Today I met up with Dani at the university for lunch. It’s always nice not to eat alone, but to eat together with friends. First we talked about music. Everyone talked about their favorite band. I like listening to German rap and so we talked about Dutch and German rap. Since rap uses a lot of swear words, we got to teach each other the most common swear words.
In Germany, the most common swear word is shit or related words such as crap, filth and ass. Shit is not only used as an exclamation on its own, but is also used in combination with subjectives and adjectives, such as “you slept like shit”.
In the Netherlands, it is typical to wish other people ill when insulting them. This phenomenon is not entirely unknown to me in German, but I rarely use it. Of course, you shouldn’t wish anyone ill in general :). In the Netherlands, the phrase “krijg de [x]” (x=any illness), Dani meant cancer in particular.
Afterwards we talked about the development of our language. The latest youth words are often used in rap. The German and Dutch languages have changed a lot over the last few decades. In both languages, more and more English words are being used in everyday speech. In Germany we call this denglish. We discussed the differences between the old and the new language. We also both noticed that the language differs in different parts of the country. I come from southern Germany and even though I don’t speak “Bavarian”, there are some regional differences in High German.
It was very funny to learn Dutch swear words. It wasn’t difficult to teach Dani the German swear words, as the languages are sometimes very similar. I’m already looking forward to our next meeting.
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