Crikey, That Snail's Got No Clothes On

A Naked Snail Photo: Antonio Garcia

I was pushing my one year old in his pram whilst my four year was jumping over puddles on the pavement next to us on our way back to infant school after lunch. The heavens had opened that morning and the rain had been continuos since I had done the first school run of the day that morning. In front of us was a mother with a four year old girl dressed from head to toe in pink in one hand and her slightly older brother in the other hand. Suddenly the trip stopped before us and the young girl let out a shriek,

"Ew. Wat is dat mama?" she asked, turning to her mother. She pointed at the ground to a slug.

"Dat is een naaktslak," said her mother laughing. The Dutch word for slug, naaktslak, litterally translates to naked snail. Both children were now laughing. The young boy said,

"Yes, he woke up this morning and forgot to put his clothes on." His little sister giggled. As did I. My four year old looked up at me,

"Nee, toch mama?" he asked, questioning the validity of the boy's statement. The mother continued,

"Yes, he must have been very confused when he woke this morning."

It reminded me just how fabulous the Dutch language can be!

Mind Your Ps and Qs Please - I'm British

Photo: Ramzi Hashisho

As mentioned in my blog post last week, I have been watching the Dutch version of Top Chef every day on RTL. However, I was shocked last night as I watched Tuesday's episode (we tape it and watch it when we get the chance so run a little behind....) and heard profanities from Omar's mouth that I hadn't expected to hear on a cooking show broadcast at 7pm. Along with uttering the 'f word' many times, he then combined it with the 'c word' which was a step too far for me.

I grew up with the BBC watershed, which means that any program shown on the BBC before 9pm is suitable for everyone. This means you will not hear 'strong language' (i.e. swearing and vulgar language) before 9pm. Even after 9pm I have a problem with the vocabulary used in Tuesday's program.  I am not generally a prude and I don't have too much of a problem with many swear words but there is a limit.

Much of it is because I am English so when the Dutch use such strong language in English it means more to me than the average Dutchman. The same is true the other way round - if you swear in Dutch it's just a funny word if you are not a native. However, I really struggle to see why such bad language was not edited out of such a show - does swearing on that scale really enhance a cooking show?


What are you used to hearing on TV in your home country? What do you think about Dutch TV and the language used?

A Dutch Decade: Q&A with Arwa Lokhandwala

As part of the Dutch Decade week I threw the floor open to you to ask me any question you liked about expat life or life in the Netherlands.....


Arwa* asked, "When did you feel learning the language (Dutch) was important, so as to enable you to integrate better into Dutch society? Was it during the initial months? Or do you feel you managed well initially without knowing the language since English is so widely spoken here? Did the realisation come about only after a couple of years when say you started a family or a business here in the Netherlands? Also what difficulties did you face while learning the language and how did you overcome them?"


My answer: I started to learn Dutch before I even set foot on Dutch soil with the intention of living here. At school I learnt French and German, and for my university degree I continued with my French and lived in Toulouse for a year so you don’t have to tell me twice how important it is to learn a local language. Once I knew I was moving to the Netherlands, I started trying to get the basics of Dutch. I used 'Hugo Dutch in Three Months' as a foundation, read news articles online and then tried to translate them with my Dutch partner sending back corrections by email. I practiced basic phrases on the telephone every time we talked (which was daily – British Telecom called me to notify me of ‘unusual high activity’ on my phone line and demanded an upfront payment to settle the ‘unusually high bill’).

When I arrived here, hit by culture shock and missing my family and friends, I found it hard to get out there and try and talk Dutch in shops and with my partner’s friends and family. Initially they all spoke English with me – it would have been a quiet household otherwise. After a few months, everyone switched to Dutch as they worked out that I understood a lot but suffered from stage fright when it came to talking. That shook me out of it! If I spoke English they looked at me blankly, forcing me to say it again in Dutch and with time, hard work, and patience on their part, it worked.

It was actually years later that I went for the first time to any kind of formal Dutch language tutor (I saw Gerrie Soede of Poldertaal in The Hague and highly recommend her by the way) as I realised that understanding and speaking was going well but writing the language was much harder. Gerrie helped me with grammar (I got to hear “that’s an exception to the rule’ a lot….) and gave me lots of writing exercises and useful resources.

Funnily enough, having a family actually decreased my use of Dutch at home as we are bringing both boys up bilingually. That means I speak English to them and their father speaks Dutch – otherwise they’ll end up speaking Dutch with an English accent and vice versa! By the time I set up The Writing Well, my Dutch was good enough to cope with the Chamber of Commerce and the tax office and any other administration body that demands money from me……

I had a colleague not long after I arrived in the Netherlands who had been here a few years but who could not speak much Dutch. I will never forget her telling me that her daughter brought home Dutch friends from school and she had to ask her daughter to translate for her – that was an extra motivator to get to grips with the language.

