Current Music: Amanda Marshall - "Birmingham" (in my head anyway...)
Last night was so much fun. I went with M and DK (haha, his name is the same even with my initial-system, LOL!) to M's parents' house in Nieuwekerk aan den IJssel, to have dinner. (DK almost got us into an accident on the way there - he didn't notice the cars ahead of us stopping, and he braked hard and we skidded and stopped about a centimeter from the other guy's bumper... no joke... a guy in the car next to us caught my eye and held up his thumb and forefinger with just a tiny bit of space in between, LOL! Nothing happened, but it shook us up. M lectured him all the way home... "Jij mag NOOIT meer in Mama's auto rijden!"...) Anyway, a lot of other people were there too - an American couple plus a bunch of neighbors. Heel gezellig! And the Americans didn't speak any Dutch, so there was a lot of both languages flying around all night. And nobody knew I could speak Dutch - they kept asking things like, "So can you already understand a little bit?" and M and I would just look at each other and laugh... LOL!
Anyway, the Americans were just that - very American, if you get my drift. Like... talk with authority about things which they have no clue about, have a lot of money which they take for granted, ask superficial questions and don't really care about the answers... and the woman was wearing a fairly ornate cross, too, which is so typical... I was a little ashamed, to tell you the truth. This was the first time I'd really been able to compare 'typical' Dutch with 'typical' American and wow... I really saw a difference, a lot more so than before. M noticed it too. I mean, I know not all Dutch people are perfect and not all Americans are horrible, but still. (The nice thing was, we could talk in Dutch right under their noses and they had no clue what we were saying. We were discussing language - M's and my specialty, needless to say - and the man authoritatively put some opinion out there which made no sense at all, expecting us to agree with him. We sort of nodded politely and then when the attention was off us, I said quietly, "Ik ben absoluut niet met hem eens, trouwens..." and M muttered, "Ik ook niet... en wij weten meer van talen..." Really funny! That's one of the things I like best about Dutch, I think - that it's so unusual, and nobody else knows it. :))
Anyway, echt heel gezellig. But a lot of switching back and forth between languages. And then I came home and tried to chat with Mom and I simply could not type in English... the Dutch words were coming to mind first. Wow... couple more evenings like that and I won't know my own language anymore. I'm having that problem more and more frequently these days... I sat here for like 5 minutes one day trying to think of the word for 'wasmachinesruimte'... and even when I do manage to speak English, I say things that aren't spreektaal, like "I found it really nice" (ik vond het heel leuk) and "could well be" (zou wel kunnen)... So basically I'm making Dutch-people errors. WEIRD!!! But cool. :)
And I learned something new - apparently here it's perfectly acceptable to just call someone up and say "Hey, can I come over?" In the US, you'd do that only maybe with your very best friends... but apparently that's the way it goes here. That's going to take some getting used to, though... it's been drilled into me for 19 years that "inviting yourself over" or "imposing" is really really rude. Ik moet eraan wennen...
M (the other one) and I made up our sentences for our linguistics experiment yesterday... pretty funny. They're all really stupid, but hey, that's why it was funny. We're meeting up again on Wednesday to compare findings, so I've got to get 5 people done before then. M and DK said they'd, ehm, 'meedoen', and I bet P would too and maybe even the manager of this building... that'd give her some of her own medicine... ever since she found out I know Dutch, if I try to go into the office and speak English, she grins and folds her arms across her chest and says, "Ik versta je niet!" LOL!
Guess I better go write those sentences on cards, then. Tot later, allemaal!
(P.S. Whyyyyyy won't S's computer let me archive??? Stupid Macs with a character limit... hmph. Oh well, I'll be able to do it at the library. For now, sorry about the excessive length of this page.)
Last night was so much fun. I went with M and DK (haha, his name is the same even with my initial-system, LOL!) to M's parents' house in Nieuwekerk aan den IJssel, to have dinner. (DK almost got us into an accident on the way there - he didn't notice the cars ahead of us stopping, and he braked hard and we skidded and stopped about a centimeter from the other guy's bumper... no joke... a guy in the car next to us caught my eye and held up his thumb and forefinger with just a tiny bit of space in between, LOL! Nothing happened, but it shook us up. M lectured him all the way home... "Jij mag NOOIT meer in Mama's auto rijden!"...) Anyway, a lot of other people were there too - an American couple plus a bunch of neighbors. Heel gezellig! And the Americans didn't speak any Dutch, so there was a lot of both languages flying around all night. And nobody knew I could speak Dutch - they kept asking things like, "So can you already understand a little bit?" and M and I would just look at each other and laugh... LOL!
Anyway, the Americans were just that - very American, if you get my drift. Like... talk with authority about things which they have no clue about, have a lot of money which they take for granted, ask superficial questions and don't really care about the answers... and the woman was wearing a fairly ornate cross, too, which is so typical... I was a little ashamed, to tell you the truth. This was the first time I'd really been able to compare 'typical' Dutch with 'typical' American and wow... I really saw a difference, a lot more so than before. M noticed it too. I mean, I know not all Dutch people are perfect and not all Americans are horrible, but still. (The nice thing was, we could talk in Dutch right under their noses and they had no clue what we were saying. We were discussing language - M's and my specialty, needless to say - and the man authoritatively put some opinion out there which made no sense at all, expecting us to agree with him. We sort of nodded politely and then when the attention was off us, I said quietly, "Ik ben absoluut niet met hem eens, trouwens..." and M muttered, "Ik ook niet... en wij weten meer van talen..." Really funny! That's one of the things I like best about Dutch, I think - that it's so unusual, and nobody else knows it. :))
Anyway, echt heel gezellig. But a lot of switching back and forth between languages. And then I came home and tried to chat with Mom and I simply could not type in English... the Dutch words were coming to mind first. Wow... couple more evenings like that and I won't know my own language anymore. I'm having that problem more and more frequently these days... I sat here for like 5 minutes one day trying to think of the word for 'wasmachinesruimte'... and even when I do manage to speak English, I say things that aren't spreektaal, like "I found it really nice" (ik vond het heel leuk) and "could well be" (zou wel kunnen)... So basically I'm making Dutch-people errors. WEIRD!!! But cool. :)
And I learned something new - apparently here it's perfectly acceptable to just call someone up and say "Hey, can I come over?" In the US, you'd do that only maybe with your very best friends... but apparently that's the way it goes here. That's going to take some getting used to, though... it's been drilled into me for 19 years that "inviting yourself over" or "imposing" is really really rude. Ik moet eraan wennen...
M (the other one) and I made up our sentences for our linguistics experiment yesterday... pretty funny. They're all really stupid, but hey, that's why it was funny. We're meeting up again on Wednesday to compare findings, so I've got to get 5 people done before then. M and DK said they'd, ehm, 'meedoen', and I bet P would too and maybe even the manager of this building... that'd give her some of her own medicine... ever since she found out I know Dutch, if I try to go into the office and speak English, she grins and folds her arms across her chest and says, "Ik versta je niet!" LOL!
Guess I better go write those sentences on cards, then. Tot later, allemaal!
(P.S. Whyyyyyy won't S's computer let me archive??? Stupid Macs with a character limit... hmph. Oh well, I'll be able to do it at the library. For now, sorry about the excessive length of this page.)
stormed at 04:56
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