Twists and turns

Benny, over at "Fluent in 3 months", writes that the most important thing you can do to learn a new language is to just plunge in and do it. Start speaking right away, don't worry too much about grammar, just start talking and reading and writing and after about 3 months, you should just "get it".

It works to a certain point, for Dutch. I find that, for most of my daily life's needs, my fledgling Dutch--by which I mean most things are in the right order most of the time, and that I can understand most of what most people say to me in return--is enough. I have, after all, made dentist appointments and changed insurance policies and started a business with nary a word of English. But what they say of the NT2, which I will be taking later this year (unless I don't have to, by dint of Karel and I getting married), is downright terrifying. It is terrifying for two reasons: first, it is a four-hour test spread out over two days, with separate reading, writing, listening, and speaking sections (one hour each). They really do test your comprehension: they'll write something one way in the reading section, and put the answer in another way. Ditto for listening. Secondly, they are real sticklers for grammar. This means, all your "er" need to go in the right places with the correct prepositions (actually, picking out the correct prepositions is harder than figuring out where to put "er"), verbs must be conjugated in the correct tense, with clear pronunciation of the "e" at the end of the imperfect, etc. Happily, they do not penalize for "de" and "het" mix-ups.

Like most languages spoken by a limited number of people, Dutch is a highly contextual one, where everybody knows that "bakken" means "to fry" unless it means "to bake". and "weer" means "again" until it means "the weather". The rules in Dutch are many, the exceptions are even greater. But the main reason I tend to disagree with most of what Benny has to say about taking lessons (for Dutch, at least) is that at more advanced levels, you can't really suss out the rules on your own. They aren't self-explanatory, and they certainly aren't obvious. And the sheer number of "Dutch-isms" are enough to boggle even the most dedicated immersion-type learner.

But that being said, Dutch is like any other language, in the sense that, if you worry too much about the grammar, you won't get anywhere. At some point, you just have to turn off your self-consciousness and your inner grammar marm and just start blurting things out, and trust that you'll be able to make yourself understood.

The Word

I've commented several times on what I perceived as "the Dutch hive mind", and although I meant it largely in jest, the fact is that conformity is a valued commodity in the society here. You must be, in other words, appropriately fatsoenlijk in order to fit in.

Like zuinig or ouderwets , there is more to fatsoenlijk than meets the eye. It carries with it not only the definition of conformity, but also an extra dimension of propriety, and extra bit of "Dutchness". Anybody can offer their guest only one cookie, but it takes someone with an extra bit of fatsoenlijkheid to make the guest feel guilty about thinking of asking for a second.

Despite our relative non-conformity, though, if you live someplace long enough, something will eventually get to you. Part of redoing our apartment involved making new curtains for the small window on the side of the apartment, and I'd always envisioned a pretty, lacy inner curtain that could be drawn to reduce the sun glare in the afternoons, but still light enough to let the light through, with an opaque layer over that in case we wanted privacy in the evenings. About five hours' worth of sewing later, I assembled the curtains (Karel tacked up the hardware) and was quite pleased with the result.

At least, I was, before Karel told me the whole thing was oubollig, a word that means both fatsoenlijk and ouderwets. I still like the arrangement--the colors fit the decor and the lacy fabric is pretty and I put far too much work into the whole thing to just take it down--but I must confess that I am a bit peeved at myself: maintaining one's individuality is apparently much more difficult than I'd thought. But I suppose I could always blame the hormones.

Klingon and Elvish

I think I've finally cracked the code to learning stuff--any sort of stuff:

Instant feedback.

Then again, I guess that shouldn't surprise me: it's why I upgraded from film to digital, it's why I love my job (experiments either work or they don't--either way, you have an answer), and it's why I love the Code Academy.

Coding, after all, isn't all that different from learning a language: it's taking the information you want to convey, and turning it into information that someone (or something, as the case may be) else can understand. There are rules, and then there are ways around those rules. The only real difference, in the end, is that unless you're a hard-core coding freak, you get to interact with people with the one, and machines with the other.

