What does “nadoen” mean in Dutch?

Zeg drie keer niet nadoen

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

💡 Did you know?
nadoen
Dutch separable verb for copying, imitating
“to imitate, copy,” literally “to do after”

A classic Dutch trick-question clip has one friend say zeg drie keer “niet nadoen”, “say 'don’t copy me,' three times”, then immediately gets the other to slip up and nadoen (copy) something anyway. Nadoen means to imitate or copy someone, built from na (after) plus doen (to do): literally, to do again what came before you.

Nadoen splits in conversation: “hij deed het meteen na” (“he copied it right away”). It covers everything from a sibling mimicking your voice to a comedian doing an impression. The repeat-a-word-then-trick-question format itself is a well-worn Dutch joke shape (the classic version asks “wat drinkt een koe?” after three rounds of “wit”), and this one turns the trap word into the answer itself.

Vocabulary frequency

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

89.5%
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

86.8%
Top 1,000
89.5%
Top 2,000
89.5%
Top 5,000

Spoken Dutch frequency

97.1%
Top 1,000
100%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000
👄 Conversational vocabulary
This reel’s words appear more often in subtitle-based spoken-Dutch data than in general usage, so it may feel closer to everyday conversation.

Words above this video’s level

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

naen
1×
Rare / outside top 5,000
(brand) nadoen — to imitate
nadoen
4×
Rare / outside top 5,000
to imitate

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

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