LL-L "Language contacts" 2003.09.22 (09) [D/E]

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From: burgdal32admin <burgdal32 at pandora.be>
Subject: English=Dutch: etymology

Hi Lowlanders,

Some days ago i wrote about an interesting article in an annual. Today i got
the permission to copie it for our forum.
The book is called "The Low Countries" (Arts and society in Flanders and the
netherlands). They publisher "Ons Erfdeel" prints regurarly in Dutch, French
and English, about the Flemish-Dutch heritage...
Here is the interesting article for us , Lowlanders:
(I hope i scanned it without faults)

ENGLISH = DUTCH

A Dossier of Compelling Evidence
History has left many a Dutch mark on the English language. There is a
sizeable English vocabulary of Dutch origin, such as beer (bier),frolic
(vrolijk), mate (maat) and pancake (pannekoek); and borrowing from Dutch is
an ongoing process, as witness recent additions like apartheid, coffeeshop,
lekker and gabber music. But while these words are in frequent everyday use,
their origin is largely unknown and forgotten today. 'We are not conscious
that the words "brandy ", "cruller ", "golf ', "duck " (light canvas),
"isinglass ", ,, measles", "selvage", "wagon", "uproar" arefrom the Dutch.'
(Baugh & Cable 1978, p. 9). It may therefore be of interest to consider in
some more detail the historical background and development of this Dutch
element in English.