I also think that this is why my Dutch lessons at the Radboud have been such a miserable and utter fail, and why going to them is such a chore, rather than a great way to get to know people. The lessons that I had in Maastricht, for all of their shortcomings and inability to handle different learning styles, at least had the benefit of not being so structured, and being able to exercise your newly-learned Dutch right away. Or maybe I just lucked out with my teachers there. But regardless: even though we covered less grammar in Maastricht, I still feel as if I left Maastricht able to speak much better Dutch than I currently do. I suppose it also helped that, in Maastricht, the students were better than the ones in my current class.

It's sort of like clicker-training, really, except without the treat. And the feedback doesn't always have to be positive. But it does have to be relatively quick to follow the event, otherwise you lose the limbic connection and the memory you build doesn't last.

Hey, I never said I wasn't a geek...

"The world's a better place when it's upside down"

I am not a girly-girl, nor have my jobs encouraged me to be one: when you're running amok in a lab, high heels and expensive silks lose out to the more pragmatic jeans-and-t-shirt. Even so, in high school, a spate of hyperactive oil glands and a small crush on one of the guys (Matt, if you really want to know) encouraged me to venture beyond my geek-bubble and explore the world of prettifying things.

One of the somewhat more daunting things about moving across the pond is how the definitions for things like "cream" and "lotion" change. That "cleansing milk" is very different from "body milk", and that neither of them have a drop of dairy in them. A scrub, thankfully, is still a scrub--that is, if you're talking about the grainy stuff that supposedly exfoliates as it cleans.

Here, a "cream" is a moisturizer for your face, unless it specifies that it's intended for your hands. Trust me when I say that, given the prices of most of these products, you'll only be able to afford to use them on your face. Personally, I've never believed much in Q10-this and regenerate-that, so I stick with the most basic of generic moisturizers. A "lotion" is actually not a lotion as it's known in the US (for those of us who didn't frequent the Clinique counter, anyway), but a toner.

It gets a little more tricky with "cleansing milk" and "body milk". Even though they're both milks, cleansing milk is a cleaner. It doesn't foam up the way products in the US do, and it doesn't make your skin feel tingly and clean. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it stops my breakouts, I wouldn't even know that it did anything--which is actually what dermatologists recommend in a soap. Body milk, on the other hand, is a moisturizer for the rest of you. Why the obsession with milk? Back in the day, women would soak their skin in milk (their hands, if they could, the rest of them if they could afford it) to get that radiant lush glow of youth.

These days, things are much easier, and a lot safer: belladonna is recognized for the poison it is. White lead is no longer found in makeup. One no longer needs to grind his own lapis lazuli (just as well, because where do you find it?), and the most complicated part of makeup is picking out the right shade of foundation. I sometimes wonder if we've made things too easy--if that might be the reason why beauty magazines would have you think that being gorgeous is a lifestyle more artificial than Splenda: morning and bedtime rituals of washing, moisturizing, toning, and scrubbing; an exfoliation/mask treatment/facial schedule as tight as the op that brought down Bin Laden; for the truly dedicated, a lifestyle that involves no caffeine, sugar, alcohol, fat, carbohydrates, red meat, or for that matter, anything that's not celery. Men purport to like "natural beauty", but one wonders if there ever was such a thing.

Whatcha Say

There was a question on today's Dear Prudie column that asked, essentially, "All my coworkers socialize in Spanish and leave me feeling left out. What can I say to get them to speak in English?"

Which brings me back to my days in Leiden, when coffee breaks were scheduled and quasi-mandatory, and chit-chat between everybody happened in a mix of languages (English, Dutch, Hindi, and Chinese). It was the unspoken rule that you only conversed in the language you were introduced in, and after a year of Dutch classes I finally realized just how weird it is to do otherwise.

