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Am a Dutch student currently studying in the UK, and many of these differences are true indeed, and possibly even larger between Dutch and English people than between Germans and the English. 'Thanks', and 'please', are used in Dutch only when there is much to thank for (saving someones life, or at least possessions or the like). While in English they are part of almost any question or exchange, no matter how trivial. Another one is 'how are you doing', which in Dutch is used to express concern/interest between close friends, or towards a stranger looking extremely distressed. While the English use it almost instead of the neutral 'Hi' between people who met once before. At first it made me wonder whether I looked alright (yes I shaved and showered, and all :). So yes, they take getting used to, and a common mistake for Dutch/German people probably is (it was for me) thinking that they are meant as strongly as one is used to. But it does not take long to get used to. Call it a cultural bias, but I slightly prefer the Dutch/German way, as it takes up less time, makes it more straightforward to find out what people think (fewer understatements as well), and does not deflate the meaning of the terms used as much... (strangely enough the English don't use different terms or pronunciations when there is more to thank for, than the usual, making it hard to judge the extent of gratefulness / problems, etc)... Anyway, at home they think I am very polite now, thanks :) |
As something like a native English speaker I was surprised how often people in Dutch say please and thank you in the Netherlands! (Flanders is of course a different cultural ball-game with politeness rules that remind me of German or French)
The informal would-you-mind-please word is "alsjeblieft" and it is normally used in any interaction with a child or someone in a shop, or even friends of whom you're asking a favour.
And while the informal thank words "dank je wel", "bedankt", "dank je" and "dank" are slightly less used than in much of the English-speaking world, they're still used for lots of stuff that is rather more trivial than saving someone's life. And seem always to be used after asking someone to do something like move their bag off a seat in a packed train... ;-)
And the Dutch certainly say informal hello's - with a slightly smaller bewildering array of sound-words than their goodbyes - with a lot more polite abandon than you'd find in urban English-speaking societies.
I suspect there's a kind of politeness-blindness working here: cultural norms and paradigms are fairly invisible once you're embedded into a society. Once you move, like wybo, the differences snap into focus.