English as Accessory

Learning Dutch involves making choices. Depending on where you live, you may or may not want to take on the local accent and vocabulary (regional dialects are another issue altogether). Differences in pronunciation can be significant – perhaps less for foreigners more accustomed to adjusting to new sounds than for, let’s say, Dutch TV-makers, who are prone to adding subtitles when non-mainstream native Dutch speakers are on screen.

Students of Dutch familiar with English, German, Swiss-German and Danish have a head-start in the language-learning process in the Netherlands, but newcomers who don’t speak English at all may be at a disadvantage. Knowing which English words or phrases to use, and when to do it, adds a certain je ne sais quoi to one’s Dutch.

Consider these few random examples encountered in recent weeks:

The nation’s leading evening newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad, stays high-brow in an editorial on Holland’s faltering judicial system by referring to something rotten.

Their morning tabloid edition targets the mobile generation with the name NRC Next.

The need for speed also peppers the speech of a producer of a jittery prime time talk show, where, as the producer concedes, haste can unhinge a script, but it’s TV and there’s never a dull moment.

Streamlined modernity shapes the program title InFocus (an example of how English words are sometimes combined into one for the Dutch variant) and its Update from the Muslim Broadcasting Company (in a system with Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Humanist and other secular broadcasting organizations).

A music sector network opts for misguided word play (that’s when it gets irritating) in framing their discussion Copyright or wrong… on authors’ rights.

Clearly a wrong decision was made when a woman named ‘Lies’ (Dutch pronunciation = ‘Lease’) created a store name by combining her own name with an English-language description of the business, resulting in Lies. For Kids. Good luck there!

I am, however, grateful to the Dutch journalist and author John Jansen van Galen who offers splendid isolation as an option for this country’s noisy right-wing PVV Freedom Party.

It's still there, in case you were wondering

Torture and Tourism: a European Perspective

Once upon a time, a seasonal exhibition was launched in Amsterdam, an educational money-maker: Medieval Torture, the freak/horror show, no longer on the sidelines of a recreational circus. The public would pay to stream through: relieved when spewed out at the other end, steadied by the thought of having learned something. The public (natives and foreign visitors alike) so loved this exhibition that it earned the right to become a permanent fixture. Inside this recreational success, guaranteed to scare, visitors can read up on the past in Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

The organizers understand that it’s not only fear of pain and suffering that will attract crowds – it’s the option of stepping into the role of executioner, or inflicting pain, that animates others. During a football competition of importance a couple of years ago, a cardboard figure of a well-known German player from the relatively recent past was propped up by the street entrance and museum visitors invited to spit on him, mimicking the act of a revered Dutch player at a game. The Dutchman, a man of color, was said to have been responding to specific remarks made by the German player against a backdrop of racist chants coming from the crowd. Dutch nationalism, often struggling for definition, has gained a profile at times like this, when defense of the national good is intended to come at the expense of Germans, the occupiers during World War II. The conflict escalated, and the two players in question were suspended. The (by now apparently resolved) conflict happened nearly two decades ago, but the Torture Museum thought that tapping into residual feelings of hate or aggression would be lucrative PR. The good news is that the target figure was removed from their entryway – enough complaints rolled in to convince them that this could put a dent in ticket sales.

The Torture Museum in Amsterdam continues to do well, but this is not only a Continental success story. Across the Channel in the UK, the legacy of 'Tudor torture' adorns pencil sets, notebooks and badges sold in shops wherever recreational and cultural pursuits cross paths.

Those Persians

A professor of Iranian origin now working in the Netherlands introduced Persian culture as 'the place where Asia kissed the Middle East.' I'm sure he said 'kissed.' He may also have said 'embraced' in the next sentence or two. It's possible that he also referred to China kissing Turkey. What's absolutely certain is that he referred to a mutual acquaintance of South Asian origin with significant disdain, more or less attributing this person's abrasive - as he saw it - personality to ethnicity. It struck me at the time as ironic that while pressing the point of a multicultural or pluralist tradition in his homeland, where there had been a unique and extended period of ecstatic cultural exchange and expression, he also illustrated some of the residual irritations that can remain visible, like scar tissue, when personalities clash.

Kavir is (was?? has the global crisis closed it down??) a pluralist Persian culinary zone in Glasgow, offering Carrot & Persian Ice Cream Milkshakes, Persian herbal tea and all variety of smoothies. I found their sign rather alluring, and I hope they've not had to fold. My Persian connections are scattered, but detailed, and luckily for me, publicity around an exhibition at the British Museum on 17th-century Iran draws another epic description of Silk Route dramas in centuries past in the days of glory in Isfahan, where, as it happened, the going currency was a silver coin mined by slaves of Spanish conquistadores, but manufactured by the mercantile Dutch. Who's kissing who, I mean, really?

