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:
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A friend of mine just came out with the following line: “Ik ben er nu naar aan het luisteren.” Babelfish tries heroically: “I am there now to for listening” which even manages to recognise that “het luisteren” is not, in this context, “the listening”.
What does it actually mean? “I’m listening to it now.” And even [...]
So the bakfiets moving went excellently — three trips piled high with boxes, computer, sewing machine, and 15 kilogram watermelon. It’s a good thing I don’t have a bed, there’s barely space for one in my room any more.
Some observations about the bakfiets: (What is that in English, anyway? Cargo tricycle? Big-bike-with-a-box?)
People ask you for [...]
Last Friday night we had a strange and lovely encounter with a random Dutch guy at two o’clock in the morning.
Belén and Marijn and myself, we were sitting outside a pub in De Pijp, we’d had enough of the music and the crush so we just sat in the dark talking until after closing time. [...]
Ik zit nu in de advanced cursus van de INTT, maar ik ben niet helemaal tevreden met wat van ons verwacht is. Ik ben bang, eerlijk gezegd, dat ik het niet kan halen. Wij zijn namelijk afgelopen vrijdag begonnen met lezen van Jip en Janneke — dat is toch heel snel, in de eerste les! [...]
One of the joys of having a flat tag list instead of a hierarchy is that every now and then you get totally unexpected combinations: “dutch” and “interactive fiction”, for instance.
Congratulations to Victor Gijsbers, whose “De Baron/The Baron” won this year’s Spring Thing (original text Dutch, also with his English translation). You can download the [...]
This one is word of the week, possibly even the month: “insektenbestrijdingsmiddelenbesproeiingssportvliegtuigje”. Insect-resistance-medicine-spreading-sport-aeroplane. I guess the “sport” is there for the type of plane (also the diminutive -je): this word means “crop duster”.
(Thanks to David —who is also responsible for the spelling— for this one; someone told me this word before I came overseas, I [...]
Happy New Year everyone! I spent mine in Naarden, with a bunch of crazy Dutch folks, dancing to 80’s pop, eating extravagently, and playing games requiring uniformly high levels of Dutch ability. Needless to say, I sucked, but it was great fun. Kudos to Marieke and Niels for the idea, the venue, and the cooking [...]
I promised geek revelry, and that’s what you’re getting. I came across this idea at Daan’s birthday party, and it deserves spreading to the other hemisphere. It’s very simple: put a strobe light in the WC, and turn off the ordinary light.
Why would you want to do such a thing? Blokes, try it and you’ll [...]
I’m having some delays in the process of becoming a PhD student. It’s almost a catch 22 situation, but not quite. The original catch 22 was “You can only have this if you ask for it … but if you ask for it, you can’t have it any more.” (Know the phrase but don’t know [...]