The Ebbing Language

Sadiqa de Meijer at Poetry Magazine:

Afval is not offal, but garbage.

blad is not a blade but a leaf, and also a sheet when referring to paper.

To huil is not to howl but to cry.

geest is not so much a ghost as a spirit, and is also used for genie, which English has adapted instead from the Arabic jinni.

fles is a bottle, which probably has something to do with a flask. A rozenbottel is a rose hip.

And in a very strange confluence, an eekhoorn, which is pronounced almost exactly like acorn, is a squirrel.

Boom, a tree. Tree, a step of the stairs. Stairs, a trap. Trap, a val, which also means fall, perhaps because of those archaic traps, holes dug on forest trails and covered with sticks and leaves. The season of fall, herfst.

more here.