Mindboards

As savedcoder said, it can mean someone did something perfectly, but I think it is a little more broad.

I would translate it to say "I think he hit the nail on the head", meaning quite literally he swung the hammer, and hit the nail squarely (or right on the head). It means he didn't miss, either literally with something physical, or with a mental type situation (like dimasterooo said).

dimasteroo: Yeah, that would be a pretty good "translation"

Matt: Wow! You nailed it!

savedcoder wrote:*sigh* American English doesn't make much sense sometimes...

I think it is the same for most languages. Many sayings simply doesn't make a lot of sense in other languages...
I'm sadly not very good with languages and I'm often afraid of mixing up Danish and English. Sometimes I'm simply not sure which language a given expression is usable in. Getting it wrong usually results in gibberish... (Which is why Google Translate at times ends up being quite hilarious.)

It would be much much easier if only one language was in use...

ah, ok,thx, "hit the nail right on the head" is exactly what we say, too ("den Nagel auf den Kopf treffen")

at least English and German (and probably Danish) somehow got the same ancient roots (from Angeln and Sachsen ("anglo-saxonian") and a dash Latin from Romans) ;)

It is useful to think of English as a kind of Dutch that got an injection of Danish (9th and 10th century invasions and partial occupation) and then got painted over with a thick layer of French (11th century conquest and subsequent Norman-French occupation). It was only superficially Latinized in 18th and 19th century by school teachers. American English diverges from British English because of it has assimilated millions of non-English speaking immigrants. Most noticeable lately is the influx of Spanish words and phrases.

I live in a small mid-western city (pop. 135,000), although far inland, that has a significant first generation immigrant population, principally Mexican, Central American, Indian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian. Because of them our restaurants and the variety of food available in our grocery stores has improved tremendously in past thirty years. Of course, almost everyone here is descended from immigrants (there may a hundred or so Native Americans). However, I would guess that only about 15-20% of the population is descended from English-speakinf immigrants. So what is actually surprising is that American English has not diverged more.

yes, Angeln (today in Germany: "state" Schleswig-Holstein) is close to (nowadays) Denmark, but Saxons are not Dutch but from Lower Saxony (Northern Germany, close to the North Sea coast; today: "state" Niedersachsen). The Friesen (in the Dutch region) were quite more to the west, more close to Franconian tribes (originally from a region that today is Northern France + Belgium + north-western to middle of Germany).
AFAIK, a major contact between Friesians and Britannia is not reported, so a major influence of the Friesian language ("Dutch") is unlikely as I assume.
The Latin influence must not be underestimated (the Romans conquered both parts of Germanian and Britannian territories already hundreds of years before that), see e.g. the number words:
English: One two three four five six seven eight nine ten
Latin: Unus duo tres quattuor quinque sex septem octo novem decem
German: eins zwei drei vier fünf sechs sieben acht neun zehn
as number words are very substantial and elementary in each language, this proves that there was a very ancient and meaningful lingual influence, not a late and superficial one.
But we're getting a bit OT^^

Frisian != Dutch. Frisians can converse with Danish people without too much trouble, but it's vastly different from Dutch. It's like comparing German and Swedish.

- Xander

yes, sure, and German != Germanian (Friesian, Saxonian, Franconian, Anglian, Bajuwarian, Suevian). And Northwest Germans (Emsland, Plattdeutsch) have no problem to talk with Dutch either. On the other hand, also Danish is not the language of the Angles and (Lower) Saxonians and Jüten, while the modern Dutch area is part of the (once) Friesian + Bataver habitat .
But these are the modern languages, the roots are the Germanian, Latin, (later: Romanic like French), Scandinavic, Slavic, and Keltic (for Spain also Arabic) languages .

Since the Indo-European migrations the areas of linguistic distribution have changed a lot .
What I meant, that I have no informations about influence of "Dutch" to "Anglesaxonian" or "English". What are the linguistic roots of "Dutch" to your informations? And how could Dutch have had an influence on English or how could be English a mixture of Dutch and any of the other languages to your opinion (if it was that what you wanted to say)