My first Iranian connection was probably during my grade school years in New Jersey, when I played with the daughter of a carpet importer. After that, on my first flight from West to East, the standard pre-landing announcement from the cockpit was slightly amended to Ladies and Gentlemen, we will land shortly at Teheran Airport, where the local time is 1500 years in the past.

In contrast: I received a congratulatory card on International Women's Day once and only once - from a forward-thinking Iranian exile in Holland. And in the new Millenium, I was witness to the bizarre application of a dynamic, modern survey of the pro-active and largely successful Iranian minority in the Netherlands. In academics and many other fields, (Dutch-) Iranians are forging ahead.

Nevertheless, it was a bit of surprise when a Canadian friend was drawn into this survey as being one of them. Amsterdam city records showed his mother's place of birth as being Teheran, where she indeed first appeared on this earth as the daughter of English oil company employees temporarily residing in Iran. He was thereby classified as an Iranian in Holland, and when the survey of his lifestyle and habits was done, there was no way to clarify his true background. I know, because I sat in as a witness.

It was quite a shock to see that the barrier to providing accurate information was built into the software on the laptop provided to the interviewer by the marketing company being paid by government and/or city funds (taxpayers) to generate useful data on Holland's new demographics. The Canadian interviewee repeatedly explained the circumstances of his mother's birth in Teheran, but there was no way of recording this history. Another strange question concerned the subject's social life: do you spend more time with your own group (Iranians) or with Dutch people?? He asked: what about everyone else? But there was no way to file accurate details.

Te gek voor woorden - too crazy for words - an expression which I now can hope to learn in Farsi, thanks (to end on a high note) to the recent publication of a Compilation of Idioms in Dutch & Persian. The book's author is a Teheran-born long-time resident of the Netherlands and a certified interpreter and translator. Farsi, as it happens, is Iran's official language - but there many dozens of others.

Salt Lake City Again

I made some notes while watching the unbelievably fast, balanced and cool-headed speed skaters from around the world who are competing in Salt Lake City, USA this weekend. Luckily for me, they're on TV in the Netherlands.

Please click to enlarge the photograph and read.

For previous reference to Salt Lake City, please see June 16, 2007.

The Secrets of Thialf

The Medicine Wheel is central to the culture of the Plains Indians in North America. It is a sacred symbol for all knowledge. The eye-shaped Medicine Wheel shown here was printed in the TIPI Newsletter.

The Thialf Hall in the Netherlands is a state-of-the-art skating rink where major international competitions are held.

[Please see also post March 3, 2008, 'A Win-Win Situation', where I hinted at the imminent demise of a certain right-wing politician in the Netherlands, only now, a year later, to be proven quite inaccurate in my forecast, as a new poll suggests that his right-wing party would WIN elections in the Kingdom of the Netherlands if they were held today; this same personality has just enjoyed publicity on right-wing talk shows and with conservative groups in the United States, after being refused entrance to the United Kingdom, where he had been invited to screen his anti-Islam movie in the House of Lords - so let's keep an eye, so to speak, on these new alliances!]

The Thialf covered oval arena was named after Thialfi, servant to the Nordic God Thor ("the chief defender of the gods and of humans against the evil forces of the giants and chaos" Encyclopedia Britannica Vol 5 p.215). Thor is more commonly known today as the God of Thunder. The climate control system applied in the Thialf Hall is depicted below.

The smaller photo showing the Medicine Wheel again also carries a computer view of one of my eyes (an image I recalled while studying the technical information about the ice-skating arena) the results of an examination carried out to assess the potential benefits of 'night lenses': contact lenses to be worn while sleeping. These relatively large inserts alter the surface of your eye during the night, allowing something close to normal vision during the day. I did try them for a spell, but abandoned the night lenses after I discovered that, after dark, the lights of oncoming cars were refracted into blinding displays, like lightning.

One Small Victory in the Bailout Era

I have two months to study this brochure and determine whether or not I qualify for the $35,000,000 (thirty-five million dollars) class action settlement from Bank of America. As it stands, I think I have to send them a letter either way: I can include myself or exclude myself. I think. 35-mln, peanuts these days, especially for what will in all likelihood turn out to be a pretty big class, but the tiny trickle of funds into my account has produced a balance modest enough to encourage an accommodating attitude towards any additions which may arrive, so I'll reread the brochure. It arrived unrequested in the mail. I didn't ask for it.

Having skimmed through once or twice, it doesn't look good, in fact, because I don't have a Bank of America debit card, but like I said, there's time to comb the fine print. I do have other credit cards occasionally in use, and recently I had an interesting experience related to personal finance and customer relations.

