Nederlands

So I went to my second Dutch ladies club meeting last Monday. I was really looking forward to speaking Dutch again, you know, in full sentences that contain words longer than two syllables, and which are not interrupted by questions about tenses and participles. But it was not meant to be. Instead of only Dutch women, this time, two American ladies joined our ranks. One of them had lived in the Netherlands for a while, and spoke a little Dutch, but the other one spoke no Dutch at all, and was there by virtue of her mother, who is Dutch.

Now before I carry on about this meeting, please allow me to insert a little caveat. In case this blog will make you doubt, allow me to reiterate once more that I really like Americans. Not only did I marry one, and am I raising two of them, but I love all of my American friends, students, co-workers, and neighbors. Love them as much as all of my students, co-workers, neighbors, and friends from countries not lucky enough to be the US of A.

But, and I am very serious about this, if you are not Dutch, and you are going to a Dutch ladies club meeting, you had better speak Dutch. If you can't, or you won't, then you need to be quiet and listen. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. I get one chance every month to speak Dutch to someone face to face, and I happen to truly enjoy those few hours.

And here's what you don't do. You don't pick up on a few words, start telling a whole story in English, and then request that people respond in English because you don't understand Dutch well enough. Especially not at a Dutch ladies club meeting in the south, because you well know that all those Dutch ladies will have integrated into the southern culture enough to deem interrupting you, or heaven forbid, speak Dutch around you, extremely rude.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened. So I spent over two hours talking to women I still don't know very well, in English, about topics that just were not that intersting. For me, there's something about talking in Dutch that makes it almost unimportant what the conversation is about. I mean, I love calling the Dutch consulate for instance, just because I get to talk in Nederlands. So the meeting was not just a waste of time, it was a actually a little bit of a disappointment. I wanted to relate to women in my own language, experience the cultural bond that comes from sharing similar expressions and phrases. But it was not meant to be.

As a result, I've been wanting to blog about the little nothings that make up my life, in Dutch, for days. Because I wasn't able to talk about them on Monday. But I realize that a) that would be very boring, and b) that would not be fair to my English reader.

But still. Ik vind het maar niks. En ik hoop stiekem dat die twee vrouwen de volgende keer niet kunnen. Als ik namelijk ongemakkelijk gesprekken over niks met relatieve vreemden wil houden dan hoef ik echt niet helemaal naar een Nederlandse club, dat kan met onze overburen ook wel. Dus ben je een Nederlander, woon je in de VS, en heb je behoefte om mijn geklets over mijn leven in het Nederlands aan te horen, doe effe een belletje. Dat vind ik namelijk gezellig.