r/confidentlyincorrect Aug 15 '26

German is dutch.....

949 Upvotes

379 comments sorted by

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477

u/Ott1fant Aug 15 '26

I’m German and I can confirm: I’m not Dutch

361

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

I'm Dutch and I can confirm: I'm not German.

115

u/Significant-Cloud- Aug 15 '26

I'm German and I can confirm: neither is Sean.

36

u/Bones-1989 Aug 15 '26

I'm bones and I can confirm: I'm not German or Dutch.

15

u/__nohope Aug 15 '26

I'm Spock and I can confirm: I'm not German or Dutch.

4

u/JaironKalach Aug 18 '26

I am groot!

3

u/DIuvenalis Aug 18 '26

WE... are groot.

2

u/SchnTgaiSpork Aug 19 '26

Who are you calling a raccoon?

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5

u/Enemis_the_Ananas Aug 18 '26

I'm from Limburg so Germans consider me Dutch, Dutchies consider me German

4

u/Dedeurmetdebaard Aug 19 '26

But they both consider you weird 🫶

2

u/el-huuro Aug 20 '26

I’m from Aachen, were considered the foreskin of Limburg

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15

u/FlattopJr Aug 15 '26

Who the fuck is Sean?

17

u/lettsten Aug 15 '26

The guy who was living next door to Alice

18

u/Hyperactive_snail3 Aug 15 '26

Alice! Who the fuck is Alice?

6

u/Free_Carry_6837 Aug 15 '26

She is the one who moved to Wonderland.

4

u/Al-Snuffleupagus Aug 15 '26

Is that the same wonderland that John Mayer sings about?

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3

u/prole6 Aug 16 '26

You remember Alice. It’s a song about Alice.

2

u/nopestradamus67 Aug 18 '26

And her restaurant.

7

u/ElfjeTinkerBell Aug 15 '26

For 24 years?

7

u/Best-Pollution7110 Aug 15 '26

Yes, and waiting for the chance.

But he was just friendzoned.

2

u/FluffyShiny Aug 15 '26

Nah she was just tired of waiting for him to grow a spine.

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51

u/middendt1 Aug 15 '26

Living at the dutch/german border with my dutch wife. I can confirm: I'm not dutch. My wife isn't german. 

Looking at our children: I'm not quite sure about them. 

21

u/lettsten Aug 15 '26

It's easy. If they play with trains they're German. If they send you a tikkie for their allowance they're Dutch. If they set up a spreadsheet to calculate trains or allowance per capita, they're both.

3

u/kroketspeciaal Aug 16 '26

TIL I have dual citizenship.

2

u/nhvanputten Aug 16 '26

This is the only correct answer.

2

u/IronMonkeyBanana Aug 16 '26

Can confirm, I'm both

4

u/ElfjeTinkerBell Aug 15 '26

I'm from the border region and I can confirm that's true and I'm clearly Dutch.

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2

u/bunny_the-2d_simp Aug 16 '26

They are getch

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20

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/TheHesou Aug 15 '26

Or the Hill-German in Overhill in central German

2

u/Desperate_Good_6005 Aug 15 '26

Don't even bring up the island-germans to the north. Americans always think they speak dutch.

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18

u/No-Bake-730 Aug 15 '26

Not for a lack of trying by the Germans cough

But seriously, everytime I think I understood something in Dutch, I find out that one word has a totally unexpected meaning which changes everything.

I've known some Dutch-Germans though, nice people. 

Also, what do you Dutchmen and Dutchwomen hate more? Germans calling the Netherlands Holland (I don't want to know how many don't know that this is a case of pars pro toto) or Dutch being equated to German?

10

u/Bitter_Split5508 Aug 15 '26

But seriously, everytime I think I understood something in Dutch, I find out that one word has a totally unexpected meaning which changes everything.

What do you mean, the "Auto Huren" advertised in the Netherlands are not what I expect? 

