching for “are windmills dutch or danish”. And since the Dutch are famous for their historical windmills, while a Danish company is now the world’s number one maker of wind turbines, and Denmark today generates about 20% of its electricity with wind turbines, I can see how that could be a cause for some confusion. Given that a lot of people are confused to begin with.
Update, October 19, 2007:
As a public service announcement to the many people who seem to find this post after doing searches like “Is Dutch and Danish the same language” and “difference between Dutch and Danish”:
No, those are two completely separate and different languages.
Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands (or Holland), while Danish is spoken in Denmark. They are both Germanic languages, and they are both spoken in small, flat countries located in the Northwestern part of Europe – but they are still different. And while speakers of the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) are usually able to understand each other (with good will exhibited by both speaker and listener), Danish and Dutch are not closely enough related for that to be the case for those two languages. Single words may resemble each other, etc., but that’s about it.
Original post:
Just yesterday I was reminded once again how difficult people from the US find it to distinguish between Dutch and Danish. As I joined a conference call, a Danish colleague and I were initially the only ones on, so we conversed happily in Danish until a US colleague joined, at which point I said something like “sorry for babbling in Danish”. To which he responded, as expected: “Oh, that’s the language spoken in the Netherlands, right?”
I can’t count the number of times something like this has happened to me – or the other way around, of course, having people think Dutch is spoken in Denmark. A few years ago when I was on an extended translation verification test along with testers from about 15 other countries, our daily meetings with the development team became the source of a running bet between the Dutch tester and me about how many times his and my defects would be confused.
I have never quite understood the reason for this almost total inability to distinguish between the two language names; after all, the two words are not that similar, and the country names are totally different.
But there definitely seems to be some kind of blind spot with respect to the “D-word” in this context.
Thanks for clearing that up, but since you’re now in the business of clearing up misunderstandings, you really shouldn’t refer to The Netherlands as Holland. Holland is a province of The Netherlands (more precisely, there are two provinces, “Noord-Holland” and “Zuid-Holland”). Referring to the country as a whole as Holland is wrong.
A similar contribution is at http://thomer.com/danish_dutch/
Yes, true – although I have met many Dutch people who themselves use “Holland” when they speak English. It is an established term in many languages, and in Danish, for instance, the name of the country is actually Holland.
The fact that Danish (or even Dutch) people get it wrong does not make it an “established fact”. The fact that Americans get “Dutch” and “Danish” wrong don’t turn that into an established fact, either.
It’s too bad that, while clearing up one confusion, you reaffirm another!
I was simply referring to established usage – like the one described on Wikipedia here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland):
“Holland” is also informally used in English and other languages, including sometimes the Dutch language itself, to mean the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands.
If you want to equate confusing Danish and Dutch with the established practice of using Holland to refer to the specific country, go ahead, you’re welcome to do so.
Can I ask what job you have, allowing you to be “on an extended translation verification test?” What exactly is that? Just interested in studying language maybe. Thanks!
At the time, back in the 1990s, I worked in IBMs Translation Center in Denmark. This is the center that translates IBM’s software products into Danish, and then performs translation verification of those translated versions (translation verification test = TVT). The TVT verifies that the translated strings are correct, in context.
At that time, almost all such tests took place at the various development labs in the United States, and because the localization techniques were not nearly as developed as they are today, they were also often very long. Today most of of IBMs translation verification takes place remotely, with the server software installed in a central location, and each tester connecting to that server from their home countries.
If you are interested in doing that kind of job, you should be knowledgeable about IT, have a degree in the source language you are interested in translating from (almost always English in the software industry), and be a native speaker of the target language.
I never heard anybody say “Danish courage” or “Dutch pastry.”
The title of your posting seems to negate what the posting is trying to clarify.
Uhm yes, it’s what is called irony…
I find it ironic that Mr. Gil rails against use of “Holland” to refer to all of Nederlandene and yet refers to inhabitants of the United States as “Americans.”
Eric – indeed. The use of “Americans” by everybody here in the US to refer to themselves is in fact one of my pet peeves (but one that I am trying to ignore, for the sake of my blood pressure)
Nice article!! I’m Danish and on my 6th year in the USA and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been called Dutch, or “oooh so you speak Dutch” or people saying ;Heeey you must be happy today??” and I say well, yeah why?….Your soccer team just won!!!…uhm, no they didn’t….yeah I just saw it on TV, Holland (Netherlands…and yes, I do know the difference;)) won the match yesterday. My wife is American and she hears it all the time too when people ask her where I’m from. Last week someone said oooooh Denmark…they speak Finnish right?? haha at least it was nice with a little variance;)
Thanks, Hans.
It IS remarkable how widespread the confusion is. This entry fairly consistently gets more hits than any other single post on my blog, and it’s quite entertaining to glance at the search terms each day. Every once in a while there’s a huge spike in the “danish dutch difference”, “is dutch and danish the same thing” searches, and I can never quite figure out what drives the spikes.
But it is also quite funny to see how biased towards blogs the big search engines are – my blog entry probably shouldn’t really be the top result for searches like that
It’s an easily made mistake though. Danish and Denmark looks a bit alike but Dutch and the Netherlands (or Holland) doesn’t look alike at all. Is the word Dutch actually related to Diets/Dietsch? (Oh and yes I am Dutch)
Oh, so we can blame it all on the Dutch for messing up the connection between their language and their country
Dutch is definitely related to Diets/Dietsch, yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietsch
And looking at the bright side from the Danish point of view: there are worse countries/people to get confused with than the Dutch
What’s wrong with calling the inhabitants of the United States of AMERICA Americans? I mean what do you want to be called? United States of Americans? Come on.. and the misunderstanding between Holland and the Netherlands came to be in the 16th century. The Netherlands wasn’t a country, just some small states working together a bit. England and France decided later they should be one country. Holland (later divided into Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland) was the richest small state and that’s why people call the Netherlands Holland sometimes. I prefer the Netherlands but I don’t think it’s incorrect to say Holland.
Reminds me of a story with similar confusion: In the USA, I used to work with a couple of guys from Belgium. Mentioned this to a friend who asked, “Oh, do they speak Belgish?”
[...] I have found that I’m not the first one to comment on this issue, one of my compatriots has her own blog entry about it here. [...]
I am Dutch, and have been living in California for the past 2 years. Someone told me about this little “Dutch” town called Salving. I looked it up and the only website taht got the whole story right is the visitors website for Salving. Before reading that website, all the websites I came across used Dutch and Danish interchangeably..very confusing!Guess it is really a Danish town though, not Dutch…although some say they do have windmills and sell clogs, which is typically Dutch but not positive that they actually do, since I have not been there myself. I have come across many people thinking Denmark was was just another name for Holland(yes I do use Holland most of the time instead of Netherlands, but do know the difference and I am actually from Zuid-Holland so I think I should be allowed:P) but after trying to figure out whether this town was Dutch or Danish, it really showed me how many people get it totally wrong. I personally think it’s ignorance but that’s just my opinion;)