Cultural and linguistic contacts across the North Sea
The Dutch loan words above reflect many centuries of cultural interaction
and language contact across the North Sea. From the Norman Conquest onwards
this traffic has brought many things and words from the Low Countries to the
British isles - in trade and commerce, fishing and whaling, maritime and
colonial rivalry, warfare and navigation, but also in water management,
brewing and mining, agriculture and gardening, the textile industry, crafts,
industries, art, science, printing and literature.
In io66 William the Conqueror brought with him considerable numbers of
Flemish troops and craftsmen. In the early twelfth century Flemish colonists
who were 'highly skilled in the wool trade' settled in many different areas,
from the southern coast of Wales to the Scottish borders and East Anglia.
Often the only trace they have left is a place name, such as Flemingston in
Wales or Flemington near Glasgow. Elsewhere it may be a street name like The
Strand in Central London, which reminds us that once upon a time - and
really not so very long ago: it was still in use in 1952 -Londoners did have
a beach (Dutch strand) along the north bank of the river Thames.
These settlers and colonists from the Low Countries brought new industry and
technology. The draining of the Fens in East Anglia, first by Flemish monks
and later by Dutch engineers, brought with it words like sluice(sluis),
canal (kanaal) and morass (moeras). In agriculture we find Dutch words like
hack (hak), yoke Ouk), buckwheat (boekweit) and butter (boter). Words like
clock (klok), drill (drillen) and besom (bezem) were introduced by Dutch and
Flemish craftsmen - clockmakers, glaziers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, joiners,
coopers, pouchmakers, potters, surgeons and scriveners. And with the
production and consumption of alcohol came words like brewery (brouwerij),
hop (hop), geneva Oenever) which was later shortened to gin, booze (buizen)
and drunkard (dronkaard).
In the seventeenth century the economic dominance of Amsterdam brought new
financial institutions such as the Bank of England, and the socalled 'Dutch
tax' of 1644 on meat, victuals, salt, starch, textile goods and other
commodities. Here too we find words like check (strictly American) or
cheque, mint (munt), lottery (loterij), bluff (bluffen) and swindle
(zwendel), and words for money like guilder (gulden), doit (duit), stiver
(stuiver), dollar (daalder) and, in American English, dime. The last word
goes back to 1585, when the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin, in his
pioneering pamphlet The Tenth (De Thiende), proposed to introduce the
decimal system in society, for 'Money-masters, Marchants, and Landmeaters'.
His French translation, La Disme, came out in the same year; and in 16o8
Robert Norton's English translation, Disme: the Art of Tenths; or, Decimall
Arithmetike, was published in London. But Stevin's revolutionary proposal
had to wait almost two hundred years before it was eventually adopted in the
United States (in Great Britain it took another two centuries before the
penny - or rather the shilling - finally dropped).
In 1648 the first substantial Dutch-English dictionary was published in
Rotterdam, A Copious English and Netherduytch Dictionarie, compiled by the
soldier, translator and scholar Henry Hexham. Through-him and other English
mercenaries in the Eighty Years War the English language acquired Dutch
military words such as booty (buit), beleaguer (belegeren), quartermaster
(kwartiermeester), knapsack (knapzak), plunder (plunderen), tattoo (taptoe)
and blunderbuss (donderbus).
In naval and maritime terminology we find large numbers of Dutch loan
words - for things related to ships such as bowsprit (boegspriet), deck
(dek), keel (kiel), ballast (ballast), freight (vracht), and wagoner (a book
of charts for nautical use); for the vessels themselves like sloop (stoep),
schooner (schoener) and hooker (the common, not the happy variety); and for
sailors' jobs like gybe (gijpen), dock (dok), smuggle (smokkelen), splice
(splitsen), steer (sturen) and aloof (aan loef). At sea the Dutch language
provided words for buoy (boei), ebb (eb), lee (Iij), maelstrom (maalstroom),
reef (rif) and wrack (wrak); and names for all kinds of sea creatures from
whiting (wijting) to walrus (walrus). Ranks on board were known by their
Dutch names as skipper (schipper) and boatsman (bootsman); and
bothfreebooter andfilibuster (via Spanish) derive from Dutch vrijbuiter. In
all the harbours along the North Sea sailors used a common lingo, and this
helps to explain how vulgar slang and taboo words from Dutch entered into
English, such asfucking (fokkinge), cunt (conte), crap (krappe) and shite
(schijten). Today it would seem the loan is being repaid with interest, as
English shit! is now the most common and popular exclamation in Dutch.
The Dutch maritime expansion led to settlement in all continents - in South
Africa, the Americas and Australasia - where the Dutch often lived and
worked in close contact with English speakers. In the United States, at the
time of independence, Dutch narrowly failed to be adopted as the national
language; the Roosevelt dynasty was of Dutch descent; and New York in
particular had a strong Dutch character. Dutch remained in use there till
the early part of the twentieth century, and has left many traces - place
names such as Harlem (Haarlem), Wall Street (Walstraat) and Coney Island
(Konijne eiland); common words like boss (baas), cookie (koekie), burgher
(burger), coleslaw (koolsla), snoop (snoepen), spook (spook) and poppycock
(pappekak); the nickname Yankee (from Janke, Jantje); and the myth of Santa
Claus (from Sinterklaas, i,e. St Nicholas, the maritime patron saint of the
Dutch) and his sleigh (slec). In South African English too, there are many
Dutch loan words such as aardvark, springbok and wildebeest, boer, bush,
trek, veld and outspan (uitspannen).
In the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) Dutch acted as an
intermediary for the adoption into English of words from Malay and other
Oriental languages, like amuck (amok), cockatoo (kaketoe), orang-outang
(orangoetan) and tea (from Dutch thee < Malay teh <Amoy Chinese t'e). The
famous Hobson-Jobson dictionary of Anglo-Indian usage contains many examples
of the linguistic adaptation processes that are at work here, involving the
English speakers' talent for word play, pidginisation, mispronunciation and
folk etymology. Thus, decoy miraculously derives from Dutch eendekooi, and
scorbut from Dutch scheurbuik (scurvy).
In the field of art, painting and drawing many Dutch words were borrowed:
easel (ezel), sketch (schets) and maulstick (maalstok), to name but three.
Around i8co, if one wanted a masterpiece, one simply went and bought a
vandyke. The case of landscape (landschap) is interesting in that its
suffix -scape has become productive in modem English, witness words like
seascape, cloudscape and - as C.S. Lewis has it - the 'great skyscapes of
East Anglia'. Today this is followed by further new formations like
artscape, soundscape, cityscape and even mindscape.
In literature and the sciences we find a similar Dutch influence. If William
Shakespeare was not actually a Fleming, it is not impossible that he visited
the Low Countries as a soldier or an actor. Milton certainly knew Dutch and
may have benefitted from Vondel's tragedy Lucifer (1654) when writing his
Paradise Lost (1667). Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift - they all
knew and used Dutch models, and Gulliver spoke Dutch well enough to pass for
a Dutchman. But then, he had been a student at the University of Leyden (now
Leiden), where so many other English and Scottish students went in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to study medicine, law or theology.
These students, and publishers like Elsevier, were instrumental in the
exchange of ideas and knowledge and the dissemination in the British isles
of disciplines like anatomy, botany and plant names such as tulip (tulp),
daffodil and nettle (netel). Later on, however, much of this was forgotten,
due to the intense linguistic rivalry that developed between the Dutch and
the English in the late eighteenth century, and the ensuing dominance of
English. This rivalry generated many strongly negative stereotypes and
pejorative expressions such as Dutch cap (contraceptive diaphragm), Dutch
courage (geneva), Dutch gold (cheap copper leaf), Dutch uncle (boring old
pedant) and Dutch wife (guling, or sleeping pillow). A key element in this
rivalry was the depiction of Dutch as Double Dutch (gibberish), or even, as
James Boswell put it, 'a language fit only for horses'.
Last but not least there is the domain of sport and games. Cricket goes back
to a Flemish phrase, 'met de krik ketsen', literally 'to chase with a curved
stick'. This was shortened to krikets, which finally became cricket, as John
Eddowes relates in his The Language of Cricket (1997). The noble game of
golf, first recorded in Scotland in 1457, was known in the Low Countries in
136o as kolf - a game in which the players had to get a small, hard ball
into a hole in the turf or lawn with as few strokes of their club as
possible. In winter the game was played on ice, as one can see in the Golden
Age paintings of Hendrick Avercamp. And today, in the age of football, we
have the case of Brooklyn - the name David Beckham and his wife gave their
first-bom son, after the New York borough where he was conceived. But would
the Beckhams know that this name goes back to the Dutch village of
Breukelen - which also figures in the last name of one of Holland's most
renowned goalkeepers, Jan van Breukelen?