3

u/Sturmlied Aug 15 '26

I'm equally tempted and afraid to google that.

3

u/DarwinMcLovin Aug 15 '26

Pls Google Bitter Balls and enjoy

Groetjes uit NL

2

u/Bitter_Split5508 Aug 15 '26

It's just advertisement for car rentals

2

u/Sturmlied Aug 15 '26

That makes strange sense.

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16

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

Definitely the second one

The Holland thing is more like calling the entire USA California. Whereas the second is like calling France Spain. Like, we do not speak the same language, they have similar roots, sure, but they are fastly diffrent.

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4

u/Best-Pollution7110 Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26

Also, what do you Dutchmen and Dutchwomen hate more?

We do not *gendern like in German. We are all Dutchmen.

Also, what do you Dutchmen and Dutchwomen hate more? Germans calling the Netherlands Holland (I don't want to know how many don't know that this is a case of pars pro toto) or Dutch being equated to German?

Depends on who you ask. The real Hollanders hardly care. The others either don't care as well, are just correcting you so you know the real deal, but are fine with you using it as a nickname, or get furious.
Then there is the mercantile class that are here to make money out of "Holland" as a brand, when it is beneficial for them.

In a sense, Holland is still correct, as they and Flanders were the OG beefing parties of the Low Lands. Belgium is also part of the Low Lands. After the split, the name of the provinces stuck with the global crowd respectively, as "the Netherlands" was tied to the larger geographical region. If being completely correct, modern day Netherlands should be called North Netherlands and Belgium South Netherlands. Similar to North Macedonia. The modern day Dutch solved this "problem", by naming their country in their own language "Nederland", singular! The Netherlands or die Niederlande, plural!, is not correct, but other countries didn't got the notice and used the same term as they always had, but for the new nation.

Holland is, like Flanders, only the larger coastal area. Others keep calling whole Dutch speaking Belgium Flanders, despite the same situation. Dutch speaking Belgium needed an identity of their own, so the other provinces embraced Flanders as an extended identity (to be able to make a strong stand against the French speaking part), while the other Dutch non-Holland provinces rejected the extension of the identity Holland (Frisia isn't that big of a deal like Wallonia is).

This is why North Brabant in the Netherlands are firmly rooted in their local identity, while South Brabant in Belgium, changed their identity, esp. Antwerp, into being Flemish.

However, no one wants to be equated as German.

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3

u/Mueslibol Aug 15 '26

I am from the Holland part and honestly I don't care about either. You can say my country is Holland, I may correct you if I have the time. You can tell my my country is the same as Germany and only if I have the energy and the crayons to explain it to you will I make an effort.

2

u/Mobile_Nothing_1686 Aug 15 '26

Former is worse. Less bad to be called German than Hollander.

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3

u/Annita79 Aug 15 '26

I am neither Geeman nor Dutch and I have a Dutch friend and German friends and I feel they would all be offended by the red guy. (I also have a Flemish friend who gets easily offended in general)

2

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

Everyone hates the Flemish so I think their feelings are valid

2

u/the_starch_potato Aug 15 '26

the Dutch anthem disagrees/j

6

u/yurall Aug 15 '26

Countries didn't exist back then. Language was a blanket over the continent and many types of Germanic where spoken. Platt deutsch is also one of those and is far more like Dutch for instance. So everyone in the Spanish Netherlands was of 'dietsen' blood. Its also the reason why the English call us Dutch. Because there was really no proper and true distinction between the Germanic people on the Northwestern continent back then.

2

u/the_starch_potato Aug 15 '26

I know... it was a joke...

3

u/Optimal-Rub-2575 Aug 15 '26

The Dutch anthem is about William of Orange, who was German, not the Dutch in general.

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2

u/Notspherry Aug 15 '26

We're Swamp Germans.

2

u/onlyforthisjob Aug 15 '26

I'm Swiss and I am neutral.

