Travelling over the summer, I met and interacted with a surprising number of Dutch people (despite not visiting the Netherlands). Being the language lover I am, I expressed my want to learn the Dutch language, which was met with a unanimous response of “no, it’s a useless language.” I don’t know if this is a common thought amongst Dutch natives, but I was honestly slightly shocked by that reaction. You could say, ‘my clog was breaking’.
If anything, it made me want to have the language ‘under my knee’ more, just ‘for bacon and beans.’ ‘It shall me a sausage be’ if it’s useless.
I’m not having a stroke while writing this – these are translated Dutch idioms that prove that the language maybe isn’t so useless after all.
1. ‘It walks in the soup’ or ‘het loopt in de soep’.
To ‘walk in the soup’ is to have experienced total failure or disaster. When you’re stressed out because everything’s gone wrong, and you don’t know what to do, it’s walking in the soup. A little like submitting the assignment you know went horribly without editing it because you couldn’t look at it any longer.
2. ‘Unfortunately, peanut butter’ or ‘helaas pindakaas’
In other words, that’s too bad! ‘Helaas pindakaas’ is a nonchalant way of expressing sorriness, ironic or actual. The phrase is thought to date back to the 1980s, in teenage slang; ‘peanut butter’ was chosen only to rhyme with ‘helaas’.
3. ‘Using the wrong leg to get out of bed’ or ‘met het verkeerde been uit bed stappen.
Similarly to waking up on the wrong side of the bed, a Netherlander in a bad mood may have gotten out of bed with his left leg. The original idiom of ‘using your left leg to get out of bed’ dates to biblical stories of the ‘good thief’ on Jesus’ left side repenting and the ‘bad thief’ on his right remaining unrepented. The Dutch verkeerd, being a close synonym to the left, ended up replacing it in everyday speak.
4. ‘Now the monkey comes out of the sleeve’ or ‘nu komt de aap uit de mouw’
This is my favourite Dutch idiom ever. For the monkey to come out of the sleeve is for someone to show their true colours. They’ve been keeping tricks up their sleeve, but it’s their ‘monkey’ like behaviour instead of tricks. I’m going to start using this day-to-day, honestly.
5. ‘To participate for bacon and beans’ or ‘meedoen voor spek en bonen’
Participating in ‘bacon and beans’ isn’t earning food; it’s the Dutch equivalent of ‘shits and giggles’, but with an alliterative ring to it. Are you doing something for a laugh? No. You’re participating for bacon and beans.
6. ‘Now my clog is breaking’ or ‘nu breekt mijn klomp’.
To break your clog is to be totally amazed, completely surprised, and wildly dumbfounded. Like me when I realised that linguistics wasn’t on strand… sorry waterloo.
7. ‘To have something under the knee’ or ‘iets onder de knie hebben’.
To master something is to ‘have it under the knee’. This is like having it ‘under the belt’, but it’s funnier to think of it under the kneecap instead.
8. ‘It shall me a sausage be’ or ‘het zal me worst zijn.’
This one’s hilarious in English because of the syntax and rhyme. It means ‘I don’t care’. The less literal translation is ‘it’s all sausage to me’, but I prefer this version.
See, Dutch isn’t so useless at all. (Take that naysayers). I will start a petition to bring these to the common English lexicon; who’s with me?
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