Great quiz! Got hung up on "nose horn". I was thinking of horn as an instrument and never came up with the answer. Definite facepalm moment when I saw the answer! ;)
That's how I got all but this one. It was easy to think of the German word first, but since neither German nor English nor Dutch are my mother tongue thinking of the English word afterwards was a bigger challenge than usual.
Same for me, most of these are exactly the same in German, except for Piepschuim, which is such a wonderful word that I think I'll start using it from now on. Quiekschaum... I love it already.
Not really. Hippopotamus and rhinoceros have the same meaning in English, they just dont know it because it's greek to them. Earth apple is the same in french and other languages. Words book, tooth doctor, arithmetic machine I have also seen in other languages too.
This is because in The Netherlands butter is protected, it has to have at least 80% milkfat.
So instead of going for spread or something that would be more logical they went with cheese. Because the Dutch love cheese, eat cheese sanwiches, and there was alread another word with cheese in it but without cheese in the product (leverkaas/livercheese).
Brandweer is more accurately translated as "fire averting", from the noun brand and the verb weren, which makes a lot more sense considering the meaning. The others are indeed a little wacky though.
Lazy horse doesn't really work here, since it isn't really a dutch compound word, but just happens to translate to these two words. Luipaard has the same origin as the English word Leopard and comes from the latin compound word leopardus, meaning leo (=lion) and pardus (=panther).
I am a Dutch speaker (as my second-best language). I had thought that "Inktvis" could translate to "Octopus". But no, apparently "Achtarm" (liiterally "Eight arm") is correct for that animal.
for me, being dutch, it is actually an easy translation quiz but seeing the literal translation of these words to english makes me suddenly realise that some of our every day words are very funny :). I'd love to see similar quizzes in other languages!
Many of these are also same in Finnish (but "mustekala", literally 'ink fish' means octopussy). I believe that the logic of many Finnish compound words is borrowed from Swedish, they use native words but with similar combination (like "vuorenvarma" 'absolutely certain', literally 'mountain's certain', cf. Swedish "berg + säker").
i get kind of frustrated when people make fun of this bc a lot of english words are the same thing, just borrowed from dead languages. Like a hippopotamus is litterally 'horse river' and a dentist is just a 'tooth-er'. It's not just bc you don't remember, that english is any less silly lol.
Was a funny quiz to complete as a Dutch guy, but I never heard of the word 'ziekenauto', I always use ambulance.
As far as I know, everyone also just uses 'kussen' for pillow. But after googling I do see that stores sometimes specify 'hoofd kussen' maybe to make it clear that it is the pillow for sleeping.
1 point
So instead of going for spread or something that would be more logical they went with cheese. Because the Dutch love cheese, eat cheese sanwiches, and there was alread another word with cheese in it but without cheese in the product (leverkaas/livercheese).
This is because "apple" used to mean "fruit" in general terms. Thus, potatoes are "fruits of the ground".
Amazing how similar some of these transliterations are to their Scandinavian-language and German equivalents. too.
Ik ben en sinaasappel
As far as I know, everyone also just uses 'kussen' for pillow. But after googling I do see that stores sometimes specify 'hoofd kussen' maybe to make it clear that it is the pillow for sleeping.