Tweet22-01-2010 om 12:04 by Sueli Brodin

My Dutch husband has a funny way of pronouncing the number 7 when he speaks on the phone. He says “zeuven” instead of “zeven”. When I ask him why, he explains that he does it to avoid any possible confusion with “negen” (9), because “zeven” and “negen” sound very much the same, especially on the telephone. I’m not convinced though... “It’s not the way I learned to say 7 when I studied Dutch,” I tell him.

I didn’t speak a word of Dutch when I first came to the Netherlands with him some 18 years ago. His mother celebrated her birthday soon after my arrival and everyone in the family jumped at the chance to come and meet “the lovely foreign girl Willi’s youngest had brought back from Israel.”

As is customary in the Netherlands, we all sat in a circle around the living room table and many family members greeted me in their best English, not only the younger adults, but also the older uncles, who spent much of the evening chatting with me.

One year and two intensive language courses later, I felt confident enough to tell them that they could simply speak to me in Dutch.

I was very motivated to learn the language and would seize every opportunity to speak, read, write and listen to Dutch. Yet no matter how positive I felt about my general progress, there was one thing that always gave me a sense of panic: having to speak on the phone in Dutch.

It wasn’t so alarming if it was just my mother in law calling to share some family news, or a temporary work agency offering me a new assignment, but whenever I had to settle administrative matters on the phone or even simply make an appointment at the hairdresser’s, all my confidence would somehow melt away.



I would become so insecure that my voice would change and my husband joked that I sounded like a child. Even sticking to very basic words, I still managed to make silly mistakes. Most of the time, I wouldn’t understand half of what the person at the other end of the line was telling me and would get much of the information wrong.

Let’s not even talk about dates, times or telephone numbers, which would be spelled out in reverse order from what I was used to in other languages. For example, I’d probably write down “34” when the correct number was “43”. Sometimes I would need to phone back again. What a stress.

The spelling out of names was and still is another source of trouble. The Dutch use what they call a “telephone alphabet” (“telefoonalfabet”) to spell out words on the phone: “A van Anton, B van Bernard, C van Cornelis, D van Dirk, E van Eduard, etc”. I have never learned this list in any of the Dutch courses I have taken and still don’t master the code.

As a result, whenever I need to spell out a word on the phone, my own name for example, I come up with completely different references and say: “S van Synoniem, U van Universum, E van Electisch..” and sense that the person at the other end of the line is either amused and smiling, or getting seriously confused.

One of the biggest challenges whenever I’m trying to reach an organisation by phone is to get past the Cerberus-like front desk receptionist, whose job is to efficiently filter all incoming calls. To this day, I’m still not sure if it’s better to speak Dutch or English.



I cannot help feeling that English will take me further than Dutch, simply because I will sound more assertive, express myself better, explain my inquiry more clearly, and most receptionists in the Netherlands understand and speak English anyway.

One of my most embarrassing phone experiences so far happened a few years ago when I picked up the phone in Dutch with the standard words: “Hallo, met Sueli,” and the man asked: “Mag ik met je vader of moeder spreken?” (“May I speak to your father or mother?”)

Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about that happening again because my three children have now become my own efficient little receptionists. “Hallo, met Naomi. Ja, mama is thuis.”

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