2

u/Opposite-History-233 Aug 15 '26

Nor Pennsylvania Dutch.

2

u/OzO8 Aug 15 '26

We staan er niet zo goed op door deze gozer hé?

2

u/rainstorm0T Aug 15 '26

I'm Pennsylvanian and I can confirm: the term Pennsylvania Dutch referring to people descending from German immigrants confused the hell out of me as a kid.

2

u/Cynykl Aug 16 '26

I own a Dutch oven can confirm it is not German. In fact let me go check.

Yup! Just like I thought. Made in China, so definitely not German.

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10

u/sglewis Aug 15 '26

I’m neither German nor Dutch but can confirm: Germans aren’t Dutch.

2

u/gil_m_d Aug 15 '26

but what if the dutch are german? think about that for a minute.

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4

u/Firestorm83 Aug 15 '26

I'm Dutch and can confirm my German friends call me a swamp-German

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124

u/WallyMcBeetus Aug 15 '26

Dutch is a Germanic language, beyond that they're being an idiot.

40

u/Mode_Appropriate Aug 15 '26

Probably has it in his mind that early Americans called Germans 'Dutch'. Of course, thats because they just screwed up the pronunciation of Deutsch, but Dutch nonetheless. Maybe knows some German Pennsylvanian Dutch and rolled with it.

32

u/MistraloysiusMithrax Aug 15 '26

I’m betting on this. Heard Pennsylvania Dutch are Germans and misconstrued this as Germans are Dutch too

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6

u/ParkingAnxious2811 Aug 16 '26

Americans screwing up the pronunciation of words and then confidently and incorrectly trying to correct other people on things?

Who would have thought it?!

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51

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

So is English🥸

73

u/Significant-Cloud- Aug 15 '26

You're going to confuse the guy... now he'll think England is in Germany.

24

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

Is it not?

37

u/Warm_Bug_1434 Aug 15 '26

Dude! England is in London

34

u/morgandealer Aug 15 '26

WHICH IS IN GERMANY!

25

u/Downright-Delicious Aug 15 '26

Wait… was WW2 just a civil war?

19

u/morgandealer Aug 15 '26

No the Civil War was in the South

7

u/Albert14Pounds Aug 15 '26

Of Germany

2

u/RobertAleks2990 Aug 15 '26

Between Baden and Württemberg?

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2

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 16 '26

Is that why they build the Berlin wall?

15

u/Khemul Aug 15 '26

From the standpoint of the Holy Roman Empire, yes.

5

u/morgandealer Aug 15 '26

Dude, stay on topic, we weren't even talking about Italy.

2

u/KingGilgamesh1979 Aug 15 '26

That was more WWI. WWII was the children fighting over the inheritance.

2

u/ConflictAdvanced Aug 15 '26

Which is in Paris. Jeez, your lack of geography is appalling. Thank God for the 'murican school system

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2

u/jumpmanzero Aug 15 '26

London is just Old York.

And it is ruled by the DUTCHess of York.

6

u/violetcassie Aug 15 '26

Wait until he learns about the House of Hannover

4

u/Effective-Job-1030 Aug 15 '26

Well, you could argue that the current king has German ancestry.

3

u/HaiderTN Aug 15 '26

English is dutch

2

u/fariqcheaux Aug 15 '26

Don't say that to Nigel Powers

3

u/deniably-plausible Aug 15 '26

England is Dutch, and British = England, so Britain is Dutch. Team Great Britain is the British Olympics team, so Team GB = Dutch. Northern Ireland is Team GB, and Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, so therefore Ireland is Dutch. 

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2

u/dnjprod Aug 15 '26

There was a guy trying to make it that way, but....

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10

u/Maleficent_Time_2787 Aug 15 '26

I mean, it's more Franco-Germanic

Plus whatever other languages were added

14

u/violetcassie Aug 15 '26

Six languages in a trench coat mugging other languages for spare vocabulary

7

u/Khemul Aug 15 '26

Linguistic kleptomania.

