Dutch “ten slotte” has a funny double usage that has always given me trouble, but this morning I cracked it. It’s first use is for enumerating options: “ten eerste… ten tweede… ten slotte” (firstly, secondly, and finally). But there’s this other use, for example in the following exchange from De ontdekking van de hemel:
Onno sprak zijn minachting uit voor leeghoofden die zonnebaadden [...] maar Max [(een sterrenkundige)] zei dat dat tot zijn vak behoorde: de zon was ten slotte een ster. [My italics]
(Roughly: Onno mentioned his dislike of bubbleheads who sunbathe, but Max (an astronomer) said that this fitted his profession: the sun was after all a star.)
You see? After all, in the above rhetorical sense (”no matter what you say”? “after all your arguments have come and gone”? or more likely “after all is said and done”) uses the same form as finally in the enumeration. And once you see it, you realise the same thing is going on, in a more subtle fashion, in English. Because what’s “finally” but “after all”, after all?
If I may pontificate (and just you try to stop me!), this is why learning languages is so wonderfully rewarding. You get a vision of your own language that you would never find any other way.
(And you get to read exchanges like this one, again from Mulisch, which looks set to become my favourite book of the month: “–Nu weet ik het zeker, dat jij krankzinnig bent. –In orde. Laten wij eens en voor altijd de rollen verdelen: ik ben gek en jij bent dom. –Afgesproken!” Which is translatable, but you’d have to lose the monosyllabic punchy poetry of “Ik ben gek en jij bent dom”, so I won’t spoil it by trying.)
5 Comments
A bit late to comment, but it does not matter for the subject matter. I think (and woordenlijst.org suggests it’s right) that the “after all” sense is normally written as one word: tenslotte. Another Dutch word for it is “eigenlijk”. This is one of those things that few people actually know and therefore is very vulnerable to being lost or even worse, the wrong form being accepted after a while. So don’t bother remembering. The interesting bit is that Mulisch is quite an intelectual writer, making it unlikely he did not know this. He quite probably used it as a very subtle rhetorical tric that you painstakingly reconstructed analysed, making me (a native speaker) find out things about my own language!
Never too late! Most likely, actually, I just copied it down wrong. (Someone else –maybe Jacob?– pointed out that written distinction, which is almost post-worthy in its own right.)
Not so, I think. ‘tenslotte’ means ‘in closing’ whether a conclusion in time or logic. After all, slot
Once more and I give up: slot is to be derived from sluiten.
Aha, that hadn’t occurred to me! … I’m not sure though, can you translate the ten slotte in the Mulisch quote as “in closing”? “After all” is much more natural in English in that context. Anyway, for me the neat thing is that both English and Dutch have the same sort of link between a list-enumeration expression and an argument-conclusing expression, even though the actual words being used don’t seem to be related.