My favorite word in Dutch is morning greeting: goeiemorgen. In Russian it sounds like dick-morgen which is ridiculous if you're native Russian speaker. This song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9H-ffphZf8&ab_channel=Eurov...) even went viral in Russia because of this (goeiedag sounds like bullshit also).
P.S. Link from the post doesn't open in Russia ("Country blocked") and I had to use VPN to read it lol. It's ONGEZELLIG to block someone read article about cozy and ecologic living.
Trust me, Russian can be equally hilarious for us Dutch. Its just that Dutch is a less widely spoken language.
Blyat for example almost reads like blaat which to us is the sound a sheep makes. It also refers to blaten, talking nonsense.
The English word cunt sounds like the Dutch kunt which means can (je kunt means you can). Kunt gets censored in a popular game, even if the rest of sentence is Dutch.
Then we have German where an English listener might think bisschen means bitch, and generally an English speaker might think a German is angry while its just the sound of the language (in contrast to, say, French).
Recently, some Dutch song (I think it was Belgian?) went viral in Ukraine as well.
Anyway, as a native Dutch speaker with autism, gezellig is equal to Orwellian double speak like Russian pravda (theres other examples, too). If its gezellig for others, it might very well not be for me. Or its tokkie level (tokkie = white trash). In other words, not a word I value when others use it.
EDIT: I believe you might find this song by a comedian weird for different reasons than intended: https://youtu.be/ATdRtTtzZ3c (he is singing good morning, good afternoon, its like this: I am a customer).
Ahhhh a distant cousin to the "Scunthorpe problem" - English and Dutch are not so dissimilar after all!
Related problem I saw recently, guy called Nasser had the "ass" in his name in some game's chat replaced with the string "***" taking a very common name and making it look like he named himself perhaps the worst word in the English language. Very unfortunate.
I remember them from my recent (~2 yrs ago, wow) re-watch of TNG! Their strategy was to look helpless to trick bypassers into helping them out, since they were not clever enough to do engineering work etc themselves.
Im a native English speaker and spent 2.5 weeks in NL, by the end i was getting nauseous from all the "oo's", "ieu's", and words that my head could almost understand but not quite.
I'm from the US. I was in Amsterdam on a business trip, and I felt the same thing, but a lot faster than in 2.5 weeks. Fortunately, I found a Uruguayan steak house. I went there for dinners. The waiters were speaking Spanish, and I thought, "Yes! This feels like home!"
This started in Amsterdam in the 1990s but now also happens in regional cities. Restaurants in Breda of all places has English speaking staff. At least there is still a head waiter who speaks Dutch. I personally don't mind much.
Whenever someone on Reddit says the Netherlands is xenophobic it makes me laugh.
Equally funny to me, The French add an 'e' to Putin when referring to him, probably because Putain sounds like Putin, which is basically the french F-word, especially in its ability to be swapped out for effect like the F-word.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/putain
Apparently he's called Poutine in Quebec as well which leads to a literal "freedom fries" situation as Quebecois restaurants that serve the dish avoid mentioning it by name to avoid controversy: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-diner-drops-poutine-from-...
The Russians residing in Russia who visit this website and express they use a VPN to access blocked content are likely to disagree with Putin and his cronies. Chances are they know what's up.
Little known fact! "Whataboutism" is an expression in English which means "I realize your example undercuts my argument, for it reveals it is not based on consistent, defensible principles, so I will just slap a label on it and declare it irrelevant to the discussion."
Interesting fact - there is a russian word for the feeling you are experiencing - when you feel bad because you understand that your opponent is having a point, you feel bad about it but instead of admitting it you are trying to be sarcastic - it is called "prigorayet" and is always associated with burning sensation just below your lower back.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic, in my experience my definition is actually spot on.
My opinion on the conflict in Ukraine is that one crooked state is fighting another, each side is fighting dirty, and neither side deserves my tax money for it. And I especially will not cheer on yet another conflict that the US has its dirty fingers in.
But calling it genocide is either hysteria or outright propaganda. We're not talking Rwanda here.
For the rest of your comment: get better at modeling your opponents before you psychoanalyze their feelings.
P.S. Link from the post doesn't open in Russia ("Country blocked") and I had to use VPN to read it lol. It's ONGEZELLIG to block someone read article about cozy and ecologic living.