(Minigolf course, Stresa on the Borromean Gulf, November 2019)
My employer is keeping on our Dutch lessons during the lockdown – on Zoom, where else? I’m glad, I love this language. Delightfully, the problem with the sentence “Een golf in de golf stopt de golf” is not the repetition of “golf” – it means wave, gulf and golf, a wave in the gulf stops the golf – but the fact that you can’t start a sentence with “een”. Under the fierce word order rules, you must start with something that receives emphasis. “Een” means “A”; indefinite nouns don’t count.
Last Wednesday I joined the lesson a bit late. The class was crying out “objects I have in my kitchen” with an enthusiasm that perhaps reflects our reduced horizons these recent weeks. In my notebook I have written down the names of more than fifty. I now have a word for a “spoon with holes” (for lifting poached eggs out of the pan) in Dutch – schuimspaan – even though I don’t have one in English.
Now it’s Easter weekend. I’ve been encouraging my team to make weekends different from working days and holidays different from weekends. No-Travel-Companion and I are trying to do the same. Today as we sat on the settee I read nearly a whole book (Kevin Barry’s Night boat to Tangier) in one go. I feel like I ate a whole box of chocolates.
PS I am of course rather pleased with myself for finding a photo that includes waves, a gulf and golf. That weekend on Lake Maggiore it bucketed down. If the minigolf course had been just a bit lower the waves could even have stopped the golf, as they stopped the use of benches at Ispra on the opposite side of the lake:
PPS In deciding whether to rely on any assertions this post may make about the Dutch language, please take into account that I’ve only been learning it for just over a year. Love can be hard of hearing.
Paul Hodson 