Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I have American friends who emigrated to the Netherlands and I go there a lot on business too. There are a few other things that are worth considering: Dutch people are generally friendly, but they also tend to take a strong line on assimilation. If you want to live there, learn Dutch and learn how Dutch culture works. Otherwise you won't fit in. As with any society, there are unwritten rules and norms of behavior that might seem strange at first. For example, the Dutch value frankness more than diplomacy. That can make them seem blunt, even to Americans.
Dutch is not far from English, both are on the same branch of the Germanic languages, but it's very idiomatic, so fluency can be hard to achieve. Also, the fact that everyone's so good at English reduces the pressure to learn Dutch. Language learning's quicker when it's the only way you can communicate.
And the previous poster's comment on the housing shortage is no exaggeration: it's a crisis. Expect difficulty and predatory middlemen when seeking housing.
Also, the weather can be intense: freezing North Sea winds and sideways rain.
Whaaaaaat....?
We are very multicultural, if you don't want to adjust, that's fine. There are enough people around who are similar to you. Only if you want to fit in you need to adjust, but that's in any culture. Over here there's not that much pressure to do that. Unless you live in the countryside.
Dutch and English are not similar at all. They have completely different origins. Dutch has a germanic origin and English an anglosaxon heritage.
The weather is not intense at all. It's just humid, so 25C feels like 35C and 5C feels like -5C. But not as humid as a rainforest. Near the coast there's some wind, but in the cities and inland not too much. Winters have become mild, summers kinda hot but compared to other regions of the world our climate is very mild. Just expect a lot of rain, but compared to the UK even that aspect is really mild too. Just prepare for us to always complain about it. And about everything else too.
Yeah, Dutch people are generally pretty blunt. When you tell something we don't like will will tell you, politely, where a British person would say "ah that's interesting". For autistic people (like me) our directness is really nice. No beating around the bush.
Some English world have a Germanic origin, like "fart".
Yeah, and vice verse. Europe has a long history, would be weird if there were no words adopted from another language.