That being said, I can't deny that it was sometimes very isolating to be in a room full of Dutch conversations and not being able to understand a word. I could still piece together the basic gist of the conversation from the words that I knew and the tone of voice and body language, but at that time it wasn't enough to actively participate in the conversations. Still, though, it felt wrong to ask that people switch languages, even though I knew they could. Well, perhaps not "wrong", per se, but it would have contradicted my stated goal of learning Dutch. Besides, it would have felt rude--I don't think I'll ever get over the whole "manners" thing.

But that does beg the question of how to include people who don't speak the language into a conversation with people who do. It's slow going to translate everything--I used to play translator for my mother, and it wasn't easy, particularly where doctor's visits were concerned. Not to mention, the burden of making sure the one side's intention is understood by the other can be a heavy one to juggle. I don't have any answers here. Etiquette is difficult enough when only one language and one culture is involved.

No muffin for you!

We were invited to Karel's sister's birthday party this weekend. She'd requested, for some strange reason, that I bake her a batch of muffins. I do understand why she asked for muffins: in the Netherlands, for some reason, everything pertaining to a baked good in that particular shape is called "muffin", as if it never occurred to anybody to put cake batter in it. I know it has, because I've seen demo cupcakes, but cupcakes in general, like your good ol' PB&J, seems to have evaded the Dutch hive mind. And, in her case, I'd made them for her before, when she'd stayed with us for a night.

Not that there's much of a difference between cupcakes and muffins, anyway: both overly sweet (I'd never call a muffin breakfast food, unless I cut out 1/2 the sugar) and loaded with butter. The only real difference is that icing a muffin is kind of weird, but nobody eats a cupcake without a great glopping heap of icing on it.

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, and Karel and I are standing outside Heeze. The cupcakes are sitting in their boxes--I'm feeling thankful that I'd chosen a sturdier icing--and we're wondering where the hell Someren is. Probably, thinks us, at the end of the road Somerensweg. We can't be sure, because it's not on the map.

A brief moment of panic: Karel had planned this trip as far as Heeze, but from there, he was counting on being able to catch a cab to Someren--a hope that, as soon as we got off the train at Heeze, vanished. Heeze is one of those cute little Dutch villages where people have huge houses and nice gardens and everybody is prosperous and things like what happened at Alphen aan de Rijn simply cannot happen, because there are no malls. But nobody gets off at Heeze and decides to go anywhere; six taxi companies called, and nobody wanted to work this particular trip.

We were about to resign ourselves to walking the entire way--that would have been tragic, given how far Someren turned out to be--but Karel was able to call someone for a ride. Lots of Dutch was spoken, lots of vlaai was eaten, and a good time was had by all.

First Tongues

After almost a year of Dutch classes, I can: hold a telephone conversation in Dutch (not very well, but the other person usually understands what I want to say), read the KNMI website, and socialize with my Dutch teacher. Last week there was a sort of borrel for international staff members at my work place (not a real borrel, because it ended way too late and had seating—not a lot, but there were chairs there), and one of the little “mixing games” they had was where they gave you a lanyard with a picture, and you had to find the other 4 people with the same picture. Turned out my Dutch teacher and I were two of a kind.

So we had a brief conversation—we both knew other people there, so it really was just small talk as we parted ways to join our friends—but what surprised me was how surprised I was that she spoke English when she greeted her other students. I mean, I know she speaks English—most Dutch people do—but up until that night 99% of my interactions with her have been in Dutch. She conducted her class almost entirely in Dutch, and when we answered and socialized with each other in the class, it was also in Dutch. As a matter of fact, when I bump into another fellow student, I also speak to him in Dutch (mostly). So to hear her speak English was something like a paradigm shift—it rewrote my world in a very small way. I'd never really considered how much our first impressions of a person can stick with you; I'd never realized before how much the first language can determine the sort of impression that gets made.

I had a little taste of the weirdness last weekend, when we joined our friends for a small celebratory dinner. By now, my main difficulty in speaking Dutch is figuring out the vocabulary to express super-complicated ideas (followed closely by “is ______ a regular or irregular verb?”), but they were good sports about my botched pronunciations and didn't interrupt. I imagine it was a little weirder for them, that I could join in, than it was for me.

