When you’ve spent some time in a Dutch speaking region, odds are you’ve heard the word helemaal being thrown around a few times. It makes sense, because it’s a rather…
Many languages have several ways in which you can require someone to do something, either in a very polite manner, or a tad more forceful. Dutch speakers often use moeten…
It’s hard to think of a language that doesn’t have filler words, and Dutch surely has tons of them. We call them stopwoorden, and they’re mostly used in speech, but…
When you make a list of favorite words to use by Dutchies, gewoon will definitely be on it. In its most common use, it’s an important word, but it’s also…
While learning Dutch, you’ll come across the verb worden early and often. It literally means to become, but it’s used in many different, interesting ways, as an auxiliary verb and…
Here’s a confession: I’m quite the aficionado of national anthems, and the Dutch anthem is one of the coolest ones out there. It’s very old, it’s quite long, and it…
You’ve probably heard of Amsterdam, and The Hague, and probably Rotterdam. But why are they called that? Are they even called that? Where do these names even originate? And what…
Mainland Netherlands consists of twelve provinces. All of them have a name, which is rather convenient. Some of these names are very old, others find their origins in much more…
Ah, family. Or, as the Dutch say: familie. That was easy, wasn’t it? In fact, since the words we use for relatives are generally very old, there are a lot…
As petite and seemingly adorable as the Netherlands may be, the language spoken here has been around for a good while. As an Indo-European language, Dutch finds its origins well…