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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

Us Dutchies, in contrast to the French, don't come up with new words. Our language is Englishifying more and more.

We've always been strongly influenced by our big three neighbors (UK, France and Germany). I remember reading somewhere that before WW2 France was our biggest "cultural influencer" (for example, we spelled helicopter "hélicoptère", until the Canadians liberated us). It's probably not surprising that WW2 made German less popular, and the Anglosphere more popular afterwards.

Cesses de téléverser des billevesées sur hackernews, Hollandais

Notre langage est parfait

> sur hackernews

"nouvelles de pirates", sûrement? :)

GAZETTE du BIDOUILLEUR

Excuse moi, je suis een baquette.

I traveled in southern France for a bit and it seems to me like it could be a Paris/Quebecois thing because I found a "STOP" (no "ARRÊT" on it anywhere) sign at an intersection in about as rural an area you can get. Granted, sample size is small, but there do seem to be gradients even inside France.

That's because France like many other countries, but not Canada, signed an international treaty that standardizes road signs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Sign... That makes it a bit easier to drive safely across countries without reading all local languages.

Edit: Huh, apparently "stop" or the equivalent in the local language are allowed by the treaty. Didn't know that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_sign

> apparently "stop" or the equivalent in the local language are allowed by the tr

Yes, but this is the only octagonal sign in the treaty, I suppose specifically so it's meaning could be inhered without knowing local language

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