Omdat Language Partners 45 jaar bestaat, bespreken we elke maand de taalkennis van een bekende Nederlander. Vandaag nemen we de taalkennis van Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, minister van Defensie, onder de loep.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert
First of all, she comes across as a very gutsy woman and delivers her speech very powerfully and with a lot of emotion behind it. It was just a shame that she read it out – as it comes across as a little stilted and a strong Dutch accent comes through. At the beginning of the speech, she almost over articulates some of the words such as ‘in particular’ and by doing this, her accent almost changes – it sounds a bit odd to me. This can be compared to a person with a southern English accent putting northern vowel sounds in their words – it doesn’t sound right. Her speech almost takes on the characteristics of an American courtroom drama – but without the American accent – a little over done, but this being said, she is very forthright in getting her opinion across.
General Pronunciation
Ms Hennis-Plasschaert shows good use of grammar and vocabulary and tackles the word ‘particular’ very well – it is a tricky word at the best of times. Her pronunciation is also quite good as is her speed of delivery. This being said, there is a very strong ‘d’ sound as opposed to ‘the’, particularly at the beginning, where she states ‘no one has de moral high ground here’ and ‘de USA letter’ and where she says ‘dere is no doubt about dat’. As well as this, her ‘v’ sound almost sounds like an ‘f’ and this is audible on more than one occasion with the word ‘views’ which almost sounds like ‘fuse’ and the word ‘provide’ sounds like ‘profide’. These are occurrences that are common with Dutch speakers of English.
Specific Examples
At around 40 seconds she uses the question tag ‘isn’t it?’ This falls a little bit flat and needed to be delivered with a little bit more oomph – and doesn’t really round off the point as strongly as it should in my opinion. In my opinion, this occurred because she was reading from a prepared script and she concentrated on what she was saying and not how she was saying it.
On occasion her sentence structure is a little wayward (and I mean very minor mistakes) when she says ‘this debate is getting on my nerves slowly’. It would have been better to say ‘this debate is slowly getting on my nerves. Shortly after that her word stress is admirable and she really drives her point home and delivers with aplomb.
At 1 min 7 seconds she delivers a very punchy speech about wanting acknowledgement and her intonation is admirable. She continues by saying: ‘I said this before and I want to hear this again – clearly ………’ This then is almost ruined when she says ‘I have to say this also’ – it was such a shame and a classic mistake with Dutch natives as we don’t tend to put the word ‘also’ at the end and would probably use ‘as well‘ here, but nevertheless, it doesn’t detract from what she was saying.
On the whole, her English is not quite native level, although as said before, her choice of vocabulary is very good and grammar (with the exception of one or two mistakes) is generally very good.
Conclusion and Rating
Her Dutch accent is quite strong, but because she delivers this speech so powerfully, it doesn’t take anything away from her professionalism. She certainly comes across as a woman who you do not mess with!! My main point of criticism is that she read it out, kept to her script and stumbled over her words trying to get them all out as they were written.. This affected the overall fluency and some of the intonation – especially with the aforementioned question tag.
This is kind of a testament as to why, it is better not to read from a prepared script because no matter how good your argument, vocabulary or grammar, reading aloud from paper does slow you down, make you trip over your words and also makes some things sound flat and takes away the passion.
If you prepare a script with lots of powerful vocabulary that is meant to make an impact and it is read out as opposed to learned by heart, you tend not to emphasise the intended words and this also impedes spontaneity and ultimately the overall fluency.
This being said – she is certainly a force to be reckoned with!