A letter from the credit card (CC) company arrived informing me that unfortunate transactions had occurred involving their lists of CC numbers and illegitimate participants in global markets, who might be planning to incur costs on others' accounts. Mine. For this reason, I would be receiving a new CC from them and could cut up the old one.

I called them to ask for more information. Specifically, I thought it opportune to inquire about the way in which my CC number might have been targetted. Where had this occurred?

That's confidential. We are not going to tell you that, as it could lead you to avoid doing business with the enterprise in question in the future. The fraud was no fault of their own, and these businesses are our clients. They must be able to rely on confidentiality at all times!

Oh, even as a small CC-holder, I'm a client, too. Aren't I? Don't I have a right to know what's happening with my miniscule account, especially if something goes wrong? It's my card, after all.

It's not your card. WE own it.

Actually, your company earns quite a reasonable rate of interest on anything that transpires involving the card which bears my name. If you wish to keep me as a client, you might want to respond to my request for transparency in a more civilized tone. But you sound quite angry and upset, so I think I'll just thank you so much for your time and get off the phone now and send a letter to your office.

You DO that. The letter will arrive on my desk and I'll answer you with the EXACT same information.

I sustained this tranquil mode while composing a short letter which now included both my original message and my disappointment at having heard that CC-holders were viewed as second-class clients. I never did receive an answer on paper, but the letter evidently landed on someone else’s desk, because within a few days, the phone rang, and a different voice from the CC-company greeted me in the most cordial of tones.

It is most regrettable that you were left with the impression that certain clients are more valuable than others. We are really in a bind here. I hope you can understand.

I do understand. If I were investigating this subject, I guess I would somehow gain access to the information about potential dangers to CC-accounts. Now of course I am not conducting an investigation - even though I am experienced in the field of journalism; I could forward you some of my work if you'd like - but I must stand by the principle of having a right to know what goes wrong when it goes wrong out in world of retail and apparently I’m involved.

I don't think anyone mentioned retail.

Well, you mean it wasn't retail?

And so forth. This quite pleasant conversation continued with the utmost respect from and towards both parties. At a certain point, disclosure of both the geographical and retail locations became inevitable, as we agreed that principled action and accurate exchange of knowledge was the most fulfilling premise for all business relations. I truly believe that this second young man from the CC-company had a new professional experience on the phone that day, disclosing the information which his company was not supposed to provide. In doing so, we sealed a deal based on trust. I vowed that I would never report having found out the name and location of the store where my CC-details were fed into a crime ring.

Name as Noun

I've been called many names in my time [Please see 'Name as Gerund, ' January 21, 2008] but this was a real surprise, breaking what had felt like a long, tedious stretch during which my name was spelled correctly on all envelopes arriving in the mail. And I've never been addressed as the familiar term for a handkerchief. That, of course, is actually written as 'hanky' or 'hankie.' Now I know: Hankey is also a surname.

Inside the envelope for Martha Hankey were promotion materials for Turkish cultural events. One of the cards, partially displayed above, bore a photograph of a Sufi whirling dervish, which, when laid on its side so that the dancer's garment flails nicely under 'Hankey,' allowed me to emphasize the aspects of textile shared by image and text. Neither the image nor the first line in the address on the envelope carrying the cards had been intended that way. In fact, the truth is that I have intentionally blocked out a significant part of the photograph, the part featuring a Flamenco dancer who stands observing the dervish, this representative of mystical Islam. They perform together; that's what this announcement is all about. If I wanted to I could be in the audience sometime this Spring.

I don’t think that would be a good idea, now that I have traded in the Flamenco dancer dimension for the concept of being an elegant fold of cloth; silk, if possible, beautifully folded, easily accessible. But that might be too passive for the dervish aims at stake - why not take the sophisticated softness along as an ally? Spraying the handkerchief with an elusive scent, or wrapping it around a potent substance before tucking it into my evening bag could be an option. Anything to enhance the audience experience.

The 'whirling dervishes' enhance their spiritual poise by whirling in devotion to God. Another order of dervishes worships in a mode which can cause alarm among onlookers: they used to link arms, then violently move head and torso back and forth, moaning and crying out, until they threw themselves forward onto snakes or swords. Nowadays, they might sit in the presence of a Master, stabbing or burning themselves, to prove their devotion. This was their ritual prayer; these people are called ‘howling dervishes’ [Please do now see 'Name as Gerund, ' January 21, 2008, if you haven’t already].

By the way, alarmed onlookers have been there in great numbers for centuries, as both the whirlers and the howlers have always ‘performed’ their ritual prayer in public.