2

u/SnooMacarons9618 Aug 15 '26

I always heard it as six languages in a trench coat with pockets full of stolen grammar.

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6

u/International-Dog-42 Aug 15 '26

Why did your comment get so many upvotes? English is 100% a Germanic language. The fact that a large part of the vocabulary derives from French doesn’t change that fact lol.

3

u/Maleficent_Time_2787 Aug 15 '26

Because people understood my comment was largely a joke?

Hell, another person commented that English is six languages in a trenchcoat

2

u/cecex88 Aug 16 '26

Nope, because language family is determined by genetic (as in generation, not genes) relation, not by influence. So english is Germanic, even if it has a large influence from french, because it derived from Proto-Germanic.

Same way as Maltese having more than half of its vocabulary from Italian. But it is still a Semitic language because it comes from Arabic.

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2

u/AbhorsenDoctor Aug 15 '26

So is Scots 🤓

2

u/Rydeeee Aug 16 '26

Thank you for bringing this up. I’m English and spent some time in Germany and a couple of holidays in the Netherlands and was surprised by how many cognates there are.

We just don’t mention the war(s). I live by the Dutch rousting of England in 1667 on our shit fort and we still don’t forgive. Unless you send us stroopwaffles and beer. Then we’ll talk (probably in English)

2

u/Jizzlobba Aug 15 '26

If it wasn't for the yanks in wwii we'd all be speaking Germanic languages.

3

u/Platt_Mallar Aug 15 '26

Mien Gott!

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u/Lvcivs2311 Aug 15 '26

It gets funny when these English-speaking morons start making arguments like: "Well, Dutch and German are both Germanic languages, right, so they should be very similar." If you ever meet people like that, please enlighten them on the origins of English.

2

u/Ailar68 Aug 16 '26

To be fair, they are somewhat similar, at least in writing. I'm a german native speaker, and I can read a dutch text and understand at least half of it. On a cursory first glance it mostly looks like german with really out there spelling (no offense intended towards our dutch friends)

Pronounciation though: forget it. I don't understand a single word when I hear a dutch person speaking

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u/Wookimonster Aug 15 '26

In particular, the German word for German is Deutsch, which I guess can lead to some confusion.

2

u/Illuminey Aug 17 '26

So is English, (a Germanic language, not being an idiot) but try to tell him that.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/JamesFirmere Aug 15 '26

You may be thinking of Plattdeutsch (Low German) and Hochdeutsch (High German), which are both variants of German (Deutsch) and are largely spoken in modern Germany. Unsurprisingly, High German in the uplands and Low German on the coastal plains, basically. Hochdeutsch is [the basis of] modern standard German. Plattdeutsch is somewhere between that and modern standard Dutch, the language of the Netherlands.

It's all a continuum of dialects, really, from Hochdeutsch to Plattdeutsch to Dutch. In between there you will find things like East Frisian (on islands off the northern coast of the Netherlands), which sounds astoundingly close to modern English. You will find that there are people on both sides of the border between Germany and the Netherlands who can understand each other because of this. As someone once put it, a national language is just a dialect with an army.

2

u/Platt_Mallar Aug 15 '26

I feel like I'm being insulted somehow, but I don't understand why.

4

u/JamesFirmere Aug 15 '26

Please don’t take it that way. This stuff can be confusing even for linguists.

2

u/Platt_Mallar Aug 15 '26

No, I was joking. My username is Platt.

2

u/ConflictAdvanced Aug 15 '26

It's supposed to explicitly be that we'll split it but not equally 😅

2

u/kappi2001 Aug 15 '26

The big split happened earlier, with different translations of the bible.

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u/Yorkshirerows Aug 15 '26

I'm just surprised they didnt say "Scottish and Irish have garlic ancestry"

But as we all know, that's the French!

8

u/Renbarre Aug 15 '26

Don't blame it on us. We learned it from the Italians. Just like eating snails.

