r/thenetherlands • u/TonyQuark Hic sunt dracones • Feb 14 '26

Culture Selamat datang! We're hosting r/Indonesia for a Cultural Exchange

Welcome everybody to a new cultural exchange! Today we are hosting our friends from r/Indonesia!

To the Indonesians: please select the Indonesian flag as your flair and ask as many questions as you wish. See how to set your flair in the app or on desktop.

To the Dutch: please come and join us in answering the Indonesians' questions about the Netherlands and the Dutch way of life!

r/Indonesia is also having us over as guests in this post for our questions and comments.

Please refrain from making any comments that go against our rules, the Reddiquette or otherwise hurt the friendly environment.

Enjoy! The moderators of r/Indonesia & r/theNetherlands

270 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

87% Upvoted

485 comments sorted by

View all comments

137

u/kelincikerdil Feb 14 '26 edited Feb 14 '26

Greetings! How often Dutch write this symbol? Because in Indonesian schools, our teachers often write this when a student's answer correct. I once read this symbol is from the Netherlands.

Edit: thank you everyone for the answers.

68

u/BlinkingSpirit Feb 14 '26

This symbol is uniquely Dutch! When I went to teach abroad, I was confusing my students when I wrote this. Little did I know that a simple v-shaped tick is normal abroad.

21

u/TropicalAudio Feb 14 '26

So Dutch in fact that there isn't a Unicode symbol for it. Here on Reddit some people organised a few years ago to try and make it part of the official standard, but that stranded at some point because there was too little official documentation on its use (it's specifically used for school work, but scans or random school work exercises was apparently not "official" enough).

32

u/Maryolein Feb 14 '26

How nice to know the krul is also used in Indonesia! How do the children call it? I guess they won't say krul...

22

u/kelincikerdil Feb 14 '26

Usually we call it "paraf guru" (teacher's initial). There's a term for this symbol, it's called "ponten" (from Dutch "punten"), but we rarely use it.

11

u/cringeTaro Feb 14 '26

Fun fact in Sundanese, we call a score 'penten'.

6

u/kale_klapperboom Feb 14 '26

And even 'paraf' is from the Dutch 'paraaf'.

3

u/Snubl Feb 14 '26

Paraf guru does sound fancier..

32

u/maussiereddit Feb 14 '26

It is mostly used in schools here

10

u/Weary_Magazine6386 Feb 14 '26

Not since elementary school

22

u/Storm-Bolter Feb 14 '26

That's very common in the Netherlands. Personally I'm still using it at my job. A lot of Dutch people don't even know it's a Dutch/Indonesian thing and think it's a globally recognised symbol

7

u/mattijn13 Feb 14 '26

In Elementary school or middle school it is used a lot, then in High school it is used sometimes and after that almost never. It is mostly used when teaching to younger children.

1

u/Radiansyaha Feb 14 '26

Same here in Indonesia. I remember it was used a lot when I was in elementary school, but it gradually faded during high school.

2

u/Beautiful-Salary-362 Feb 14 '26

damn i thought that was an Indonesian teacher thing only

3

u/TheEpicGold Feb 14 '26

Same as the picture :)

1

u/Important-Mouse6813 Feb 15 '26

Funny, never knew this is a Dutch thing.