Why are there so many (nasty) English Expressions about the Dutch?

have you ever enjoyed a Dutch Treat been given advice by a Dutch uncle or reached for the Gin bottle for a little bit of Dutch courage maybe you thought that your grandmother's heirloom was solid gold only to be told that it was Dutch gold and therefore completely worthless if I tell you that you're speaking Double Dutch what does it mean why am I filming like this with the camera at an angle it gives a sense of unease and forboding I yes the Dutch angle why are there so many English idian about the Dutch and many

of them are a little nasty some are everyday expressions and some are a little less welln and today on let talk TV we're going to look at the Dutch expressions and explain the Curious linguistic history behind it all and answer the important question are the Dutch really like that are they really so mean and if you are a Dutch speaker then I'd just like to say f Latin vanan now there are several idioms in English that include the name of a country you have Russian Roulette It's All Greek To Me pardon my French that you

say after you apologize for using bad language or Chinese Whispers which is the game we used to play as children where you whisper a phrase to another kid who Whispers it to another kid and when it comes around back to you it's a completely different phrase you also have a Young Turk a Mexican standoff and a few others but that's nothing nothing compared to the expression s about the Dutch here is a list and in this video we're going to look at some of the most important ones and some that are perhaps less common but

very interesting and before delving into the history I have a task for you now there is a theme running through all the Dutch expressions and my question is what do all these Expressions have in common see if you can spot it I'll reveal the answer in a moment that's my challenge for you today and after we've done that we can make our own Dutch Expressions think of it as a Dutch expression Workshop or perhaps just a Dutch Workshop now Dutch is interesting it's a Germanic language just like English and supposedly one of the easiest for

an English speaker to learn I was curious about this and so I started studying a bit of Dutch on my own looking at some grammar books and some vocabulary but to be honest I didn't get very far there is no substitute for having a native or a fluent teacher of the language to guide you and as this video is about Dutch expressions in the English language I thought it would be interesting to learn a Little Dutch properly from a Dutch speaker and apply what I learned here and for that I use the platform I talki

who have kindly sponsored this video as I'm many speaking a few Dutch words in this video I wanted to get my pronunciation just right so I chose Nina who is a Dutch native speaker and a certified teacher from Rotterdam and then we have Mor Mor where is that the in the beginning is well very good very but of course with I talki it's not just your pronunciation you can also improve your grammar your vocabulary your conversation as well as the other skills you need for mastering a language with I talk you get onetoone customized language

lessons and it's easy to book a lesson find the language you want to learn and the area you want to focus on and what I like about italki is that there is no long-term contract assign no subscription you just pay for the lessons you take you can adjust your search according to your budget and you can see when the teacher is available so it's easy to navigate and set up a lesson I talki has thousands of teachers and they offer more than 50 languages now each user has three trial lessons which are refundable if not

satisfied there is never a better moment to begin your language learning Journey than today you can start your lessons from only $5 if you spend at least $10 then you can use my exclusive promo code let them talk to get you $5 for free for your first lesson the discounts are only available for the first 50 users the link is in the description let's start with Dutch courage sometimes people can get a boost to their Carriage from alcohol this can be called Dutch carriage for example at first I was too shy to speak to the

lovely Yolanda but I had a couple of shots of Jin Dutch gin probably and started a conversation and the Dutch courage really helped next we have going dutch now do you remember the good old days a man and a woman at a restaurant the bill arrives and it was the man who paid men were usually the Breadwinners men were paid more and even now depending on where you are in the world it's often assumed that the man would pick up the tab but what if each person PID their own share of the bill that was

quite shocking back in the day well you would call it going dutch next this is a true story I was once invited to a dinner party by some friends a couple I hadn't known for very long and I accepted the invitation the food was good the wine was good and the conversation flowed but at the end of the evening they announced the PRI of the food and drink and asked everybody to pay their share I was a little surprised to be honest but I paid up anyway we have a name for that when everybody has

to pay their own share at a meal or at an event and it's called a Dutch Treat now I've given you a few instances of expressions with Dutch in them can you see the connection between them okay so we use Dutch for playful or Twisted version of the thing we're talking about it means that there is something slightly different from the original an alternate version something that deviates from the norm for example an uncle is supposed to be kind and Charming to his nieces and nephews but if instead he offers Stern advice or criticism you

can call him that's right a Dutch uncle no no no no you don't want to do it like that you want to make your video like that oh really so you see that's different to what you expect from the behavior of an uncle let me give you another example the normal angle for filming is like this but you can film like this two if you're making a horror movie because it's scary because it's not quite right it's weird it's the Dutch Angle now the Dutch angle has been popular in film making since the 1920s and

you see it in the third man and a number of other films some sources say that the origin of the Dutch angle is a Corruption of Deutch because it was popularized in 1920s Germany but there is no evidence to support this assumption in fact Dutch angle fits in with the other Dutch phrases to convey something slightly different or contrary to what you normally expect imagine that you're at an auction you're bidding 1 million 2 million 5 million 10 million sold to the lady in the red sweater okay that's the normal way to have an auction

