gezellig
kheh-ZEL-akh
Warm, easy togetherness, of a room or an evening or people
The Dutch will tell you it cannot be translated, and then spend ten minutes trying.
Cosy is close but too small: gezellig is about people, not cushions.
The archive
Dutch
Three genders that are really two
English's closest big relative on the continent, with the word order that trips everyone up and a gender system quietly collapsing.
FamilyProto-Indo-European › Germanic › West Germanic › Dutch
ScriptLatin
Speakers25M 24M native · 1M second
Weeks to a working level24 Counted from English. It is the Foreign Service Institute's figure for someone starting from English and from nothing.
The first hundred words cover58.4% and the first thousand 82.9%
- Textbooks give three genders. In practice masculine and feminine have merged into one de word class, and only neuter het stands apart.
- The verb goes to the end in subordinate clauses, and in some constructions you end up with a stack of three or four verbs at the end of the sentence.
- Gezellig has no English equivalent. It covers cosy, sociable and the particular warmth of good company in a small room.
- Afrikaans is its daughter, and the two are still close enough to read each other.
- The g is a scrape at the back of the throat in the north and a much softer sound in the south, which is the fastest way to place a speaker.
- Dat is Chinees voor mij. Dutch is one of about a dozen languages that end their chain of blame in the same place.
- Anything can be made small: a beer, a walk, a quick question.
The closest big language to English that English speakers never learn. Halfway to German at half the price, and twenty-four million people between two continents speak it. Amsterdam and Antwerp do business in English but bond in Dutch; the difference shows up in friendships and job offers alike.
Words with no translation
uitwaaien
OUT-vaa-yen
To walk in the wind on purpose, to clear your head.
Literally to out-blow yourself. The Dutch prescription for a heavy head: go where the wind is, let it strip the noise off you, come back lighter. A walk with a job to do.
voorpret
VOR-pret
The pleasure taken in advance of a thing you are looking forward to.
Pre-fun: the Dutch joy of the trip before the trip, savoured while booking, packing, imagining. Research keeps confirming what the word already knew: anticipation is half the holiday.
gunnen
KHUN-nen
To be glad someone gets a thing, even when you wanted it yourself
The Dutch use it several times a week and English speakers need three sentences instead.
A relative of firgun in Hebrew, with a sharper edge: gunnen is most often said about the thing you lost, by the person who lost it.
Next to its neighbours
Where Dutch parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.
Where to practise it
Reading about a language is not speaking it. These are the places I would go to find someone to speak Dutch with.
The Dutch Passepartout is not out yet
Five printed pages that carry you through the arrival. Leave your address and you hear about it first, and nothing else.
Leaving takes one click.
Stories in Dutch
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.