I'm now writing a tour of Maastricht for Rama and most of the pages that I'm gleaning my information from are in Dutch. And it's quite an interesting sensation, not to care whether a page is written in Dutch or English.

Not Bad

When I first moved here, I didn't speak a word of Dutch. My Great Integration really only began once I got a job, as there I was exposed to many Dutch people, and had to buy my monthly train ticket from the machine and was stuck on a train for four hours a day, sometimes next to people who FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD NOT SHUT THE F*CK UP.

At first, I would only ask for things in English, as I literally did not know what many of the things were called. Then I would try speaking in Dutch--and then people would still reply in English, because apparently my attempts at the local language were that pathetic. But eventually I got better at making the funny noises involved in speaking Dutch, and people began replying to me in Dutch as well.

Yesterday I went to the Saturday market to get some chantarelle mushrooms and goats-milk cheese to try out a new (and expensive!) recipe. The nice mushroom lady gave me the cantarellen en roze oosterzwammen that I asked for, and then I went to the herb stand for some salie en vers knoflook. So far so good. Then to the cheese stand.

The problem with such stands is that their selection is limited, but I did see one cheese that I might have liked. So I asked to try a slice, to be sure of its taste, and the cheese man obligingly cut me a slice. It was vaguely reminiscent of the cheese I'd had at the Chateux Neercanne, not quite as sharp, but as close as I was likely to get for a price I could afford. By far the most exciting part of the whole thing is, when you've decided which cheese you want, the cheese man takes this huge curved blade with a handle on either end and cuts you off a hunk (what can I say, I like sharp objects).

I was on the verge of asking the cheese man, "Mag ik een stukje hebben?" when he told me, in English, "It's sheep milk cheese. It comes from a sheep."

Now, I fully realize that I will probably never speak Dutch like a native--I will probably always have some kind of weird accent; Amsterdammers will probably think I come from Limburg, Limburgians will probably think I come from Friesland, etc. I don't care about that. But I'd like to think that, after 3 years, my Dutch isn't all that bad.

Thoughts on language and editing

I do a lot of editing for my boss, which is currently my primary running rant for several reasons, none of which have to do with what I'm musing upon now: language and editing (I know, my post title is inspired).

Unlike my boyfriend, who is truly bilingual and probably could count as being trilingual, given his near-fluency in German, I remain stuck in English-mode for about 90% of my life. This is partly because of my job--in academia, the langue de rigeur is English, and conversations are either mind-numbingly simple ("Hi, how are you?") or extremely complex ("But the CYP450 system does not phosphorylate residues next to proline") and there's not a whole lot in between where a person at my current level of understanding can really get in on. However, when I do "flip the switch", my understanding of the language is now at the point where the switch is total. That is, I no longer try to translate the words as I hear them, but I (try to) understand the meaning as it comes along. I even kinda like watching the news, now (if only because pictures make everything much easier to follow).

A friend of mine who now lives in Japan and speaks, reads, and writes Japanese at a native level, described it this way: you cannot learn to a language rule by rule; you have to learn how the language "feels". I think it's true: when most adults want to learn a language, they start going at it the way a computer programmer would: x input = y output. If you think about it that way you'll get nowhere fast. It's more like getting to know a lover: you start with the small things--dinner and a movie--and then you move on to the more complicated things--life, the Universe, and Everything--and as you do, you grow to understand that person. Or, in this case, a language. Some ways to say things "feel" right. Others, not so much. Dat is het verschil tussen "weten" en "kennen".

What's all this got to do with editing? I gotta confess something right away: the sort of editing that I do (mostly) is for scientific papers, in a field which has its own lexicon and diction, so it's not as if I'm critiquing the latest thriller or anything like that. Maybe the following would be different if I were going over potential best-sellers, or something targeted at people who don't have PhDs.

That being said: Editing has almost NOTHING to do with finding grammar/spelling mistakes. I mean, sure, you have flubbed verbs and spelling mistakes left and right, but that's no different from 98% of the writing done by native speakers (who tend to use pseudo-words like "alot" and mix up their/there/they're). These sorts of things pop up no matter where you go, what language you speak, and who's writing it--here's a game for you: find all my grammar/spelling mistakes in this blog. There are more than I'd like to admit.