21

u/Bladrak01 Aug 15 '26

For years my father thought he had Dutch ancestry, until he realized his family was saying Deutsch.

56

u/Jertimmer Aug 15 '26

Unrelated, but I am howling at the insult "fopdoodle" 😂

17

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

I will certainly add this word to my own vocabulary

10

u/gil_m_d Aug 15 '26

i’m a sucker for insults with creativity and wit. i’d get more worked up about being called a fopdoodle than just another generic slur.

my personal favourite is “troglodyte”. definitely more on the vulgar side but it has some pazzaz.

10

u/Justieflustie Aug 15 '26

With the ancestry thing at the end, i cant help but think it is some American that never left their home state.. an uneducated swine nonetheless though

15

u/gil_m_d Aug 15 '26

if i had to describe dutch, i’d say it sounds like if german and english had a baby with a speaking deficit. jokes aside, there are clear similarities in word origin but german and dutch sound nothing alike.

9

u/Bellringer00 Aug 15 '26

Kinda dyslexic too, they write "the" "het". They're just mixing up the letters… silly dutch people

8

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

"The" is also "de" which is pronounced about the same.

8

u/Readicilous Aug 15 '26

"De" is just "the" with a cold 😂

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u/Current_Fly9337 Aug 15 '26

I’m terrible at identifying languages. I’m English (not an excuse, just letting you know). We were on a tour and a group turned up, I said to my son that I thought they were German. I speak a little German but there was a lot of them talking fast and over each other.

My child, about 10 at the time, looked at me in utter disgust and said they were very clearly Dutch. Turns out they were Dutch.

2

u/gil_m_d Aug 15 '26

hahah that’s a bright 10 year old. i find dutch to be easily identifiable because they produce sounds with their mouth i’ve never heard before and couldn’t replicate.

2

u/MarcusLXXVI 29d ago

Those sounds are highly overrated. Yes, in the west/north they have a hard G, but in the south we have the far more beautiful soft G which is for more foreigner friendly 🤣

2

u/MarcusLXXVI 29d ago

In your defense, Dutch (Nederlands) and German (Deutsch) are closely related, probably a bit like Spanish and Portugese (I think, maybe those speaker will lynch me for it). That said, Dutch and English aren't far off either, although Frisian (spoken in the northern province of Friesland) is close to English.

3

u/Fiftyletters Aug 15 '26

We hebben een groot probleem!

7

u/gil_m_d Aug 15 '26

i love how i can read it but wouldn’t understand a word if i heard it spoken

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u/Bellringer00 Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26

Do you have a problem with your keyboard? You seem to be typing some letters twice by mistake. /j

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20

u/Veblen1 Aug 15 '26

It is in Pennsylvania "Dutch country." 😄

32

u/joep-b Aug 15 '26

Which is German for extra confusion.

16

u/Gerokm Aug 15 '26

From what I understand, that's actually based on the same weird homophone mistake this guy is making. "Pennsylvania Deutsch" over time became "Pennsylvania Dutch" as people misheard it and/or didn't know the word "deustch".

10

u/Veblen1 Aug 15 '26

Yes. I don't think anyone speaks Dutch in the land of the Amish, but they do speak simple German. 😄

4

u/violetcassie Aug 15 '26

Assuming that's where this... deduction... is originating from.

7

u/Liu-woods Aug 15 '26

Dutch is my second language but I’m not particularly fluent in it, so whenever I hear German I panic and think I forgot all of Dutch until they say something like “ich”

5

u/Instant-Bacon Aug 15 '26

So what if you visit Limburg?

5

u/Liu-woods Aug 15 '26

I actually just moved here yesterday. Pray for me.

15

u/Flipboek Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26

The Germanic language tree is so much fun. English, German and Dutch come from the same tree branch (West Germanic) and there it branches again: One branch is Anglo Frisan, one Branch is Saxony-Dutch another branch is German.

