Dutch speakers of English confound native speakers by pronouncing the words that are listed below in the same way:
knees / niece
bet / bed
bad / bat
head / hat / had
mad / mat
snag / snack
access / excess
salary / celery
leak / league
That is what researchers of the VU (Vrije Universiteit/Free University) in Amsterdam and the University of Utrecht have found out.
The European Commission recently concluded that Dutch companies miss business contracts because of their faulty English. “Your Dutsj eksent is bat for your celery.” Of course, grammatical and lexical errors also play a role. The strange thing is that American and Canadian speakers of English take more offense at these mistakes than Englishmen do.
There is hope: when Dutch students sing lyrics, they lose their Dutch accent.
One thing is for sure: language matters. Always.
'Snag' and 'snack': entirely different things, different words as well, yet often pronounced in the same way by Dutch people who speak English.
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