On 5 May, around 17 million people in the Netherlands celebrate Liberation Day, or Bevrijdingsdag. On this day, the Dutch commemorate the liberation from German occupation on 5 May 1945, which brought an end to World War II in the Netherlands. Initially, Liberation Day was only celebrated every 5 years, but since 1990, when it was declared a national holiday, the Dutch celebrate Liberation Day each year with parades and music festivals all throughout the country.
The official language of the Netherlands is Dutch. An interesting fact about this language is that it is possible to create diminutives of all sorts of words by adding the suffix -je. This suffix is used to indicate small size or as a way of showing affection, but also for making uncountable nouns countable. For instance, beer is translated as bier, but a beer would be een biertje. Dutch is also known for its long compound nouns: according to the dictionary Van Dale, the longest word in Dutch is the word for multiple personality disorder and counts 35 letters: is meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornissen. This particularity could be an added difficulty for interpreters when working from Dutch as it may require a complete change of the sentence structure.
If you want to learn more about Dutch culture or practise your interpreting skills, we encourage you to check out the Dutch section of the Speech Repository.