I've been noticing a very specific new pattern on YouTube lately: commenters under urban planning videos that talk about the Netherlands, saying that such-and-such is actually hated by Dutch people, or considered a mistake, or a waste of tax money, or whatever... only to be immediately contradicted by a bunch of other Dutch folks and then the original commenter either starts arguing some fallacious bullshit or just disappears.
Now it's not like Dutch people can't be making bullshit claims, but I find it suspicious how this is suddenly starting to happen across *multiple* urban planning channels, and none of the suspicious commenters seem to have any of the linguistic tells of a natively-Dutch English speaker.
@joepie91 only tangentially related, but every Dutch person I've heard speaking English either had a very strong accent or sounded like a native English speaker with either a perfect American or RP accent lmao
@hazelnot There's a subset of Dutch people who speak very good English, pretty much indistinguishable from native speakers, yeah - but they're not really the majority. The majority have the typical "stone coal English" accent and weird sentence constructions.
Given the demographic of Dutch people who use YouTube, it's therefore very suspicious when *none* of the commenters have those linguistic tells. There should be at least *some* who speak imperfect English...
@joepie91 Interesting. Yeah I thought the perfect English ones were the *only* kinda cause I was like "oh well Dutch and English are pretty close so maybe that's just what it sounds like"
To be fair my sample consisted entirely of YouTubers like PJiggles and... probably more but I forgot their names, first time I realized there is actually a Dutch accent was when I came across Marcel Vos' channel and thought he was French or something at first lol
@hazelnot Oh, Marcel Vos' accent isn't even that bad. You should hear the typical Dutch person :)
The reality is that a large chunk of the population just doesn't ever interact with English-language communities unless the subject is the Netherlands (for nationalism reasons), so "Dutch people in English communities" end up being a very narrow demographic that speaks unusually good Dutch.
@joepie91 That's even more surprising considering the reputation Dutch people have (i.e. everyone speaks good English, to the point where some young Dutch people think Dutch is cringe and just choose to speak English instead)
@hazelnot Well, I wouldn't say everyone speaks *good* English. It's true that any one person you speak to in NL is likely to be able to communicate with you in English, but it's going to be pretty stilted outside of the major city centers especially.
It's likely true that younger generations are more likely to grow up speaking English commonly, mainly due to there not really being any Dutch social media left, but that's only really younger generations.
@joepie91 Yeahhh that's a problem in many places, people just find the cultures they were raised in "cringe" just cause it's not American culture >.>
It used to mostly be a thing in former colonies like Canada and Australia and Brazil (in relation to Portugal in that case) and stuff but lately it seems to be happening to just, countries in the US' sphere of influence even if they're not directly under its control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe
(apologies if you already knew all this lmao)
@hazelnot I did not! Thanks :)
@joepie91 Oh ok I was wrong, the bit about Brazil was in relation to both European cultures and the US, not specifically Portugal
@joepie91 Fair enough. It's kind of a thing in Romania as well, with urban middle class young people (including myself even though I'm not that young anymore) speaking "Romglish" and just mixing and matching words and sentences from both languages
I've kinda consciously tried to stop myself from using it as much as I used to cause I don't like the idea that I'm complicit in my own imperalization by the US, but when hanging out with certain people it becomes painfully obvious how much I still do it lol
@hazelnot I do mix-and-match languages quite a lot, but not just when speaking with Dutch folks; I likewise tend to use Dutch idioms when speaking to non-Dutch folks and then translate/explain them. That's what ended up working best for me, and also nicely counterbalances the cultural imperialism thing a bit.
@joepie91 Oh cool, when I'm with friends from other countries I just incessantly tell them about various interesting linguistic facts and funny expressions in Romanian hahah
@hazelnot Tangent: personally I've found that Dutch is better at emotional and metaphorical language, whereas English is better at explanatory language.
I therefore can't help but see "Dutch is cringe" in light of the increasing individualism and suppression of emotions in the culture here...