In the Dutch discussion room I put
these few paragraphs about something that happened yesterday. I thought it would be interesting to pull out a few interesting words.
Slenteren = saunter; roll up.Sometimes
sleuren is used as a synonym for this, or slepen (drag; cognate with German
schleppen, but a false-friend perhaps). I learned the word
slenteren from the title of an old Simon Carmiggelt book. These bundled 'cursiefjes' or short columns written for newspapers and magazines, were the basis for most, if not all, of his books and he wrote looooads of them that were put out over 50-60 years. On bookstalls here there are piles of the most popular ones for 50c. They're a goldmine of everyday words and 'spreektaal'. Some of the words he uses have already faded away.
Hondenweer = Rotten weather (raining cats and dogs). Another amusing one is 'het regent pijpenstelen' = that it's raining really hard
Ongelegenheid = Inconvenience. I recall first hearing someone say to me on the telephone: "komt het (je) gelegen?" And I was flummoxed and just said yes. It was a telemarketer and I'd just agreed that the call was convenient, so when I then said I didn't want the call, she must have been confused.
Early on in Dutch I couldn't find the right expression for 'convenient' because a lot of people just say
handig/niet handig.
Nou...dat is niet echt handig voor mij... and I felt like it wasn't really getting close enough to the idea of
inconvenience and some people said 'ongemakkelijk', which also means inconvenient, but more in the sense of 'awkward'. Very slippery.
Another common phrase for it is:
het is niet van pas, and pas/passend might be best rendered as: 'appropriate'. So a rude joke in polite society is 'niet echt van pas' or 'helemaal ongepast' = inappropriate or not fitting. Though
passen also refers to 'fitting' in the actual sense of clothing, which is why you have 'paskamers' for trying on clothes and someone who sees the trousers you're fitting might say: 'het past heel goed bij je!'. You could also say: 'dat past niet bij zo'n kleur' = that doesn't match with the (such a) colour.
The endless spiral of vocabulary!