Are you learning Dutch? Do you find yourself confused or amused in the Netherlands or Belgium? Are you trying to puzzle it out by communicating with other expats who know a thing or two about hagelslag? Have no fear, it’s not just you! Dutch is even stranger than you thought. Read on for ten interesting facts about the Dutch language.

1.  It’s probably the easiest foreign language for native English speakers to learn
Given their Germanic roots, Dutch, German, and English bear some similarities; Dutch is probably somewhere in the middle between English and German. While Dutch does enjoy leaving the verb at the end of the sentence occasionally, like in German, it doesn’t have the cases German does, which makes it more akin to English. Further, where German has three (nominative) definite articles, der, die, das, and English one, the, Dutch has two, de and het. However, Dutch pronunciation is notoriously difficult. Your pronunciation of Dutch words, e.g. Scheveningen, tells native speakers whether or not Dutch is really your mother-tongue; this was the downfall of more than one German spy during WWII.

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