STORIES say that during the second world war, Dutch soldiers used the name of the seaside resort Scheveningen as a shibboleth to identify German soldiers in their midst. German soldiers would pronounce the first three letters “sch” as “sh”, following German sound rules. (English speakers might do the same, partly on account of our familiarity with German proper names and words like “schnapps” and “schnitzel”.) Most Dutch speakers, on the other hand, read “sch” as [sχ], a run-of-the-mill “s” followed by a sound that’s akin to the Scottish “ch” in loch.* Today, Dutch civilians use Scheveningen as a shibboleth to poke fun at my gawky pronunciation now that I live just south of that beach.

In a vacuum, learning Dutch should be a relative cakewalk for English-speakers. Dutch and English are both West Germanic languages, along with German. English has absorbed a bigger glut of Romance vocabulary over the last 900 years. But it’s still hard to miss the deep Germanic family ties when comparing English and Dutch. Even where spelling differs, hearing words like “huis” (house), “uit” (out) or “vergeten” (forget) spoken out loud reveals connections. While…Continue reading

via Johnson http://www.economist.com/node/21578728?fsrc=rss