What's wrong with Dutch?

[Eric]

Someone mentioned on another thread the quite accurate fact that most of the people on this forum don't speak Dutch.

Those living in the Americas are perfectly justified in saying "why should we?". But I feel that people in Europe should ponder a little on the fact that it is more than "poor man's German", and is the literary language of one-and-a-half countries, plus being spoken by an estimated 21 million people - almost that of the whole of Scandinavia including Finland (about 25 million).

Because the northern half of Belgium speaks Dutch, and, of course, the whole of the Netherlands, there is a long coastline stretching from the Belgian-French border right up to the Dutch-German border north of the city of Groningen along which Dutch is spoken. This coastline faces England and Scotland across the North Sea.

And yet this language, one of the first you reach when crossing onto the continent of Europe, is completely and utterly neglected in Britain, except for at a few university departments. For 99.9% of Brits, Dutch is as remote as Hindi or Zulu.

Why is this? Can it be remedied, or does the English language dominate the consciousness of Britons so much that no neighbouring language counts, apart from the huge ones, French and German?

[Colette Jones]

I think most of what secondary schools decide to teach is probably based on the number of teachers available to employ. I don't think the prevalance of French and German in British secondary schools has much to do with school leaders thinking those are the most important languages to teach, but instead, the easiest to accommodate. I personally would have liked my children to learn Spanish at school but that is not an option where they are.

I've never heard of Dutch being on offer at secondary school. Every Dutch person I've ever met speaks so many languages anyway, that perhaps as a result, they don't make it necessary for others to learn their language. It is very impressive that they learn so many.

[Liam]

Eric, there is nothing essentially wrong with any language; to a willing and dedicated learner, the sky is the limit; in which case one might even take up a useless dead language like Latin or Attic Greek.

I think people's unwillingness to learn new things does not stem from laziness or lack of stamina but rather from lack of time. If it's not going to benefit you in the long run (or even in the short run), why would you even bother?

People who have intimately "to do" with literature--students, professors, translators, reviewers, are the lucky ones. They get to do what they love, read tons of new books, study and master foreign languages, and sometimes even write their own things. The vast majority of other people, however, have dayjobs of another kind.

My b/f is in advertising, for instance, and he doesn't read AT ALL, a sad fact which I bemoan every chance I get. He works 8 to 6 every day, sometimes stays till 7, and sometimes has to come in on Saturday. I'm sure he'd be willing to learn a new language but, you know, he has to pay his bills, too.

So unless you're somebody who is planning to move to Holland to live and work, there's no practical reason why you should learn Dutch, and population numbers and geographical location have nothing to do with it. I imagine that most people learn English nowadays for practical purposes, and not in order to read literature. That's like an unexpected bonus.

I remember reading somewhere that schools are no longer offering courses in various other foreign languages, and English is the sole reason why. If the whole business world is rapidly switching to English, why the fuck would one choose to sign up for a Polish class, or a Finnish class, or, better yet, an Irish Gaelic class? Oh well, there's always the Teach Yourself guides.

[miercuri]

I'm taking Dutch as my optional third language at uni, starting from February. I have to admit that it was my second choice after Swedish (which unfortunately was not available this year). Nevertheless, I am looking forward to learning as much Dutch as I can in one year and a half.

[Omo]

I'm probably not making myself very popular by saying this, but Dutch is a truly ugly language when spoken. I'm German so I naturally can read Dutch quite well, I occasionally read Dutch articles in the internet. I probably could improve fast when I chose to immerse myself, a lot faster than in most other languages. Still, I have absolutely no intentions of doing so.

The second and more important point is the uselessness; every Dutch person I ever met spoke excellent English and most of the time also pretty proficient German. Whether you want it or not, most people learn the languages they learn because they think it will be useful for them. I didn't study English because I wanted to read John Milton, but because it became compulsory in the schools' curricula, just as Russian had been mandatory before that. So unless I move to the Netherlands, no Dutch for me.

[hdw]

Ugliness is in the ear of the beholder. I'm sure Eric could whisper sweet nothings in Dutch and make it sound as romantic as hell.

No offence to German and German-speakers, but it has seldom been labelled one of the world's most beautiful languages.

People call French romantic, but although I enjoy showing off my knowledge of it when in France, I don't think it sounds particularly good (especially the way I speak it).

But then again, non-Scots often say how much they like a Scottish accent (apart from broad Glasgow), but I can't see anything attractive myself in the way that most of us speak, especially the dreaded glottal stop, which seems to be growing out of control like Japanese hogweed. Maybe I'm too close to it. Scots are always taking the piss out of the way Shir Shawn Connery speaks. He needs new denturesh, and you wouldn't want to shtand too closhe to him in cashe you got shplashed (shorry, Shir Shawn, but ye know itsh true!).

Harry

[Eric]

Colette, please miss, I actually got a grade one at O-Level in 1971 in Dutch. But, of course this was presumably because the person assessing my exam was so pleased that there was even one pupil in the Birmingham area (Solihull in my case). And I listened to Dutch every day from my mum. Nobody taught me, I just mugged it up a bit.

