slim means clever. kind means child. room means cream. English gives you a huge head start in Dutch — until a false friend catches you out. Spot the traps before they spot you.
Dutch word
zomer
Looks like the English “summer”.
Does it mean the same?
146 words in this set · keep your streak going
Dutch and English share thousands of words — water, hand, warm, storm. You already know more Dutch than you think.
A short list of look-alikes means something else entirely. Learn those and the head start pays off with no embarrassing slips.
Every reveal comes with the twist — why wet is law, why gift is poison. The story is what your memory holds onto.
A false friend (valse vriend) is a Dutch word that looks or sounds like an English word but means something different. Slim looks like 'slim' but means clever; kind looks like 'kind' but means child; room looks like 'room' but means cream. They trip up English speakers constantly, which is exactly why they are worth drilling.
Yes — Dutch and English are close cousins in the West Germanic family, so thousands of words are near-identical: water, hand, warm, storm, best, winter. That shared vocabulary gives English speakers a huge head start. The catch is the handful of look-alikes that mean something else, and those are the ones this quiz makes stick.
They come from different roots that happen to have drifted into English-looking spellings. De wet (law) is unrelated to English 'wet' (which is nat in Dutch). Het gift can mean poison — related to the idea of something 'given', the same root that gave German Gift (poison). Knowing the story makes the trap memorable instead of confusing.
Exposure and repetition. Seeing slim, braaf, raar and their real meanings a few dozen times — with a quick note on each — rewires the reflex. Play a round or two here, then keep going with the full vocabulary and exam practice on the main site, where these words show up in real sentences.
Vocabulary, grammar and all five DUO sections — Reading, Listening, Writing, Speaking and KNM — in the real exam format.