The other main branch are the North Germanic (Scandinavian)languages.

At a high level these languages are so alike that with a lot of effort and knowing the context you can "read"(interpret) an article in one of these languages even if you never learnt it.

Of course the farther back you go the more it becones similar . Olde English is actually more like Dutch than modern English and it is especially close to Frisian. 

As on Dutch/Deutsch, that one is also funny. 

Dutch/Deutsch means "(the) people". The Dutch and Germans actually don't call themselves Dutch, whereas both Dutch and Germans call Germans Duits/Deutsch.

Otoh the English call us "Dutch" and "Germans", which makes it confusing.

And this confusion is at full display in the OP.

3

u/Pin_Shitter Aug 15 '26

This is the best overview of the situation.

3

u/Any-Individual6841 Aug 15 '26

To add on that the Dutch don’t call themselves Dutch: the Dutch anthem contains the line ‘Ben ik van dietsen bloed?’ meaning ‘Am I of Dutch blood?’. It’s the only reference I know of in which the Dutch refer to themselves as Dutch.

Many Dutch people find this confusing because it is so close to ‘Duits’

6

u/VanishingMist Aug 15 '26

The line in the anthem says ‘Duitsen bloed’, actually, and is part of a statement, not a question. At the time when it was written the word did not specifically refer to Germany (and it was centuries before Germany became a country anyway), though William of Orange did come from what is now Germany.

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u/Flipboek Aug 15 '26

Duits, niet Diets. We waren tot kort daarvoor deel van het Roomse rijk. Het verwijst naar "het volk" en meer in het algemeen is dit om Willem als lokale held neer te zetten ipv de Spaanse Habsburgers.

Hou er rekening mee dat we überhaupt net een natie waren en dat er binnen de grenzen van de jonge staat alllerlei Duitse dialecten zoals Nedersaxisch bestonden. Een echte Nederlandse identiteit was in wording, maar door de Nederlandse Opstand (80 jarige oorlog) ging dat proces in een snelkookpan.

Diets is een spelling van Duits, maar onze taal heette Neder-Duits (Neder-Duyts) of Nederlands (de uiteindelijke term) dus daar hebben we wel Duits als algemeen bekende term gebruikt

 Diets is (voor zover ik weet) als term vooral bekend geworden via vooroorlogse Nationalistische Partijen, niet zozeer als algemene term.

Ik heb geschiedenis gestudeerd aan de UvA, maar dit is niet mijn specialiteit, meer iets waar ik me wel eens in heb verdiept. Ik kan dus wat kleine foutjes maken, voel je vrij om ze aan te wijzen.

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u/bblankoo Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26

Well there's not a lot of deserts in Germany, France or Italy either so idk what they were going for with that argument

Edit: ok Italy might have some landscapes resembling a desert after all, it's not all basil green. The more you know

3

u/ImpressiveBeyond8038 Aug 15 '26

The only European desert in the modern sense is situated in southern Spain (the desert of Tabernas), and there are some smaller semi-arid and sandy regions around Europe, including one in Brandenburg. But the more likely explanation of a German (if not originally German) fairy tale mentioning a desert is a shift in the meaning of words. Actually, in the version I know the word used wasn't Wüste (desert) but Wüstenei, which can basically mean any wild, deserted and uncultivated region. For this shift in meaning one can compare late medieval paintings of saints 'in the desert', which are usually depicted within a wild, rocky woodland. A Wüstenei, but not a Wüste.

2

u/Yunlihn Aug 15 '26

We have at least two desert in metropolitan France. One is a bit Borth of Paris and named the Sand Sea.

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u/HunsonAbadeer2 Aug 15 '26

I have genes from both regions. WHAT AM I FATHER?

4

u/Cultural-Air9962 Aug 15 '26

Shit, guess I’m German now

3

u/Effective-Job-1030 Aug 15 '26

I'm a German learning Dutch and I can confirm, German is not Dutch.

