Wij hebben een huis gekocht

And so I looked at the photos of the new "huis"... what I saw was actually an apartment - in fact a rather small one and it had nothing to do with a house at all. Actually I was rather disappointed by their new "huis" but of course I could not show that.

Can someone explain the Dutch meaning of "huis" please? Is this a term used for any type of accommodation? How do people distinguish if they refer to living in a house or apartment? Is living in a mansion a "huis" as well?

And why did they boil their house anyway?

"gekocht" might look like "boiled" through comparison with German, but the correct meaning is "bought" (which I knew only incidentally, not even speaking Dutch).

I don't know how that works in Dutch, but some languages use the word "house", as a generic term, to mean home or place of living..

Tonieja is right. Huis means house, but in Dutch it is not as mandatory as in English to make a distinction between houses and apartments. It may be relevant that there is no separate word for "home," and "huis" fills in for that. For example, "I'm going home" in Dutch is "ik ga naar huis," whether the speaker lives in a mansion or in a shoebox apartment. So you might interpret "wij hebben een huis gekocht" as "we bought a home."

So you might interpret "wij hebben een huis gekocht" as "we bought a home."

However, in English, at least here in California, "we bought a home" would imply a house, while "I'm going home" would imply "I'm going to the structure wherein I dwell." It can also mean "I am returning to the place where I grew up." "I'm going home for Christmas" would be "I am spending Christmas with Mom and Dad in the old house."

When I was in New Zealand in the 1980s, I was amused to hear "home" used to refer to England, clearly a leftover from original settlers. "I'm going home on holiday."

Yeah, that's true. To an English speaker "we bought a home" sounds like "we bought a house."

In any event, to a Dutch speaker it would not come as a surprise that a person saying "wij hebben een huis gekocht" had actually bought an apartment, not a house.

A House is not a Home is the memoir of a famous New York "housekeeper" named Polly Adler. In this case, the house would have been known as a disorderly house, bawdy house, house of ill-repute, or just plain whorehouse.

I think French is somewhat similar to Dutch although "maison" is used differently depending on the context.

"Je rentre à la maison." In this phrase maison is used for home and not house. However, it sounds odd to me if someone said "J'achète une maison" when the person actually meant to say "J'achéte un apartement". Can someone confirm that?

As a side note, as far as I can tell, other people's home ownership is an anglo obsession.

And having written that out just now, I have to come back to nutrax's point. It's common for apartment owners, at least here in New York, to be referred to as homeowners. ("He's a homeowner now, so he has to take care of the repairs in his apartment himself.")

When I was in New Zealand in the 1980s, I was amused to hear "home" used to refer to England, clearly a leftover from original settlers. "I'm going home on holiday."

Quite irrational and strange. A business friend took me to his parent's home, and it was in the end of 80s. They still referred to England as "home", even if they were born in New Zealand.
They still had text books at school with stories about Bill and Jane going sledding at Christmas time.

To an English speaker "we bought a home" sounds like "we bought a house."

British estate agents certainly advertise "Homes for sale". It is a usage I hate, because a home is also a synonym for institutional care, as you can see in sentences like "When her parents were both killed in an accident, she was sent to a home"; "When she was too old to care for herself, we put her in a home." To me "home" is the place you feel comfortable living in, be it a building or the town or country you came from. As some people say, "Builders can build a house, but only the people living in it can make it a home." When I bought my first residential property (which was by chance a house), I was thus annoyed at people who said I had bought a "home". It was not home at all for quite a long time. So, for me, "a home" is not a happy usage for "a house or a flat or a static caravan or...".

"When her parents were both killed in an accident, she was sent to a home"; "When she was too old to care for herself, we put her in a home."

"A home" without a qualifier sounds British and a bit archaic to me. I'd expect a qualifier. "Nursing home" would probably be the most common. Maybe "retirement home." A Children's Receiving Home is a place that gives emergency`shelter to children removed from abusive situations. "Rest home" and "old folks home" are out-of-date.

(I did once read about a Home for Hopeless Inebriates in a murder mystery from the 1930s.)

Is "homely" still a compliment in British English or is it, too, out-of-date?

Is "homely" still a compliment in British English or is it, too, out-of-date?

As far as I am aware "homely" still means "welcoming and comfortable" here. Unfortunately translators of Tolkien have sometimes misunderstood his Last Homely House at Rivendell, though you wonder how they could possibly have translated it with the American meaning and not wondered at what a very odd thing that is to call it.

In Dutch there is no distinction between 'home' and 'house'. Both are called huis, sometimes with a t in front: thuis (I'm home - Ik ben thuis). Any type of living space is called huis, but we do have different words for different types of houses.

OPs reaction to the new house is similar to the reaction of my Australian cousin to my house. She said: O, what a lovely little unit, while I live in a house which -by Dutch standards of course- is actually big enough to accommodate a family of 5.

In Spanish the usage is similar to French. If you say "compré una casa" it means you bought a house (not an apartment); but if you're going home you would say "me voy a casa", whether you live in a house or an apartment.