A common ancestor: lngvaeonic
The presence of so many words of Dutch origin in the English language
reflects a shared past, a common North Sea culture, and a remarkable
openness on the part of English speakers to new words adopted from abroad.
However, much the same could be said for the presence of words from French,
Latin and other, more exotic languages in English. That is, the history of
contact and borrowing, though interesting and important, can tell us only so
much, and it is only when we move beyond it that we discover a far more
intimate connection between Dutch and English than between, say, English and
French. For although the number of French and Latin loan words in English is
quite substantial, they do not occur in the inner core of its grammatical
system, amongst its pronouns, articles and demonstratives, its prepositions
and conjunctions, in its inflections and its syntax. And it is precisely
here that Dutch and English share a wide range of common elements.
There are many nouns that point to a deeper relationship between English and
Dutch than we have seen so far. We find cognate words in the domain of
family / kinship - daughter (dochter), wife (wijf) and nephew (neef); names
for body parts - lip (lip), tongue (tong), elbow (elleboog), thigh (dij),
knee (knie), shin (scheen) and ankle (enkel); for domestic animals - cat
(kat), hen (hen), sheep (schaap), cow (koe), swallow (zwaluw) and bee (bij);
plants and trees - beech (beuk), oak (eik), birch (berk) and willow (wilg);
the seasons and the weather - summer (zomer), winter (winter), day (dag),
night (nacht), snow (sneeuw), rain (regen), wind (wind) and sunshine
(zonneschijn).
We find similar close correspondences in other parts of the
grammaticalsystem. The two languages have in common not just weak verbs like
babble(babbelen), bake (bakken), hope (hopen) and knead (kneden), hut in
particular also many strong verbs which are much older, such as
think-thoughtthought (denken-dacht-gedacht), see-saw-seen (zien-zag-gezien)
and swimnd there are common adverbs and adjectives such as blue (blauw),
naked (naakt), handy (handig), thick (dik), long (lang), gruff (grof), full
(vol), cool (koel), tight (dicht), enough (genoeg), sickly (ziekelijk),
manly (mannelijk) and openly (openlijk).
Beyond this, the two languages have many other kinds of words in common.
Common pronouns are you Oou), me (mij), mine (mijn), him (hem), it (het) and
himself (hemzelf); common articles and demonstratives are the (de), an
(een), this (deze), that (dat), here (hier) and there (daar); common
numerals are three (drie), seven (zeven), eleven (elf), twenty (twintig) and
hundred (honderd). Common prepositions are in (in), over (over), for (voor),
under (onder), to (te/toe/tot) and around (rond); common conjunctions are
since (sinds), when (wanneer), than (dan), as (als) and while (terwijl);
common question words are where (waar) and what (wat); and common
interjections are ahoy, now (nou), well (wel), yea Oa) and Ach (ach).
And then there are remarkable correspondences between the sounds, syntax and
grammatical inflections of the two languages. We find regular sound change
in the following pairs, where English ou corresponds to the vowel ui that is
so typical of Dutch: out (uit), clout (kluit), snout (snuit), spout (spuit),
sprout (spruit), grout (gruit), loud (luid), south (zuid), mouth (muide),
house (huis), louse (luis), mouse (muis), owl (uil), howl (huilen),foul
(vuil), rough (ruig), thousand (duizend), brown (bruin), crown (kruin), down
(duin) and town (tuin). In inflection there are common affixes such as be-
in be-devil (beduvelen) and -er in baker, but also the common plural
ending -s for nouns (baker-s, bakker-s), the endings -er and -est in
comparatives and superlatives (great-erlgreat-est, groter / grootst), and
the -lyl-lijk endings we saw in the adverbs. In syntax, finally, we note
that Dutch and English have very similar ways of stringing their words
together in sentences. Shakespeare's English employs many Dutch
constructions - a form of address like 'Min alderlefest sovereign' (Mijn
allerliefste soeverein), a greeting formula such as 'How now?' (Hoe nu?),
and questions like 'What think you, sailors?' (Wat denken jullie, zeelui?)
and 'How is it with you?' (Hoe is het met jou?). Similar evidence is
available from seventeenth-century polyglot conversation books intended for
merchants travelling through Europe, where we find striking similarities
between spoken English and Dutch sentences like 'Have you good wine?' (Hebt
u goede wijn?), 'Hath your horse droncke?' (Heeft uw paard gedronken?) and
'Howfare you?' (Hoe vaart ge?). And today this is no different: an English
sentence like 'Come here now, Peter, will yer, 'tis so cool here in the
boat' is almost literally the same as its Dutch equivalent 'Kom hier nou,
Pieter, wil je, 't is zo koel hier in de boot'.
All these many different correspondences point to a connection between the
two languages that goes far deeper than could be explained just by a history
of contact and borrowing. So, instead, we must explore an alternative
explanation, viz. that the two languages have a common ori gin and share a
common ancestor. It is generally assumed today that this common ancestor
language was the so-called Ingvaeonic or North Sea Gemianic, which around AD
100-500 comprised the dialects of the Frisians, the Angles, the Jutes and
the Saxons. Clear traces of this can be found on both sides of the North
Sea - in place names such as Norwich (Noordwijk), Bentham (Benthem),
Plymouth (Pleimuiden), Amersham (Amersfoort) and 'Nes' in Skegness (and
Dutch Eemnes); and in shared words like five (vijf), island (eiland), ladder
(ladder), mare (merrie), bull (bul), wheel (wiel) and little (luttel).

