h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is a great entry! I really enjoyed reading it. Being a Dutchman and fluent in both German and English, I recognise many of the difficulties presented here. Most of the 'mistakes' that the Germans make in English are equally well used by the Dutch. This is of course a result of Dutch being so closely related to German. This very same fact can lead to interesting situations between Germans and Dutch.
There are quite a few words that are written and pronounced exactly the same in both languages, but have a entirely different (or worse: only a slightly different) meaning. My favourite one is the word "Geil", in German roughly equivalent to the English "cool" (hip, great, fantastic), in Dutch it means "horny" or "randy".
The German word "Ofen" (heater) is very similar to the Dutch "oven" (stove). The Dutch word for a heater is "kachel", but in German a Kachel is a tile.
Finally a nice confusing circle: The German word "Wie" means "how" in English, but sounds and looks the same as the Dutch "wie". In English "wie" translates as "who". "Who" sounds like the Dutch word "hoe", but that is Dutch for "how", which is, as you have just seen "Wie" in German.

Cheers Proost Zum Wohl

Terry

I have started learning Dutch and have less problems with the examples you make if I forget the German and just come to it from the English. (this helps particularly to differentiate between na and naar which both translate into "nach" in German but have different meanings.)

"Geil" in German means "randy", Only in recent years has it been watered down to mean "great"!

This is a similar phenomenon to "terrible" which means "great" in French. But the dictionary meaning is the same as the English word "terrible" An English person coming to France might be forgiven for thinking that the French didn't know the real meaning of the word "terrible". Then again, these days, in English, "wicked" is seen as something positive.

On checking your page, I see that you are on line now and that you have been around since October 2002. Why haven't we met before?

Hello!

And I see that you are a musician and bass player and all sorts of weird things like that. Great!!

I have only been on H2G2 since last February, so maybe that's why we haven't met before. At first I wasn't very active, not quite knowing what to do, but I think I'm getting the hang of it now. I submitted my first entry just a few days ago.

And, yes, I am both a musician and a bassplayer . I played at a party last night and had a great time. It was at a large boathouse on the river Rhine, beautiful landscape, moonlit river, great audience and lots of nice . Feel a bit old today, though ...I just wonder how these old rock'n'rollers manage to do that every night?

How long have you been studying Dutch? And is it for any particular reason that you do that?

Terry