What does “zoönose” mean in Dutch?
Mijn hond, brucellose en de dreiging van euthanasie
B2 Dutch listening practice · Dutch from the Netherlands · Picked for people who know more
In this Quest podcast clip the owner explains that her dog’s brucellose turned out to be “een zoönose die kan overslaan naar de mens,” a zoönose that can spread to people. A zoönose (zoonosis) is any disease that crosses from animals to humans, and the everyday verb for that crossing is overslaan, literally “to skip over.”
The word jumped into daily Dutch around COVID-19, but Dutch news uses it constantly for vogelgriep (bird flu) and Q-koorts (Q fever) too. The -ose ending marks a medical condition, the same suffix you see in brucellose and tuberculose. Learn this one word and you can follow a whole genre of Dutch health reporting.
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this B2 Dutch listening practice video?
How common in written Dutch
How common in spoken Dutch
Harder words in this video
These words are harder than B2. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-NL 2014 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In Dutch news about vogelgriep (bird flu) and other outbreaks
- ▸In updates from the RIVM, the Dutch public-health institute
- ▸In Dutch popular-science media like Quest and its podcasts
- ▸At the dierenarts (vet), discussing animal-to-human risks
- ▸In Dutch coverage looking back on the corona pandemic