False friends – 04: draak vs drake

Transcript of the video lesson – draak vs drake:

Hi, welcome to learndutch.org’s false friends.

Words from different languages that sound or look the same, but with a different meaning. Today the Dutch word: “draak” which looks like the english “drake”. Absolutely not the same, they are false friends!

A drake in English is what we call in Dutch “een woerd”. And that is a male duck.

Now the Dutch word “draak”.

This is “een draak”.

Dragon in english

So if you ever meet a Dutch knight. And he is telling you he cut of the head of a “draak”. Then you now know he was not killing some stupid duck. He really did something heroic.

Ik heb de draak gedood.

Ik killed the dragon.

Perhaps the chance of meeting a knight who killed a dragon is not that big in Holland.

But least you now know. The Dutch “draak” and the English “drake” are false friends! My apologies to all ducks for calling them stupid, i didn’t mean it like that.

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See you there!