The original language is Dutch

The Ingvaeonic hypothesis is in line with what the printer William Caxton
observed, back in the fifteenth century, viz. that Old English was much
,more like to Dutch than to English' - something that is certainly true of
Chaucer's work. Since then, however, it is English that has changed the
most, for ...'if that linguistic cataclysm, the Norman Conquest of io66, had
not occurred, the English today might speak a language not unlike modern
Dutch" (McCrum et al. 1986, P. 58). It is therefore reasonable to suppose,
not that the two languages share a common ancestor, but rather, quite
simply, that Dutch is the older. The Dutch have known this for centuries. As
the Antwerp humanist Joannes Goropius Becanus demonstrated in his Origines
Antverpianae (1569), Dutch was actually the language spoken in Paradise. His
argument was that, as a rule, older words are shorter, and since Dutch has
more short words than either English, French, Latin, Greek or Hebrew, it
clearly must be older. His younger contemporary, the mathematician Simon
Stevin, added from a slightly different perspective that, of all the
languages in the world, Dutch was best-suited to expressing ideas, because
of its many mono-syllabic base words and the ease with which it can produce
new word-combinations to express new ideas.
These insights are alive and well in the Netherlands today - for example in
the recent claim of the Duizenddichter poet of Amsterdam, that all languages
derive from Dutch - although this is still a bit contentious with the
Ffisians, who make the same claim for their own language in the epic Oera
Linda Bok (1872). The Duizenddichter starts from the fact that Adam (< Dutch
adem, breath) was the first human being to receive a Dutch name. He also
reminds us of the fact that the Dutch are the only people in the world who
give each other letters as presents each year on the fifth of December, when
they celebrate St Nicholas' birthday. And he supports his theory with many
striking examples of etymological derivation. Thus, English teacher
obviously comes from 'Diets-heer' (= master of Dutch), erudite from
'eeruw-Diets' (= honour your Dutch), and alphabet derives not from Greek
'alpha-beta' but from Dutch 'al-van-bute'-Ieren (= learning everything by
heart).
Recently the Dutch linguist Hugo Brandt Corstius has taken this tradition
into the twenty-first century by portraying Dutch as the natural world
language of the future. In a flashback from the year 2ogg he recalls the
Nobelprize winning invention by two Dutch scientists working in the field of
advanced language technology, who discovered the so-called 'DNA of inanimate
objects', which assigns each and every object in the world its natural,
generic name in a universal letter code. Take, for example, S-T-O-E-L.
Though this happens to be Dutch for chair, what really matters is that this
is now the one and only true name of this object, and therefore, inevitably,
all resistance from other languages such as English and Spanish has proved
futile.
And so, as we now see, Dutch truly is the once and future language. Take any
of the basics - money, booze, sex, sports, the weather - and the Dutch have
a word for it. This in turn helps to explain why all the other languages in
the world - including English - are so easy for the Dutch and for those who
know Dutch. So my modest proposal would be for the English to take Dutch as
their first foreign language, and to follow the traditional Dutch recipe for
successful language learning. The key is to start early, taking a language
that is a close cognate, hence not too difficult. This will produce early
success, which then breeds further success, and lays the foundation for
learning other languages. So, the first foreign language to be learned by
the English in school should not be the traditional bourgeois French, nor
solid German, nor even popular Spanish, but simply Dutch, the mother of all
mongrel languages (and also, it seems, an effective antidote to dyslexia).
If the English were to follow this advice, who knows, one day they may
become just as proficient in languages as the Dutch.