Rather, it has to do with a) understanding what the author wants to say, and b) helping the author to say it. In other words, meaning matters more than grammar. Your grammar can suck like a Hoover*, but if your meaning is clear, then the editing is easy. On the other hand, if you don't know what it is you want to say, it becomes much, much harder to edit--even if your English is perfectly correct. You have to have an understanding of the meaning of the text you're editing, and then figure out why the meaning isn't clear, and then think of how to fix it so that the meaning is clear--and, if you can, preserve the voice of the original author.

Editing is a lot like learning a lanugage. It's about being able to keep an eye on how the big picture evolves when you tweak the little things.

*Original thought was a lot more explicit--I do try not to use cliches.

Pet Peeves, Editing Edition

I get asked to edit a lot of stuff. Being a native English speaker has its perks, I suppose--for my boss--but it'd be a lot perkier for me if I got a bonus for everything I edit. Nevertheless, since part of my job--hehe, my job, period--is to make my boss look good, I'm a good little minion and edit away.

I'm not going to kvetch about stupid English, because a) my Dutch is just as bad and b) I've seen worse English coming from English-speakers. By and large Europeans have a pretty good command of the English language, and even those who do not know enough to make themselves understood. To me, at least--but then again, I have an almost telepathic ability to understand what people are trying to say. Oh, the benefits of growing up with ESL parents!

No, the bitch-fest this time centers around a whole other aspect of writing: namely, construction and composition. I probably have higher standards than most, since I took so many writing classes in college--well, all of 2. But there were several history and pre-law courses that I took that also required a ton of writing, too. Thanks also goes to somehow never managing to get above a C+ on my lab reports in spite of arduously adhering to everything my "how to write a lab report" guide said. Things that have become second-nature to me--summarizing, careful usage, and making sure things "evolve" in a sensible manner--are apparently not so second-nature to most people.

I don't think it's the language barrier--I really believe that, if things could be written in Dutch, I'd have just as many issues with things showing up in the wrong place, or even worse: again. That's my first pet peeve--repetition. One does not get brownie points for repeating the same thing over and over again. This could be avoided by, say, planning an outline of what you're going to write beforehand.

And that leads to pet peeve number two: said outline, if someone has one, usually has no structure whatsoever. At least, that's the only explanation I can think of when I try to explain why the writers put a particular section "here" as opposed to "there". A good structure allows you to build up a story--it gives your ideas a direction to "evolve" in, without repeating yourself.

It also helps avoid my third pet peeve, which is non sequiturs. That which does not follow. The things which I am asked to edit are often rife with them. And the thing is, I can usually understand why the writer chose to put a paragraph about A next to a paragraph about B, but there's no link between the two, nothing to tie them together.

The last pet peeve of mine is the following: a string of citations does not a coherent point make. Very often, especially in reviews, you'll find that the author strings together a list of one-sentence article summaries, and...that's it. Not even an attempt to say "And what this means is..." See above about non sequiturs.

These problems, again, are not endemic to Dutch scientists. After all, I've read some pretty craptastic shit in the US, too. I guess it's safe to say that I just really, really, spectacularly, hate bad writing.

Mijn Nederlands Taalessen

Mijn Nederlands taalessen gaan wel. De klas gebeurd vroeg om maandag en woensday 's ochtends. Er zit 10-12 mensen in de klas.

It's funny. In my three years here I haven't manged to figure out the grammar, and while my understanding of the language is pretty decent, I still bungle speaking and all but the simplest writing. The vocab isn't that hard. I still do get words mixed up, but that's because, I think, I pay attention to stems and prefixes and suffixes, and so words that look similar get assigned similar meanings and then I get confused. Dutch grammar, on the other hand, is one huge-ass long rule list of rules and an even longer list of exceptions. But construction-wise, it's not that different from English (at least, compared to Spanish), so my lack of language is more from lack of practice than anything else. I work in an academic setting, so most people around me speak English, and I know enough simple Dutch to get around the ones that don't.

