lit a candle 1d agoA Dutch grad student lent me Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding back in 2010, said I'd never hear 'zeg maar' the same way again. She was right. Fifty is no age at all.
Their story
Paulien Cornelisse was a Dutch writer, cabaret performer, columnist, podcast maker, and television presenter whose humour turned small linguistic habits into a shared national pastime. Born in Amsterdam on 24 February 1976, she spent early childhood in a canal house on the Herengracht near the Gouden Bocht before her family…
Paulien Cornelisse was a Dutch writer, cabaret performer, columnist, podcast maker, and television presenter whose humour turned small linguistic habits into a shared national pastime. Born in Amsterdam on 24 February 1976, she spent early childhood in a canal house on the Herengracht near the Gouden Bocht before her family moved in 1983 to the Albrecht Durerstraat in Oud-Zuid. She attended the Openbare Nicolaas Maes primary school and the Barlaeus Gymnasium (1988-1994), then spent a year at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts (1994-1995). From 1995 to 2000 she studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam, including a year at Hiroshima University in Japan (1998-1999), a stay that later fed her curiosity about Japanese words and customs.
After graduating she built a life in comedy and journalism. With Irene van der Aart she formed the cabaret duo Rots (1999-2003), performed with Comedytrain (2001-2004), and finished second at the Leids Cabaret Festival in 2007. Her first full-length theatre show, Dagbraken (2008), won the Neerlands Hoop in 2010. Later programmes included Hallo Aarde, Maar ondertussen (Poelifinario nomination), Om mij moverende redenen, and Aanstalten. With Chris Bajema she also made festival pieces such as View-o-rama and Live vanuit de Stoek. She co-founded the monthly storytelling podcast Echt Gebeurd with Micha Wertheim in 2008.
As a writer she began as a journalist around 2000 and as a columnist from 2007. Weekly columns in nrc.next and NRC Handelsblad (2008-2018) gave way in August 2018 to an alternating front-page column in de Volkskrant with Sander Donkers. Her breakthrough book, Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding (2009), dissected everyday Dutch with affectionate precision and sold more than half a million copies, earning a Platina boek in 2013; NOS later cited sales around 700,000. The book became a 2018 film directed by Barbara Bredero that won four awards at the Glendale International Film Festival in Los Angeles, including best film and best director. Further bestsellers included En dan nog iets (2012), De verwarde cavia (2016), Taal voor de leuk (2019), Japan in honderd kleine stukjes (2020), De verwarde cavia: terug op kantoor (2024), the 2025 Boekenweekessay on softening particles in Dutch speech, and In het kort (2025). In November 2025 she won the NS Publieksprijs for the cavia sequel after earlier nominations for other titles. In December 2025 De Taalstaat named her Taalstaatmeester 2025.
On television she won Wie is de Mol? in 2013, presented the VPRO Japan series Tokidoki (2018 and 2020), and from summer 2025 served as the one-person jury on De slimste mens, succeeding Maarten van Rossem alongside presenter Herman van der Zandt. She also appeared in Verborgen verleden, De Kwis, and other Dutch programmes, and contributed to Staatsbosbeheer's Groene oren podcast.
In 2021 she was diagnosed with cancer. While artist in residence in Dutch Studies at the University of Sheffield in 2023/2024 she again felt unwell; cancer was diagnosed and she cancelled the theatre tour for Komma, a planned show conceived as one long sentence without other punctuation. Treatment at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital in Amsterdam coincided with continued writing, including the cavia sequel and the Boekenweekessay, which needed an unusually fast reprint during Boekenweek. In early September 2026 she told De slimste mens viewers she was receiving chemotherapy and appeared nightly in hats or caps after losing her hair, explaining she did not want to wear a wig. On 30 September 2026 she died at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital, aged 50, surrounded by loved ones. Her publicist confirmed the news; theatre DeLaMar cancelled remaining performances and KRO-NCRV cancelled that evening's De slimste mens broadcast. She is survived by partner Chris Bajema, with whom she lived for about seventeen years in Amsterdam, their son, and two stepsons from Bajema's earlier relationship. Dutch readers and viewers remember her as a collector of tiny observations who made the soft edges of language feel comic, precise, and shared.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia EN/NL; NOS; NU.nl; Het Parool; AD; RTL Nieuws; KRO-NCRV; NPO Radio 1 De Taalstaat; pauliencornelisse.nl; Ons Amsterdam.
In their own words
“Mensen vragen graag aan elkaar hoe het gaat. Waarom dat is, weet ik niet, want het antwoord interesseert doorgaans niemand.”
From Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
“Het woord waardoor Nederlanders altijd verraden dat ze Nederlands zijn is 'he'.”
From Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding, on the softening particle he
“Praten is net als fietsen: als je erover na gaat denken, val je om.”
From Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
“Zelf denk ik dat de meest onderscheidende eigenschap van de mens is: schaamte. Dieren hebben buitengewoon weinig schaamte.”
From Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
“Prima is het woord van mensen die de strijd hebben opgegeven.”
From En dan nog iets
“It was often about the search, not the endpoint.”
NOS paraphrase of her reflection on an early Volkskrant column about mistaking a Mars wrapper for a bird (2026 tributes)
Photos
2Paulien Cornelisse at Wie is de Mol fan day 2013
Mar 2013 · by People Forever
Paulien Cornelisse at CC De Ploter, Ternat (2015)
Dec 2015 · by People Forever
Same book, same effect, still catch myself listening for it