Ahoy!

With SAIL in town, here’s a blog to enrich your Dutch language skills with some expressions related to boats and shipping. There are uncountable expressions related to water, boats and sailing, but here is a selection to get started (‘Van wal steken’, (pushing against the shore to sail out).

Let’s first break the ice with the simple expression ‘Het ijs breken’, which means ‘to start a conversation’ and comes from the breaking of the ice by a boat creating a passage for other boats to follow.

If you want to make a new start it might be necessary to clean up thoroughly: ‘Schoon schip maken’ (literally ‘make a clean ship’). For really big changes and turns in life the expression ‘Het roer omgooien’ is what you need. Roer is the helm of the ship, so the expression means ‘to change course’.

If something doesn’t work you might need to try something else: ‘Het over een andere boeg gooien’ (‘throw it over another bow’).

When something happens but you want to reassure someone that it’s not that bad, you can say ‘Er is geen man over boord’ (‘there is no man over board’ – meaning ‘nobody died’).

If you’re too old for one thing and to young for the other,  or you cannot buy a house in Amsterdam, but your salary is too high to rent in the social sector.. you ‘fall through the cracks’, in Dutch you fall ‘Tussen wal en schip’ (between the shore and the ship).

If something is hard and requires more effort, so you should set all sails: ‘Alle zeilen bijzetten’. 

And if you stop resisting and surrender to someone else’s arguments you change your tack (‘Overstag gaan’).

In the week of 15 September in our school it will be ‘Alle hens aan dek‘ (‘all hens on deck’ – meaning the full crew needs to come to the deck because there is an emergency) for the start of the new courses!

If you’re planning to set course (‘koers zetten’) on improving your Dutch language skills, make sure you don’t fall tussen wal en schip, because some courses are filling up quickly and you might end up ‘in de aap gelogeerd’, (‘slept over in the monkey’ – meaning ‘in trouble’, and nobody really knows where this expression came from).

We hope to welcome you on board soon!