Vocabulary
Dutch words in English, and the English words every Dutch text uses
Dutch words in English are more common than most people expect: yacht, skipper, cookie, coleslaw, boss, landscape, easel and Santa Claus all started as Dutch words, most of them in the 17th century, when Dutch ships, Dutch painters and the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam were everywhere the English looked. The tables below give each English word with the Dutch word behind it and how it traveled. Then the other direction, which is the useful part for a learner: the English words a Dutch text uses as they are (computer, weekend, sorry, oké), the Dutch words you already half know (water, huis, boek, appel, melk) and the false friends to watch.
Dutch words in English: the list, by route
Most of these words arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries, the last ones with the Dutch of New York in the 18th and 19th, and nearly all of them belong to three worlds: the sea and trade, painting, and the kitchen and the street of the old Dutch colony in America. The tables give the English word, the Dutch word behind it, what that word means in Dutch today and when English took it, as the etymological dictionaries date it. Read them the other way around too: jacht, dek, baas, koekje and stoep are words you will meet in any Dutch text.
Ships, trade and war
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Painting
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Food and drink
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American English: New Amsterdam and after
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A few more came by way of Afrikaans, the language that grew out of Dutch in South Africa: aardvark is the Afrikaans form of Dutch aardvarken, earth pig, and trek is Dutch trekken, to pull, the word for the long journeys by ox wagon.
Some words appear on every list of Dutch words in English and are less certain than the lists suggest. Dollar came through Low German, or Dutch, daler from German Taler, a silver coin from Bohemia; the Dutch daalder is a cousin, not the source. Yankee was first recorded in 1683, a name the Dutch of New York, the old New Amsterdam, gave the English in Connecticut, but nobody knows where it came from: Janke, little Jan, is one guess among several. Bluff, in the poker sense, is perhaps from bluffen, to brag, and knapsack is given as Low German, with Dutch knapzak as a parallel form. The dictionaries hedge on these, so this page does too.
Where the words came from: the 17th century
The pattern in the tables is the pattern of the 17th century. The Dutch Republic was then the leading sea power and trading nation of Europe, its ships were in every port, and English sailors and merchants took the words for ships, boats and ways of sailing from the people who built the best of them. At the same time Dutch painting was famous across Europe, and the words of the studio came to England with the pictures: landscape, easel, sketch.
The second wave came from America. In 1624 the Dutch founded the colony of New Netherland; a year later New Amsterdam rose at the tip of Manhattan; in 1664 the English took it and renamed it New York. The Dutch stayed, and so did their words for the things of daily life: the baas at work, the stoep in front of the house, the koekjes, the Sinterklaas of December. Brooklyn and Harlem still carry the names of Breukelen and Haarlem.
The other direction: English words in every Dutch text
Open any Dutch text at A1 or A2 and you will find English words in it, written as Dutch spells them and said with Dutch sounds. The computer, the weekend, the team, the baby, sorry, oké and e-mail are all ordinary Dutch. For a beginner they are a gift: a Dutch sentence with weekend in it has one word fewer to learn.
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English verbs take Dutch endings. Mailen, scannen and lunchen are weak Dutch verbs: ik mail, hij mailt, ik heb gemaild; zij scant, ze heeft gescand. The spelling follows the Dutch rules, so the past participle of scannen ends in a d, gescand, as the A1 text Controle writes it.
Hearing these words is harder than reading them: a Dutch speaker says weekend with a Dutch w and sorry with a Dutch r. The sounds are on Dutch pronunciation.
Cognates: the Dutch words you already half know
Dutch and English are close relatives, both West Germanic languages, and the oldest, most common words show it. These are the words of an A1 text: the house, the food, the weather, the family, the things you do every day. Most of them are in the 1,000 most common Dutch words, with a list you can download.
