What’s the meaning of “krokant” in the line “Ben je gek, die school? Daar is het zo krokant” from the Sophie Straat song “Groen Amsterdam”?



by buice

11 comments

  1. If you really want to deep dive and up your Dutch game by 1000x I would highly suggest asking a native Dutch person to explain the meaning of all the lines in Watskeburt by “de jeugd van tegenwoordig”. Good luck, your Dutch will be as fluent as a born Dutchman in no time!

  3. Nonsensical to me, as with many other lines of this song.
    I think that’s why comments are turned off on the video

  5. If you put your pizza too long in the oven, it will become very krokant (burnt to the crisp). It’s student slang, I think. You can apply it to anything/anyone that looks tired, old, overdue, hungover, belegen, gaar

  6. The whole song makes no sense. She probably was stoned when she wrote it. A couple of random sentences that rhyme on “ant”, refrain about bakfiets, done.

  7. The song as a whole is about the gentrification of neighbourhoods in Amsterdam.

    In [NRC](https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/11/12/smartlapzangeres-dankzij-de-bakfiets-a4019649) [(archive)](https://archive.is/Lpw02) she says:

    > „De bakfiets staat voor mij symbool voor de gentrificatie van minderbedeelde Amsterdamse volkswijken als De Pijp. Nadat mijn ouders er als een soort ‘lokhipsters’ kwamen te wonen namen de nieuwe rijken het over. Ik zag het op schoolpleinen gebeuren: de bakfietsmoeders die neerkeken op moeders die de kinderen met de auto naar school brengen, dat zouden zij, milieubewust als ze zijn, nooit doen, nee, ze maken de stad juist groen met hun bakfietsen. Maar een bakfiets kost al gauw 5.000 euro en op de stoep nemen ze enorm veel ruimte in. Het werd een statussymbool in de witte, rijke wijken. Je ziet de ouders naar elkaars bakfiets kijken: wie heeft de duurste, wie de glimmendste?

    So the whole song is about people (yuppen) moving there and taking over the neighbourhoods and looking down on the people who originally live there. Part of that is often having their kids go to a different school because the one in the neighbourhood is not good enough (e.g. what is often known as a ‘zwarte school’). So probably ‘krokant’ means the school is bad and possibly also a reference to baked black (i.e. black school).

  9. I’m Dutch. I have never heard of this at all. To me krokant means crispy, and you can only say it about baked or fried food, nothing else.

  11. In trying to answer, I found its meaning to me is that I’m starting to get old.

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