What does “zebrapad” mean in Dutch?

Nijntje op de fiets langs trein en zebrapad

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A1 Dutch listening practice · Dutch from the Netherlands · Curated for beginners

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zebrapad
Dutch compound word
pedestrian crossing; literally “zebra path” — named for its black-and-white stripes

Zebrapad puts two Dutch words together: zebra (the animal, for its stripes) and pad (path). The result is the everyday word for a pedestrian crossing — the striped road marking where you stop to let people cross. Once you know that pad means path, a whole family of Dutch compounds opens up: fietspad (cycle path), voetpad (footpath), bospad (forest path). One word, two lessons at once.

In the clip, the narrator builds up the reveal: “Wat is dat? Heel veel lijnen. Weet jij het al? Nu zie ik het. Het is een zebrapad.” — “What is that? Lots of lines. Do you know yet? Now I see it. It’s a zebrapad.” Miffy (Nijntje) stops at the curb and models the correct road-safety sequence: look left, look right, look left again. The word then comes back in the summary (“een trein, een auto en een zebrapad”), cementing it perfectly. In everyday Dutch you cross op het zebrapad and cars must give way bij het zebrapad — the crossing doubles as a right-of-way marker, not just a visual stripe.

Vocabulary frequency

How common is the vocabulary in this A1 Dutch listening practice listening practice?

97.5%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Dutch words
Based on this reel’s transcript, most of the vocabulary is high-frequency, everyday Dutch.

General Dutch frequency

91.4%
Top 1,000
97.5%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Spoken Dutch frequency

91.7%
Top 1,000
98.7%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Words above this video’s level

Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A1 level.

zebrapad
3×
Rare / outside top 5,000
zebra crossing
stoeprand
1×
Rare / outside top 5,000
curb
wieeee
1×
Rare / outside top 5,000
wheee
dat klopt niet
1×
figurative: it fits / makes sense

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-NL 2014 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.

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