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

A crab is known in dutch as "krab", the plural is "krabben" (literally "to scratch").

"Whale" is "Walvis" - literally a "land-fish".

"Dolphin" is known as "Dolfijn", but also as "tuimelaar" - literally "tumbler".

The dutch word for "lake" is "meer", the german word is "See"
The dutch word for "sea" is "zee", the german word is "Meer"
(no, I'm not mistakenly switching anything, it *really* is that confusing!)

How about a vacuum-cleaner... the dutch call it "stofzuiger" - literally "dust-sucker"

A baby (as long as they're breast-fed) is a "zuigeling" - literally "sucker"

yes - the german vacuum-cleaner would be "Staubsauger", meaning dust-sucker too - same with the babe, spellt "Säugling"
I always liked the direct translation of "Autobahn", meaning highway/motorway - car-train. apparently they thought of traffic jams.
If you change gears there, you change courses/gaits/corridors/aisles/burrowings - "Gaenge", sing. "Gang" - which means all of this and has absolutely nothing to do with the gangs policemen try to get rid of.

oh yes jam - it's "Marmelade" in german. marmalade would be "(Orangen)konvituere"

and if you have sore muscels in Germany, you have a muscle-tomcat "Muskelkater" (It's called charley horse, too in english I just read - which I find pretty strange).

Working for the fire brigade means working for the "fire barrage" in german - "Feuerwehr"

There's the famous glow-pear, too, which you can't harvest, unfortunately - it's a light-bulb or "Glühbirne".

animals.... a mule would be a mouth-animal or muzzle-beast, in german "Maultier", not to be confused with a mole = "Maulwurf", meaning mouth-throw ("Mole" meaning pier, and "Maul" having nothing to do with to maul something...).

Nice game, this is

Hi kats-eyes, welcome to this one

Highway is "snelweg" in dutch, meaning "fast-way".

The German "Gaenge" are confusing

Gangs are called "bendes" over here in holland, but a "bende" is literally a "mess"

And what about a railroad? The German "Eisenbahn" actually means "Iron-track", the dutch "spoorweg" is a "track-way".

Jam is the common "dutch" term too, only few people use "confiture", which is actually the french word for the same thing. And for "Orangen-konfituere" we use the original "Marmelade"

When you have lot of muscles, the dutch call you "dubbelgespierd" (double-muscled), and also "dubbelgespierde kleerkast" (double-muscled ward-robe).

A mule is "muilezel" (muzzle-ass, where "ass" is not referring to someones backside ), or "muildier" (muzzle-animal).

A lightbulb is called "peertje" (small pear) or "gloeilamp" (glow-lamp)

The fire brigade is "brandweer", which is analogous to the german "Feuerwehr".

We're having fun, aren't we?

we do

I like this "double-muscled ward-robe"-thing....
I apologize aforehand for the spamming now to follow - but Festival, you surely know dutch tongue twisters! could you help me out with a few?? pleeeeaaaase..... post'em here: http://www.h2g2.com/A181054

Yeah, that ward-robe is heavy, huh?

There are more like that one... I just can't think of them right now

Ah wait... I saw your tongue-twisters page before... I'll check it out again soon, but I'm not sure if I can help much. We'll see