First, in response to Betty Janet's question, the first name Tjaard would be pronounced "Chart" (or thereabouts -- it's tyaart, but you run the T & Y together like a poncy pronunciation of "tiara.")
Now for some other stuff. Scheveningen is next to impossible. A hard sk sound at the beginning and forget the rest. You can find an MP3 clip on the Internet and listen to people saying it out loud. Jason says it was the test that they used to ferret out Nazis pretending to be Dutch -- make them pronounce Scheveningen. (Like we made people talk about the World Series here.)
mijnheer -- mih NEER
huiselijk (not a word you would expect to find; it means domestic or homey): HOW ser luck
Anything ending en is pronounced as if it ends er -- braden (my last name!) is pronounced BRAH-der and means to roast, fry or bake
Anything beginning with a G has that guttural ch sound, as in loch. So the cheese, gouda, is pronounced HOW da, as long as you have a phlegmy cold.
Mevrouw -- mer FROW
There's more, but no one made me a list to look up or ask Jason, so this will have to be enough for now. (It's late and I'm sleepy. And it's my birthday by all of 26 minutes. I am 54 and darn proud of it!)
Happy Birthday, Betty Magdalen!
Thanks, Betty Debbie! So far it's a lovely birthday. I got Jane Austen's Persuasion on CD (with the divine Juliet Stevenson reading it) -- Anne Elliot is my favorite Austen heroine. A book about Molesworth by Geoffrey Willan; these are wonderful cartoons and text about life at a public school called St. Custard's. (Very different sort of world to Betty's World, but she might well have read them as they were published in 1950s.)
ReplyDeleteThere are more presents for me at home, so I'm positively chomping at the bit to get home.
Thanks to all the Bettys -- this is the best blog evah! (Betty Ross thinks so too.)
More proof that we're related - Betty Keira and I BOTH love Persuasion.
ReplyDeleteI had to look up Molesworth(which sounds very fun, darn it!) I think Willan would go very well on my bookshelves next to P.G. Wodehouse and Margery Sharp.
Scheveningen--sk? er? What sort of language sadists are these? I learned German, for pity's sake, and flattered myself that I was at least less lost than Betty Debbie. Well that's torn it!
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing the research that other Betty's couldn't do and happy, happy birthday!
Happy Birthday!!
ReplyDeleteI'm a little disappointed to had been corrected in my language pronunciation skills. I can no longer mumble the unfamiliar words in my head. (Insert dutch curse word) While my high school German skills have come in handy, Dutch is truly unique with all the random js.
Yes to all of you -- Dutch is just weird (Wierd? which is pronounced VIE-art, btw).
ReplyDeleteI too studied German and it gets you a little bit of the way: W = the V sound, V = F sound, etc. but then they have to muck it up with the odd guttural GH noise and EN = er.
But, hey, we're all in together. Let's get a list going of names, words, places, and I'll work out some approximate phonetic pronunciations. It may not help when we get a group Betty Neels In Holland trip going and sound like utter tourists butchering Dutch, but it's better than nothing, right?
(I was floored by lijk = LUCK. That's just bizarre.)
I never took German in high school...I had one semester of Spanish in college and realized then that I have no aptitude for foreign language. That was the same semester I roomed with a girl from Denmark. Those Danes have a bit of that gutteral thing going too. (she wore wooden clogs around our second floor apartment, much to the dismay of our downstairs neighbors).
ReplyDeleteI like your Betty Neels in Holland idea...a lot.
I am sooo happy to have discovered this blog. Recently rediscovered the joy of Betty after decades of deprivation.
ReplyDeleteMagdalen: there were several Molesworth books. How To Be Topp is the first, I think or perhaps Down With Skool. I'm laughing just thinking about them.
The Danes are supposed to be the worst -- very sniffy about anyone who tried to speak Danish. I met a young woman who had been an exchange student and was living with a family in order to improve her Danish. One day, her host family had a big party with all the aunts & uncles & cousins invited. Uncle Jens said something at the dinner table, and then was really angry when the exchange student didn't laugh enough.
ReplyDeleteTurned out it had been a highly idiomatic joke, so she simply hadn't gotten it. It also turns out that not laughing at your elders & betters is a capital offense in Denmark. The host family had to explain that Miss here was an American girl. Uncle Jens eventually calmed down.
Still, she figured she must have been doing okay in Danish if Uncle Jens hadn't twigged to her being American before that!
Yes, yes, yes to a Betty Neels in Holland trip.
Miranda -- I've been told that what I got for my birthday was all four Molesworth books in one compact volume. I also follow him on Twitter; I've Tweeted you the link. :-)