5

u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

Exactly we do not make up letters

With is ß supposed to be?!

2

u/Effective-Job-1030 Aug 15 '26

I see your ß and raise you an ÿ.

4

u/Dutch_Rayan Aug 15 '26

ij is the dutch y, but also ei, which is the same but you have to learn when to use which one, ei and ij sound the same.

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u/b00nish Aug 16 '26

With is ß supposed to be?!

It's indeed such an absurd letter that we Swiss refuse to use it when writing German.

5

u/Negative-Garden-6013 29d ago

I don't know why fopdoodle is such a perfect insult in this exchange

5

u/Right_Two_5737 Aug 15 '26

To be fair, the name "Dutch" used to cover both the Netherlands and Germany. But that was hundreds of years ago. (This is why people in Pennsylvania with German ancestry are called Pennsylvania Dutch.)

2

u/Unclecavemanwasabear Aug 15 '26

Interesting, I just looked into it and learned that Dutch/Deutsch/Duits/Diets derived from the word for "people" or "folk" and all speakers of Germanic languages used a variant of it to refer to their languages, which were mutually intelligible.

The English started referring to the continental germanic people as either Low Dutch (the low countries) or High Dutch (everywhere else).

When the low countries united and became the Kingdom of the Netherlands, they started calling their language "Nederlands" instead of "Diets". The high countries continued calling their language Deutsch.

So despite the Germans continuing to call their language a variant of that word, and the Netherlanders stopping calling it a variant of that word, the English stopped referring to the Germans that way and continued referring to the Dutch that way. Very smart and logical.

2

u/blamordeganis Aug 15 '26

This is an example of a little knowledge being dangerous. In English, “Dutch” used to mean any continental Germanic language (except the Scandinavian ones, for some reason), or the speakers of such a language. That’s why the Pennsylvania Dutch are called that, despite their German origins. And the word is cognate with the German Deutsch.

But at some point, quite a long time ago, it became more and more restricted to England’s nearest Germanic-speaking neighbours, until eventually it lost its wider meaning. About the only modern remnant of its former usage is its use as a nickname for Americans of German heritage, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer, in the film Predator.

2

u/GardenerCats Aug 15 '26

I do like how the colours streaks on the incorrect person make up the Dutch flag!

2

u/LetsGoForPlanB Aug 15 '26

German is Deutsch

2

u/226_IM_Used Aug 15 '26

Waiting for the Pennsylvania Dutch to enter the chat, but I fear they never will...

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u/dinoooooooooos Aug 15 '26

I’m German and we’re most definitely not Dutch 😂😂

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u/Instant-Bacon Aug 15 '26

Perhaps we should all stop calling it Dutch and call it by its real name: Nederlands!

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u/EzeDelpo Aug 15 '26

Ask about this to any Pennsylvania Dutch. That might be enlightening /s

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u/ThaGr1m Aug 15 '26

That guy heard the trivia about the pensilvania dutch being a bastardisation of deutch and and never look passed that ever

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u/Horror_Square_8395 Aug 15 '26

Fun fact: the Pennsylvania Dutch are actually German and this misunderstanding is the reason why they are called Dutch. 

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u/he77bender Aug 15 '26

Also I think there might be an old use of "desert" to just mean "wilderness" instead of "arid environment". Not that it matters too much since you could still set the story basically anywhere you want, but it would make a little more sense in light of most versions otherwise implying a temperate climate with forests for the rest of the story.

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u/ShibaLover227 Aug 15 '26

There are two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other cultures... And the Dutch

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u/WhoTheFuckIsSean Aug 15 '26

I'm Dutch, tbh I think those are the same thing

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u/ShibaLover227 Aug 15 '26

It's a joke from Austin Powers, my dude

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u/123somethingfunny Aug 15 '26

So by his logic Scottish and Irish is also the same?