The Dutch you know already - English words of Dutch origin, with dates of
first recorded usage
A anchor (1692) < anker (1240)
B brandy (1622) < brandewyn (1300-1350)
C clock (1664) < klok (1237)
D dike (chaucer) < dijk (1035)
E etch (1634) < etsen (1573)
F furlough (1625)< verlof (1361)
G geneva (1706) < jenever (1606)
H hop (1440) < hoppe (1376-1400)
I iceberg (1 774)< ijsberg (Middle Dutch)
K keelhaul (1666)< kielhalen (1590)
L landscape (1598)< landschap (1240)
M monkey (1530)< ?manneke (1498)
N nip (1430)< nijpen (1360)
0 overall (1596) < overal (1240)
P pickle-herring (1570)< pekelharing (1500-1525)
Q quacksalver (1579) < kwakzalver (1390-1460)
R rack (1305)< rek (1287)
5 skate (1 648)< schaats (1567)
T tide (1435< getijde (1236)
U uproar (16th c< oproer (1537)
V vane (158 1 )< vaan (1170)
W waffle (1808) < wafel (1450)
Y yacht (1557) < jacht (1528)
Z zebra (1600) < zebra (1596)

Double Dutch
In 1994-1995 Dutch brewers Oranieboom launched their beer on the London
market with an eyecatching campaign of Double Dutch (It helps if you read it
out loud in English).
1 . Stuf de tur kei ei mof vooeaan Oranie6c>om
2. Take uur tast buds
voor aar rij de
3. U vil nijver hier aan ie tin negatief a bout de tast of Oranieboom
4. Zeems lik dubbel Dutje?
Wel, zuur prijs,
zuur prijs, et ijs

REINIER SALVERDA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BARNOUW, A.J., Monthly Letters on the Culture and History ofthe Netherlands.
Assen, ig6g.
BAUGH, ALBERT c. and THOMAS CABLE, A History of the English Language.
London, 1978.
BENSE, J.F., A Dictionary of the Low-Dutch Element in the English
Vocabulary. The Hague, 1926.
BRANDT CORSTIUS, HUGO, '2000-2ogg; Neew Neelans'. In: Peter Burger & Jaap de
Jong (red.), Taalboek van de eeuw. The Hague / Antwerp, 1999. pp. 227-23 I.
EDDOWES, JOHN, The Language ofcricket. Manchester, 1997-
HALEY, K.H.D., The British & The Dutch. Political and Cultural Relations
through the Ages.
London,1988.
LLEWELLYN, E.C., The Influence of the Low Dutch on the English Vocabulary.
Oxford London,1936.
MCARTHUR, TOM, The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford, 1996.
MCCRUM, ROBERT, WILLIAM CRAN and ROBERT MACNEIL, The Story ofenglish.
London, 1986.
OSSELTON, N.E., The Dumb Linguists. A Study ofthe Earliest English and Dutch
Dictionaries. Leiden/ Oxford, 1973.
RIZZA, RICCARDO (ed.), Colloquia, et Dictionariolum Octo Linguarum.
Viareggio / Lucca, 1996.
TOORIANS, LAURAN, 'Flemish in Wales.' In: Glanville Price (ed.), Languages
in
Britain and Ireland. Oxford, 2000. pp. 184- 186.
VAN DER SIJS, NICOLINE, Geleend en uitgeleend: Nederlandse woorden in andere
talen en culturen. Amsterdam, 1998.
VAN DER SIJS, NICOLINE, Chronologisch woordenboek. De ouderdom en herkomst
van onze woorden en betekenissen. Amsterdam 1 Antwerpen, 2001.
WRENN, C.L., The English Language. London, 1966.
www.ucl.ac.uk/dutch: Study pack History of the Dutch Language

Groetjes
luc vanbrabant
oekene

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