From what I understand, there is a panel of linguists that convene every few years to discuss what's "real" Dutch and what's not. I would imagine that these people make their living scanning the newspapers with a red pen in their hand, circling words that they didn't know existed, checking up with Van Dale (the dictionary of the Dutch language, complete with "het" and "de" in front of their nouns) and then making a list of noncompliant text examples. Then they convene and "tsk" over how much of other languages are polluting the purity of their beloved Nederlands but go about deciding which words get added to the language anyway.

Watching languages evolve is, I think, one of the more fascinating non-scientific pursuits--one that is a good deal more satisfying than, say, elaborating on the Bhuddist influence on Chaucer. You have to take into account the history, the influences, the ideas that wanted expression. Bill Bryson does a cursory job in Made in America but the English language practically begs to be abused, and if you're an American, you don't (according to Bryson's depiction of the fussy British) have the reverence for the sanctity of the language.

I wouldn't say that the Dutch are worried about the proliferation of English congnates in their language. The Dutch are very pragmatic people: a computer is a computer, and to call it by any other name would be a waste of breath. But they do want people who live in the country to know how to speak Dutch, and the individual steden (new vocab word, woohoo!) arrange language courses for newcomers that are free of charge, if you can prove that you have residence and can't pay for it. Many of the universities also give language lessons, and you can arrange for private tutoring if that suits you better, as well.

I do not understand people who pack their bags, move halfway around the world, and expect to continue living as if they were still back home. Who refuse to learn the language (or, in the case of Pakistani men in England, to let their wives learn the language, the better beat them into submission), refuse to learn about the culture, refuse to integrate--and then they wonder WHY they are so unhappy? I don't understand why people think it's society's job to integrate people who clearly want to spend their lives wallowing in misery. If they want to drown in their own despair, then let them! But for the ones who do want to learn the language, learn enough about their adopted culture to get along, at least, to get a job and work and earn a living and be happy--then they shouldn't be prevented from doing so.

This is actually a fairly big issue in the Netherlands. There are a fair number of immigrants living in the Netherlands--I think at last count some 10% of the populace was foreign-born. Who's responsible for integrating all of these noobs to the country, etc, and how can we make sure that none of these are suicide bombers, and so on. There aren't any easy answers--there never are, to these kinds of questions.

Language Barrier

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went shopping in Maastricht--we bought silver candlesticks for ourselves (to replace the thrift-store thingums that had broken) and wandered into and out of some pretty nifty shops. Then we tried to find a Chinese restaurant for lunch. It took us almost 40 minutes, but eventually we were able to find one. And it was good--evidenced by the fact that my boyfriend, normally of a dainty and ladylike disposition when it comes to his food, shoveled nearly 5 servings of food down his gullet. PLUS an appetizer, and soup--we'd ordered one of those XX/person menus, where you get a soup, starter, and main course. It was good, although not quite as delicious as food in, say, Chinatown, New York.

In most of the Netherlands, "Chinese food" actually means "Chinese-Indonesian food", which is pretty good by itself but terrible if you were expecting, well, anything like the Chinese food you'd find in the States, or anywhere else in the world where "Chinese food" actually means "Chinese food". And again, this is largely historical: up until the 1950s, the Dutch ruled Indonesia, and when they granted Indonesia its independence, they also gave anybody who feared to stay there a get-into-Holland-free pass. To this day, when you go to the supermarket, you will often find one aisle, or part of one aisle, covered in red-and-yellow packets of stuff for bami, nasi goreng, or prawn crackers.

But suffice it to say that most of the so-called Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands actually serve Indonesian food, so a Chinese restaurant that actually serves Chinese food is hard to find. Even so, I suppose it says a lot about Dutch food when I ask you to believe me when I say that even being tricked into eating something swimming in sauce is a delightful alternative to eating your standard Dutch pea soup.