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Originally Posted by Toxaris
Actually Chinese makes a lot of sense, especially if you want to get into trade.
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It looks like manufacturing is moving to Indonesia for some types of products. China is getting too expensive it seems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hamlet53
Anyway I've always been impressed on my visits to Holland with the seamless way locals could switch languages from English to German to French and of course Dutch. Though I never got over how what to me sounded like one clearings ones throat was a part of Dutch.
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In the south, most people speak Dutch, English, (some) German, and, most of the time, their local dialect. I don't know about German in more northern parts of the country, and with regard to French, I'm clueless as well how many Dutch speak it passably. Belgians probably will, beside Dutch and English.
With regard to the throat clearing thing, it's the "hard G." They use it in the central part of the country. In the south, we have a "soft G." In other parts of the country, it's somewhere in between.
The hard G/soft G is almost as big a schism in the Netherlands as Dutch/French is in Belgium.
Middle/Northern people often ridicule the pronunciation the southerners here (and Belgians) use. The other way around, the southern people often visibly cringe when talking to people from the middle part of the country. Their pronunciation is often viewed as grating and aggressive.
That hard G really is like nails on a chalk board, at least to me.