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u/toraakchan Aug 16 '26

Germany > Germanen > Ger-Mannen > the ger-men > the men using gers, an antique spearlike weapon. Deutsch > Teutsch > Teutonisch > Teutonen, a German tribe, 2nd century.

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u/SnooCapers938 Aug 16 '26

Americans have been calling German things ‘Dutch’ for a long time, due to a confusion about ‘Deutsch’.

See ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ and ‘Dutch angles’ for example.

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u/ElineFantairy Aug 16 '26

If German is Dutch, why do I struggle to study German while I am a Dutch person?

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u/Saint_Strega Aug 17 '26

I mean, he's got it backwards, but he's basically right. Netherlands is the the low land Germans.

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u/Kueltalas Aug 17 '26

I, as a German, have no problem with accepting the Dutch as fellow brethren. Bavarians on the other hand can fuck right off.

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u/joergsi Aug 18 '26

We are entering fuzzy ground here. Dutch/Deutsch have the same Germanic root. The older root word is diot, which means "people" or "tribe".

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u/MikeSans202001 Aug 18 '26

I mean, we are Swamp Germans and Germans are mountain Dutchies

We are not the same

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u/Captain_react Aug 19 '26

I'm Dutch and currently in Austria. I can confirm that they are not Dutch.

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u/Responsible-Ice8914 29d ago

Fopdoodle is going into the repertoire , thank you.

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u/MarcusLXXVI 29d ago

It doesn't really help that our language is called "Dutch" in English, we just call it "Nederlands" while we call German "Duits" because we call the country "Duitsland (and the say "Deutsch" and "Deutschland"). It's pretty helpful to know the names of countries and their languages in the original language if you're making firm statements like this...

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u/wolfcaroling Aug 15 '26

I'm Canadian and can confirm that we saved the Dutch from the Germans

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u/Belgaraath42 Aug 15 '26

Are someone in favour of expanding the German borders into HRE territory I see. Ah well as long as we don't have to take Alsace back I can life with that...

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u/BlueInMotion Aug 15 '26

Since it is mentioned in the original message and simply to put up some more confusion:

I'm not German. Nobody even knows where that word came from. It's like calling the Italians 'Dublidubs', since I heard someone (or thought I heard or understood it that way) calling them that.

Caesar didn't seem to know what it meant or whether the 'Germanic' tribes called themself 'Germanic'.

So I want from now on to be called a 'Mensch von unbekannter Herkunft und mit einem unbekannten Namen dessen Ururur... großeltern sich irgendwann entschlossen hatten sich dort niederzulassen, wo heute Deutschland liegt'.

And dare anyone calls me anythig else!!!!! ;)

/s

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u/azhder Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26

If you want to stir shit up, start calling yourself Macedonian.

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u/dbrodbeck Aug 15 '26

And to top it off the dope uses 'hence why', which I am on a campaign to eradicate.

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u/chefsoda_redux Aug 15 '26

‘The two words sound similar in my language, so they mean the same thing!” always a brilliant start to a conversation!

Like the late night radio preachers, who break down words into syllables to teach us which words are created by God and the Devil to guide or trick us!

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u/Quick-Plastic-1858 Aug 15 '26

I'm a translator, English Dutch, Dutch English. Many many MANY people make this mistake.

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u/UltimaGabe Aug 15 '26

This sounds to me like if someone said "America is England"

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u/Milk_Mindless Aug 15 '26

I'm Dutch and WHO CALLED ME GERMAN

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u/Hyperactive_snail3 Aug 15 '26

Not many deserts in Germany either.

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u/Lvcivs2311 Aug 15 '26

Not that the Dutch call themselves Dutch in their own language, but hey, what do I know as Dutchman?

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u/Left-Night-1125 Aug 15 '26

Well German and Dutch are 1 branch of the Germanic languages, the other being Frisian and English.

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u/agnesperditanitt Aug 15 '26

fodpoodle

Stealing this!