but what you did it in reverse you start with the high price and then you lower the price until a buyer is found that would be called yes you guessed it a Dutch auction and did you know that tulips are sold by Dutch auction at the flower market in Amsterdam when something bad happens and somebody says well it could have been worse you know we have an expression for that and it's dutch comfort you sprained your ankle while skiing you're lucky you could have broken your legs Double Dutch means to speak in a technical or

nonsensical way who wrote this contract I don't understand it at all it's written in double Dutch there is also by the way a skipping game called Double Dutch and I'm don't think it's connected with these other Dutch expressions a Dutch wife or a Dutch Widow is a prostitute Dutch gold or Dutch metal is a worthless metal called tombach that looks like gold but it isn't a Dutch agreement is an agreement made between two people who are drunk a Dutch Nightingale is an archaic word for a frog a Dutch Act is suicide a dutch oven is

not an oven at all it's a cooking pot in American English in British English is is called a casserole dish a Dutch concert is where several Tunes are played at the same time a Dutch Feast is one where the host gets drunk before the other guests and if you scream well I'm a Dutchman it means that you've heard something that is unbelievable how did this all happen let's look at the history now there are two theories there's my theory and is everybody else's and you can decide which is correct however for my theory I do

have data to back me up but first let's look at the conventional Theory so the General's consensus is that it all stems from the Anglo Dutch Wars between England and the Netherlands and later on Great Britain and there were four wars fought between 165 52 and 1784 and in some they not all of these Expressions it seems like there is a hint of anti- Dutch sentiment reflecting the historical enmity between the English and the Dutch and just to give you a taste of the conflicts the raid on the Medway took place between the 19th and

24th of June 1667 during the second and Anglo Dutch War the Dutch Navy sailed up the temps estery and into the river Medway where they completely destroyed the English Fleet and captured the town of shanes on the 5th of November 1688 the Dutch ruler William of Orange landed at brixen with an invasion force and proceeded to march on London this was the last success ful invasion of England and he became William III and jointly reigned with his wife Queen Mary II now about all this the Oxford English Dictionary says go Dutch Dutch Treat and other

phrases are an approbate or derisive application largely due to the Rivalry and emity between the English and the Dutch in the 17th Century really but could it be that the most esteemed of all reference books the Oxford English Dictionary is wrong let's see yes there was a lot of conflict between the Dutch but that still doesn't explain why we have so many Dutch idioms the English were at war with the French many times too and for even longer than the Dutch and yet we only have a couple of Expressions about the French and they're not

even negative the Spanish sent an armada to invade England and were colonial Rivals for hundreds of years but no idioms dissing the Spanish in fact Britain has been at war with every European country in its history except one do you know it's Portugal so let's look at the timeline of Expressions okay we don't see to go dutch until the 1920s and it's probably American in origin Dutch courage we don't see until around 1800 Dutch uncle is from the mid 19th century a long time after the end of the conflicts with the Dutch now here's a

quote from the book culture shock Netherlands a survival guide to customs and etiquette we say Dutch uncle because the Dutch are and I quote practical direct outspoken stubborn well organized blunt and thinking they are always right really that's the kind of stereotypical nonsense that I can't stand we simply say Dutch uncle because it's contrary to what you'd expect from an uncle that's why we use Dutch in all these Expressions nothing to do with bad tempered Dutchmen Dutch Treat was first recorded in the 1870s that's 100 years after the wars with the Dutch I could go

on so if it's not because of the wars then why the Dutch well the Dutch and the Flemish are our neighbors and a significant trading partner for hundreds of years and this is attested to by the fact that 1% of the English language comes from Dutch that may not seem very much but includes a number of significant words for example snack cookie which comes from Dutch cook meaning a little cake cook pickle geek trade deal dock landscape and many many more there were large numbers of dutch-speaking immigrants working in the textile industry in London and

it's estimated that onethird of Scots have a Flemish background and it explains why there are so many Scottish people or people of Scottish descent who have the surname Fleming and we talk about this more in this video here Dutch speakers have for many centuries been an important immigrant community in England and Scotland the Dutch was seen as different exotic quirky so it's not surprising that if you came across someone that was different exotic quirky you might give it the prefix Dutch and although at first glance some of these Expressions seem negative many of them clearly

aren't and even those that seem so can be interpreted in different ways to go dutch is it meanless for a man and a woman to share the bill or evidence of a more liberated culture you decide so Dutch as an expression simply means different or contrary to what is familiar or expected so in short the Dutch aren't nasty at all they are in fact just original and offer an alternative worldview which is what many of these Expressions attest but now can you make your own Dutch Expressions I've got some that I invented the classic Italian

pizza has olive oil mozzarella tomato on it but you want to put pineapple on it no no no that would be a Dutch Pizza what's that awaii pizza according to my definition that's a Dutch pizza please order that way from your local franchised Pizza chain don't call it a chatbot or an AI assistant it's a Dutch assistant bicycle with square Wheels well that would be a Dutch bicycle can you do better let us know in the comments and if you enjoyed that video then do check out our other video on how the Dutch changed the

English language check it out here that's all for now doell