> «maar ik kan een beetje maar Nederlands spreken» and I'm not even sure I'm supposed to use "maar" twice in that sentence or not.
“maar” can both mean “but” or “only” but you have to use it like this: «maar ik kan maar een beetje Nederlands spreken» literally translated as: «but I only can speak a little Dutch». A native speaker would use it twice.
I certainly considered the Netherlands… «maar ik kan een beetje maar Nederlands spreken» and I'm not even sure I'm supposed to use "maar" twice in that sentence or not.
(Sadly I don't even get to use the wonderful «Ik ben groot», because I'm only tall by non-Dutch standards).
Well, maybe we didn't go to the same school then ;)
There are no words in the English language that should be dismissed with prejudice, but is one of those.
I'm not a 'native' speaker (or writer), the dutch for 'but' is 'maar', and it indicates a modification of the first part of the sentence, a qualifier.
It does not negate the preceding part but it detracts from it, so I mean that to read (and I'll try to avoid the use of 'but')
I take your word for the research, HN will have some of that that, given the general level of discourse here and having read extensively in both articles written by HN'ers and the comments I have yet to see your point proven but it is bound to be true to some extent.
Supposing, of course, that this is an ESL problem, I'd expect the original Dutch sentence to have used the Dutch word 'men', which means the same as the English 'one' as in "one must not ...", or the 'man' in 'mankind'.
It never occurred to me that this might be a language problem, but I do find it somehow hilarious to imagine a Dutch person saying that (assuming you've translated the sentence literally). This makes me wonder how, shall we say, zany we must generally appear to the Dutch. It also makes me wonder how many other such misunderstandings are lurking under the surface with continental Europeans who appear (damn you) to have native-speaker-level command of English.
> Dutch is probably the closest language to English that isn’t a dialect of English.
I still remember hearing two Dutch guys speak in Dutch, I thought there were speaking in English but then I realised I dont understand what they are saying.
> The name of the country is the Netherlands, not Netherland.
I disagree. I'm Dutch[0], and I find it stupid that English speakers always pluralise our country. We've been a unified country for quite some time now. Netherland is fine.
[0] Yeah, "Dutch" is another one of those weird things that English inflicts on us. Why?
> I don't find myself stuck trying to translate Dutch all the time
Dutch is close enough to English that you can eyeball it for a lot of things with just a little basic work: e.g. in the subways where "houd uw kaart op de lezer" (iirc) is "hold your card on the reader"
The Dutch name "eenmaal" means "once" but can also be
read as "een maal" meaning "a meal" or in this case,
as "één maal" meaning "one meal". Cute worldplay...
I wouldn't say bad, but I would say it is often spoken without the nuance of a native speaker. In my experience Dutch peoples' English is strongly influenced by Dutch.
“maar” can both mean “but” or “only” but you have to use it like this: «maar ik kan maar een beetje Nederlands spreken» literally translated as: «but I only can speak a little Dutch». A native speaker would use it twice.
reply