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[Japo]

Or just say it like Dutch people: "däyts"... easy!

[twillight]

Originally Posted by Japo

Or just say it like Dutch people: "däyts"... easy!

It is actually Dütch, not Dutch. And means something different from German.

English is suffering from not being a phonetic language in writing (and lacking proper vowels in general). Everyone should learn hungarian letters to write down stuff, and articulate in general.

Well, except for the letters "j" and "ly" where there is no noticeable difference anymore since at least 200 years, and everyone wants the "ly" disappear serving no purpose, but the grammar-people just fear they job and want people to suffer wasting an entire school-year whacking in you words with j and ly for no other purpose than "tradition".

[Japo]

"Duits" is how the Dutch say German, for themselves they always say "Nederlands" or "Hollands", never anything that sounds like the English "Dutch"--originally equivalent to German Deutsch, as used in the Netherlands' anthem.

[twillight]

"Dutch" is spoken outside Germany in countries like Switzerland. It has different vocabulary, and slightly different pronounciation.

I mean "originally" english and german was the same language, but hey, this "originally" argument just sounds stupid.

[Japo]

The German dialects spoken in Switzerland are completely different from the the language of the Netherlands, and I don't think they're ever denominated "Dutch".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German

What I mean is that the Dutch reserve the word "Duits" for Germans from Germany, or the standard German language, and they never refer to themselves with any similar word in their own language any longer--even though the rest of the world use the English word "Dutch".

In the Dutch national anthem, written in archaic Dutch, William of Orange claims "ben ick van Duytschen bloet," that is "I am of German blood," because at that time that the political separation between the Netherlands and the rest of the old German Holy Roman Empire was recent and the cultural one was very tenuous yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelmus#Interpretation