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Many more cognates hide behind a regular change of sound. Once you have seen the pattern a few times, a new word in a text looks familiar before you have looked it up.
| Dutch | English | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| oe | oo | boek book, voet foot, goed good, koel cool |
| ij | i | ijs ice, wijn wine, rijst rice, tijd time, mijn mine |
| ou | ol | oud old, koud cold, goud gold |
| oo | ea | brood bread, dood dead |
| k | ch | kaas cheese, kerk church, kin chin |
| d | th | dat that, drie three, dik thick, denken to think, vader father |
| v | f | vier four, vijf five, vis fish, vol full, vinden to find |
| z | s | zon sun, zee sea, zout salt, zeven seven, zingen to sing |
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This shared vocabulary is the main reason Dutch is one of the easier languages for an English speaker; what is hard about it is on Is Dutch hard to learn?. The spellings in the table stand for sounds English does not have, such as the Dutch ij and g: how to say them is on Dutch pronunciation.
False friends: Dutch words that look English and are not
A few common Dutch words look exactly like an English word and mean something else. They are worth learning as a set, because the wrong reading is so natural that you will not notice it.
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Slim and braaf are words a child hears every day; eventueel turns up in forms and letters, where it means if applicable, never in the end. And snoep, from the table above, is candy: the Dutch word that gave English snoop.
See it in a text
The free texts on this site are full of both: English words the Dutch use as their own, and Dutch words an English speaker can guess. Each sentence below is quoted word for word from its text.
- ‘Sorry,’ zegt Rahul. “Sorry,” says Rahul. (The English word, used as Dutch. De grijze bak, A1)
- ‘Lunch!’ roept de juf. De kinderen doen hun broodtrommel open. “Lunch!” the teacher calls. The children open their lunch boxes. (Lunch is English; broodtrommel, bread tin, is the Dutch for the box it comes in. De volle broodtrommel, A1)
- Ze heeft de melk twee keer gescand! She has scanned the milk twice. (The English verb with the Dutch past participle, ge- and -d, next to melk, milk. Controle, A1)
- Marktplaats is een website. Mensen verkopen daar hun oude spullen. Marktplaats is a website. People sell their old things there. (Een nieuwe fiets, A2)
- Ze kijkt op Buienradar. Dat is een app voor het weer. She looks at Buienradar. That is an app for the weather. (App is English; weer is the cousin of weather. Het weer in Nederland, A2)
- Het is koud. Haar handen zijn koud, haar voeten ook. It is cold. Her hands are cold, her feet too. (Four cognates in ten words: is, koud, handen, voeten. Een uur te vroeg, A1)
- Dan nog brood, kaas en eieren. Then bread, cheese and eggs. (Brood, kaas, eieren: the oo for ea and the k for ch of the pattern table. Controle, A1)
Read next
Start with the free A1 texts: short stories in the simplest Dutch, each with a glossary, where the cognates and the English words carry you through the first pages. De grijze bak is a good first one: Rahul, his two garbage bins, and the neighbor who holds her nose. For the words you will say rather than read, the basic Dutch phrases are the hundred you need first.
For a whole book at this level, Fairy Tales is the A1 volume of the Dutch Readers series: eight famous fairy tales, from Little Red Riding Hood to The Little Mermaid, retold in easy Dutch, with a glossary and questions after every tale. It is out now as a paperback.
Which English words come from Dutch?
Among the best known: yacht, skipper, deck, sloop, cruise, landscape, easel, sketch, cookie, coleslaw, waffle, brandy, gin, boss, stoop, spook, snoop and Santa Claus. Most came in the 17th century, from Dutch ships and Dutch painters, or later from the Dutch of New York.
Is cookie a Dutch word?
Yes. American English took cookie from Dutch koekje, little cake (koek is cake and -je makes it small), through the Dutch of New York; the -ie is the English spelling of the Dutch -je. British English kept biscuit.
Is dollar a Dutch word?
Probably not, and the dictionaries disagree. The Online Etymology Dictionary has dollar come through Low German daler from German Taler, a silver coin first minted in Bohemia; Merriam-Webster gives Dutch or Low German daler. The Dutch daalder belongs to the same family; whether it was the door into English is not settled.
How does Dutch write English words?
Modern Dutch takes English words over as they are, for technology, work and daily life: computer, weekend, team, baby, sorry, oké, e-mail. They are written as Dutch spells them (oké, e-mail, baby’s), get a Dutch article (het weekend, de computer) and verbs take Dutch endings (ik mail, gemaild).