#I also hate favoriet and lievelings because they just sound like French and German loans

[culmaer]

one of things I noticed in the Netherlands and Belgium, is that menus often list bottled drink sizes as "25cl" or "50cl", and people usually say kwart liter and half liter

whereas in South Africa we always write "250ml" or "500ml" and we'd usually say twee(honderd) vyftig mil and vyfhonderd mil when speaking Afrikaans

now, it's perfectly obvious what all of those mean, like it's all the metric system. but it's precisely these small and subtle differences which I find fascinating ! and that's probably why I enjoy the Dutch language so very much. people always talk about how similar the languages are, and it's true. if communicating is your only goal then they're almost perfectly intelligible. the classic example is wandel[en] which in Dutch means "to walk", but in Afrikaans means "to take a leisurely stroll". if communicating is all you care about, that distinction is irrelevant. the person is going on foot. but — if you're into languages and linguistics or poetry, then that's a huge difference !! (this example might actually work better in Flemish than Hollandic ? but that just adds a whole extra layer of excitement to things)

I find that so much more interesting and rich than the super obvious differences, like how a "receipt" is bonnetje in Dutch and strokie in Afrikaans. or even the false friends like the word aardig, which means "friendly, nice" in Dutch, but "weird, unpleasant" in Afrikaans. because the subtle ones can slip by you unnoticed