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> One of their websites was a “website builder”, like Geocities, except worse. The value for the customers was that was in Dutch, with Dutch support (it didn’t
by wdb 5y ago
> One of their websites was a “website builder”, like Geocities, except worse. The value for the customers was that was in Dutch, with Dutch support (it didn’t even support English.[2] Shortly before I joined they decided to rewrite it from scratch (which in this case was probably the right decision by the way).
Or people just want to do the work in their mother tongue instead of a foreign language. Personally, it's quite disappointing to the see Englishification of The Netherlands. Even been to restaurants were I couldn't even speak in Dutch in Amsterdam and had to order in English. Bloody ridiculous. I don't think you will see that happen in London.
Depending on the kind of work I prefer to do things in Dutch, English or German. Anything mathematics is something I prefer to read about in Dutch, while some social science or anthropology related subjects I prefer to read in German.
- nemetroid 5y agoI don't think the article is dismissing the value of internationalization. As the endnote says: > People often seem dismissive of that value i18n, “everyone speaks English” Well, depends on who your customer base is. Even in the Netherlands where almost everyone speaks some English there are still loads of people who are not especially good at it and much more comfortable with Dutch. This is probably over half the population, and it’s really not just old people.
- WhyNotHugo 5y agoHere in Amsterdam there's probably more people who don't speak Dutch than there are people who don't speak English. Heck, I've worked at companies where over 50% of the employees did not speak Dutch at all. So English will reach a wider audience in Amsterdam, ironically. Not sure how well this applies to the rest of the Netherlands (especially outside Randstad).
- arp242 5y agoI think you completely misread what I wrote; the entire point was that it being in Dutch was valuable (in spite of being a very mediocre to crappy product in every other way).
- renewiltord 5y ago> > The value for the customers was that was in Dutch, with Dutch support (it didn’t even support English > Or people just want to do the work in their mother tongue instead of a foreign language These two sentences mean the same thing. While sometimes people say “or X” to reword X I don’t see why you’d do that. It’s clear as it is.
- wdb 5y agoYes, I am aware of that. Just wanted to express my opinion. For example, Netflix is doing a bad job at providing Dutch subtitles. Barely any tv show has Dutch subtitles. Disney+ does a much better job.
- Rexxar 5y agoI always though it was strange than Dutch completely embrace English in Netherlands but Flemish make everything they can to not speak French in Belgium. We can wonder if dutch will be spoken only in Belgium at some point in the future.
- arp242 5y agoEh, it's just a few loanwords. The language isn't going extinct any time soon. There are many loanwords from French and German already.