this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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The German compound noun thing also works in other Germanic languages like, say, Dutch, Swedish and Old English. You can blame the Normans (i.e. a bunch of snobbish Vikings who, a generation earlier, decided to speak only French) for modern English’s lack of them.
And it leads to a neverending stream of newly invented hype words.
We even have a yearly word of the year tradition, where the organisation behind our most famous dictionary picks one of these newly invented words based on coverage in media.
Last year's word was "graaiflatie", a combination between "graaien" (no direct translation, means to grab, but in a greedy way), and "inflatie" (inflation).
We have many of them in English as well.
Pretty much every dictionary and various organisations have their own.
In Belgium there's a radio segment where every lunch they create a new word, most of them are for situations or feelings that are quite specific. Of course it's just a little bit of messing around, it's not like there's 5 new Flemmish words to memorize every week.
From a Dutch perspective, there's always 5 new Flemmish words to memorize. You'd think we speak the same language, but we really don't.
In some ways, Flemmish is more Dutch than the language anyone from the Netherlands speaks. Which seems especially true when it comes to loan-words from French, which some of you seem to avoid at all costs.
All of this leads to interesting situations where any conversation with our southern neighbours has a risk of needing a mental double take to make sure we derived the right meaning from your fancy words.
One example of how crazy things can get is the word for roundabout. The Dutch will generally refer such traffic control measures as rotonde, which is a French bastardization. The Flemmish, in turn, sometimes refer to them as rondpunt. ...which the French seem to have adopted when they say rond-point.
The French definition of rotonde is actually from architecture. Where it is used for dome-shaped constructions, and is originally derived from the Latin rotondus, which just means "round". Conclusion: Dutch is a weird language.
Graaien could be clutch, claw, scrabble, grasp, or snatch, maybe?
to yoink
I usually associate yoink with playfully stealing something, whereas graaien in this context refers more to behaviour seen in landlords and high level executives. You know, the kinds of people that are so far up their shareholder's butts that they can't see the damage they're causing.
Let's just reserve yoink for stealing each other's hoodies and similar endearing behaviour.
There it is