Roots and Language.

I’ve mentioned before that I used to be a photographer and occasionally wrote articles for a photography magazine. One of the articles was translated into Dutch and used in the Netherlands edition, and they sent me a copy. I read it through and was most interested to see the obvious similarities between what I’d written and how it translated into Dutch. Much of both the grammar and vocabulary was oddly familiar, but with sufficient difference to make it amusing.

And only today did I notice something else when I received a return comment from a Dutch YouTuber. Goggle Translate tells me that the Dutch for ‘thank you’ is ‘bedankt.’ This is suspiciously similar to the English phrase ‘be thanked’, which is rarely used but correct nevertheless. Surely an indication of the common roots of both our people and our language.

(And if you should be interested in the INFJ phenomenon – which is true of me because I am one – the YouTuber’s name is Kuro Tadorii. She’s lovely to look at and a delight to listen to. And she probably speaks English better than I do because I don’t recall a single instance of her ending a sentence on a preposition.)