Sadly, my mum and the few thousand Dutch people who ended up in Britain after WWII didn't manage to convince the rest of the 60 million that nextdoor's language, spoken by about one third of that number, was anything more than the medium for a dialogue between clogs and windmills.

Even when pot-smoking hit Blighty, and the "cultural" tourists would sneak over to Joint Capital Amsterdam, I'm sure that male British tourists, dividing their time between the ladies in the window and buying grass (pot-smoking is, evidently, bad for the former activity), still did not embrace the language, literature and other parts of the Dutch culture. I'm not saying that the rather market-oriented Dutch were any better at selling their local cultural wares, as pot sold better than Vondel (which they did in the park of that name, as the name of the bard is pronounced with an "f").

All people are lazy to an extent, that's why education is not a take-it-or-leave-it activity. Otherwise half the country would not be able to read, let alone write. Liam's partner arrangement sounds ideal, if, as is often posited, opposites attract. But he may not make a good Minister of Literature and Culture.

Obviously, there is no practical-pragmatic-mercenary reason to learn Dutch when all Dutch people claim (sometimes even with justification) that they can speak adequate English. But I'm an idealist talking about culture. Maybe the cultural bodies in the UK should begin to promote languages from "near abroad" - for cultural reasons. Britain's always boasting about Shakespeare, Dickens, the two Eliots (one of whom a Yank) and so on, but surely it is rather insulting to ignore the writers and other cultural figures (post-Rembrandt) that have grown up over that small stretch of water.

And the reason you would sign up for a Polish class is not to run an illegal hostel for Polish slave labourer vegetable pickers in Peterborough, but to read Witkacy, Tulli, Chwin, Pilch and whomever. If we learn French to read Balzac and Gide, what's wrong with Dutch and Polish as literary languages?

Merciuri, Swedish was my second choice at university after Finnish, back in 1970, but I now speak the former language fluently but still can't speak Finnish properly. Because there was no Finnish degree course at the time.

I'll deal with ugliness and Dutch proficiency in English next time.

[Loki]

And the reason you would sign up for a Polish class is not to run an illegal hostel for Polish slave labourer vegetable pickers in Peterborough, but to read Witkacy, Tulli, Chwin, Pilch and whomever. If we learn French to read Balzac and Gide, what's wrong with Dutch and Polish as literary languages?

If I want to learn French or whatever language, it's not to read newspapers or literature in the original language. I know some French just because I studied it a school, and the same applies to Spanish and English.
It would be great learning new languages, but I haven't got the time. Also because before reaching a certain level of proficiency that allows you to read novels or poetry in a language you'll have to study hard for a lot of time, unless you happen to spend months in the country where that language is spoken.
Anyway, why shouldn't they study Italian, Portuguese or Icelandic as well?

[Manuel76]

All people are lazy to an extent, that's why education is not a take-it-or-leave-it activity. Otherwise half the country would not be able to read, let alone write.

I speak more or less two languages besides spanish and can understand and read another two, I would really like to learn as many as possible. One of the reasons is certainly to enjoy their literature. But...there's no time or one has to be much more intelligent than me.

I'd like as well to play the piano or the violin and a hundred other things. Simply I can't.

I don't think that to know better or worse french or spanish literature, or to have read Balzac or Tolstoi makes me better educated than many other people who don't especially like literature, but know a great deal about physics, chemistry, mathematics or engineering. That's culture too. And there's not time for everything.

I'd like to start learning german, or improve my very weak italian but...I have to study many other things because of my job: thermodinamics, materials, chemical process etc, they're culture too and extremely interesting. And I think very enriching to learn about different things, whether astronomy, biology or botanics.

You must sacrifice something, and I like to read, and listening to music, and enjoy other arts, and spnd time with my family, and have a beer with my friends, and go clubbing some saturday night, go to the beach on summer, even have a "siesta" sometimes...

[beelzebubbles]

No offence to German and German-speakers, but it has seldom been labelled one of the world's most beautiful languages.

Yet the German accent does wonderful things to English.

[Liam]

I'm probably not making myself very popular by saying this, but Dutch is a truly ugly language when spoken.

I'd be curious to find out what people think of spoken Welsh (it is generally acknowledged that my beloved Irish Gaelic is kind of... mushy, LOL):

YouTube - PlaidTV - Cymraeg / Welsh Language broadcast

[peter_d]

I'm probably not making myself very popular by saying this,

No, you're right!

but Dutch is a truly ugly language when spoken.

I know that Dutch is often referred to as an ugly language. When asked why, many people reply that it has to do with the rather frequently used gutteral 'g' sound. I never understood why it makes a language ugly. It's also there in Spanish, e.g. as in joder! (excusez le mot); in Arabian and Ivrit (language spoken in large parts of Israel) and in many many local African languages. It's just another sound. Every language can be used in a beautiful poetic way and in an ugly way. It's just how one uses it.

I'm German

What a surprise...