On a final note, I don’t believe you can truly understand or enjoy another country’s culture without learning the local language – without it you cannot understand the newspapers, films, TV programs, music text, radio programs. You can’t fully follow politics or happenings in society.

How have you learnt the local language?

*An Indian expat in The Netherlands, Arwa is a travel and expat writer. Her articles have been published in a host of travel and expat websites including the Lonely Planet. She has traveled extensively in India and Europe, and this has given her an excellent opportunity to understand different cultures. She also maintains her blog Orangesplaash wherein she shares her expat experiences, travel adventures and expat tips!  You can catch her on twitter at @arwalokhandwala.

Guest Post: It's All Greek to Me by Anneke Kamerling

This is the first in a series of extracts by Anneke Kamerling from her booklet called 'Typical Greek' about her experiences as an expat in Greece. You can find out more at het-boekje.nl.

Photo: Chrissi Nerantzi

I know the Greek alphabet. The word itself is Greek. I learned it from my father, before I was taught ancient Greek at school. The advantage is that I can read what is written. The disadvantage is that I do not understand what it means. I must learn Modern Greek, now that I'm established here in Greece. But learning Greek is different from learning English or German and even French is a cinch compared to this complex language.

The ancient Greek language is more than 3000 years old. It is a dead language that no longer develops. Over the centuries, Greece was often conquered and occupied. Especially during the Turkish occupation, which lasted over 400 years, the development of the Greek language virtually stopped. The population continued to speak the language though and also in the Greek music the language was kept alive, but reading and writing at that time was dominated by only a select group of scholars and clerics within the oppressed Greek Orthodox Church. In the 19th century the 'Katherevousa' was introduced. This artificial language, composed by scholars who held to the ancient Greek from ancient times, was taught in schools as the official written language.

The spoken language, which had been through a natural development, differed enormously. After the fall of the colonels the Katherevousa was abolished in 1974. The spoken language, 'Dimothiki', became also the written language. This is the language, which to this day is used in Greece. The language has kept the alphabet of the ancient Greek language, but is constantly evolving with new words like airplane, computer, etc.

I start studying Modern Greek. Some words are recognizable from the Ancient Greek, but these are mostly words that we have integrated into our language, such as psychology, pharmacy, mechanics, etc., so that doesn't help much.

It starts with the simple yes and no. Where is it heading when 'yes' is 'no' (ναι)? Most difficult for me, however, are the language's five is, the two os, the two es and the accented syllables. The accent is not only specific in the Greek language, but also important. The same word spoken with a differently positioned accent can mean something completely different. Often I pronounce words wrong. For example: I ask at a romantic dinner for a sweet prison*... I regularly go one day to the much*... I look through the mosque τζαμί (tzamí) of the window τζάμι (tzámi) and I give my kiss φιλί (filí) a girlfriend φίλη (fíli)... who by the way is also of a different race φυλή (filí). Over time I've learned the difference between children παιδάκια (pedákia) and lamb chops παïδάκια (païdákia), I read a passage χωρίο (chorío) from a book about a village χωριό (chorió) and I am πότε πότε quite upset of the word πότε, or is it ποτέ?* In the beginning I actually said soft μαλακά (malaká) when trying to call someone a wanker μαλάκα (maláka).

It gets more confusing! Not only does the accent play a role, but also the pause between two words is crucial, something the Greeks do not usually take so closely. For example if you order two large cups of tea, δύο τσάι, μεγάλα (dio tsai megála) don't forget to pause at the comma. Otherwise you will be surprised when you get two cups of tea with milk, namely δύο τσάι με γάλα (dio tsai me gála). Anyway, for English people it makes no difference.

But those vowels... That is exactly ακριβώς (akrivós) where I pay a high ακριβός (akrivós) price. The squadron ίλη (íli) bites in the dust ύλη (íli). It costs me liters λίτρα (lítra) of ransom money λύτρα (lítra).
Or even worse, the combination of vowels and stress, for example: I speak μιλώ (Miló) of an apple μήλο (mílo) or, a healthy complexion χροιά (chriá) is no necessity χρεία (chría). Besides όμως (ómos), I am beaten on my shoulder ώμος (ómos) for all that όμως (ómos) in a cruel ωμός (omós) way every time the Greeks were laughing at my blunders!

Φυλακή (filakí) = prison. Φιλάκι (filáki) = kiss
Πολύ (polí) = much. Πόλη (póli) = city
Πότε πότε (póte póte) = occasionally
Πότε (póte) = when and ποτέ (poté) = never