[hdw]

Earlier today I was in the foreign languages department of Blackwell's bookshop in Edinburgh, whence I had gone to purchase an Icelandic language course, and I noticed that there was half a shelf of Dutch language courses (audio+textbook) of various levels of complexity - beginner's, advanced, conversational - as well as dictionaries of all sizes.

As far as I know, Dutch is not taught to degree level in any of Edinburgh's four universities, although Edinburgh University itself includes Dutch in its Dept. of Continuing (i.e. Extra-Mural) Education language classes.

So good for Blackwell's, maintaining a strong Dutch language section for any locals with a yen to learn a new language.

Harry

[Eric]

Loki, what is your specific reason for wanting to learn new languages? If you're really devoted, you will make the time for yourself.

Beelzebubbles should remember that Brits & Yanks speaking German with a silly accent must be just as hilarious as Chermans speaking our language in their idiosyncratic way.

As Peter D rightly points out, the very gutteral "g" sound in Dutch is the same as the Spanish "j", plus Hebrew and Arabic. The crucial thing is that when you don't know a language, you just hear the sounds. Once you learn to speak and understand the language, the actual way it sounds recedes into the background.

To address Harry's point, I think that Dutch is hardly taught anywhere in Britain nowadays any more, if you want to learn it to read literature. There will be some quick courses for those eager to sell things to the Dutch, but culture is not high on the agenda of Brits when it comes to tuition. A materialistic culture of "languages for business studies" will never get you anywhere near the literary culture of the Netherlands or Flanders.

[beelzebubbles]

Beelzebubbles should remember that Brits & Yanks speaking German with a silly accent must be just as hilarious as Chermans speaking our language in their idiosyncratic way.

I actually meant that is sounds sexy.

English speakers affecting German accents sound silly. They are approximating what Germans speaking German sound like to the English language ear and not what German's sound like when they speak English.

Germans and middle Europeans speak English in a way that softens it quite a bit. English sounds more lilting when spoken with those accents than it does when spoken with a British, American or Australian accent.

[lenz]

That is very true. English almost always sounds better with a non-English accent. I like a Dutch accent - it's cute; but, in my humble opinion, nothing makes English sexier than an elegant Parisian accent - lilting isn't the word for it.
I like lilting accents, too.

[Loki]

Loki, what is your specific reason for wanting to learn new languages? If you're really devoted, you will make the time for yourself.

The basic reason is because it is amazing (for me) being able to talk -or communicate in general- with foreign people who cannot understand my language. I remember when I first went to England years ago: after spending years on books studying English, I could actually use it, and being understood was great. Just then did I appreciate what I had studied. Anyway, first reason: communicate, not reading literature (although I enjoy it!).

Anyway, I have barely the time to go out sometimes to take a break from study. I don't know what it was like when you were at university, but it's really hard (or at least in Italy, I can't express my opinion about foreign universities).

[Eric]

I get this "I can actually use it" feeling too. After you've studied a language from a book, maybe for years without much personal contact with people speaking it, you go to the country where it's spoken. And you discover that people do actually speak it. The shop signs are written in it. It's even spoken on the street.

And not only that, but people run their whole lives using that language! So it's no longer just the rather abstract language you saw in your primer, when you were translating reading passages and stilted dialogues. But ordinary people speak it in ordinary lives. The fact that there is also a whole literature attached, sometimes a sophisticated one, is something you get extra, for free.

Nowadays, I am more eager to read things written in any new language I learn than necessarily have long pub conversations in it. But of course, as a native-speaker of English, I can always cheat and use English in an emergency as lingua franca. If your native-tongue is Albanian or Lithuanian, you simply have to learn foreign languages if you want to travel abroad.

[Loki]

I get this "I can actually use it" feeling too. After you've studied a language from a book, maybe for years without much personal contact with people speaking it, you go to the country where it's spoken. And you discover that people do actually speak it. The shop signs are written in it. It's even spoken on the street.

Sorry to ask but... were you being sarcastic?

I know it may sound naive, but that's what I really felt: I was speaking English to communicate with foreign people, rather than to decide whether to use the Past Simple or the Present Perfect to complete grammar exercises.

[Eric]

Absolutely no sarcasm. What I meant was, when learning a language in the classroom or at home, you may long to go to the country. When you actually get there, assuming you have learnt a reasonable amount of the language, it is nice to hear it spoken in normal situations, not just textbook dialogues. Even if you don't understand it all, it becomes real.

Actually, this happened to me recently. I am learning Latvian and hearing it spoken on the street in Riga may seem obvious. And yet half the population of Riga is Russian-speaking. So it is not be so self-evident that you will hear a lot of Latvian, even in the Latvian capital. But you do. Maybe the Russian-speakers don't live centrally, and so you would have to go out to the suburbs to hear Russian.

In the English-speaking world, most language-learning at beginners' and lower intermediate level is a question or classroom or language CDs. As Britain is so monolingual (apart from in areas where there are large numbers of immigrants) languages always have a veneer of exoticism. When you hear a language spoken in shops, on buses, in restaurants, and so on, only then do you realise that this is real. If you're brought up in a multilingual country, this experience won't be yours.