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Tag Archives: dutch

Afluisteren in de tram

Monday, July 23, 2007

Meisje op mobiel: “Weet jij wat overdose betekent? Ja, het Nederlandse woord overdose… want ik dacht namelijk dat het een doos moet zijn, die over is.”

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Places not to leave your bicycle

Saturday, July 21, 2007

#173: Under the railway overpass way off to the side of Centraal Station. Not that I normally would, only the back tyre sprung a leak during a thunderstorm, and that was the closest place I could lock it up under shelter. And not that it got stolen, either. Instead, some klootzak slashed the seat and [...]

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Björk and height problems

Monday, July 9, 2007

This post combines a short review of Björk’s concert last night (short version: disappointing but good) with a rant about Dutch concert-going habits (short version: they’re tall and don’t care if you’re not).

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Ten slotte (a discovery)

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

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 [...]

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I will never really speak Dutch

Monday, August 14, 2006

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 [...]

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Boxes by bakfiets

Monday, August 7, 2006

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 [...]

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Confidences

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

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 [...]

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Terug naar school

Monday, April 24, 2006

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! [...]

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Dutch IF wins Spring Thing

Monday, April 24, 2006

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 [...]

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Word of the day

Friday, March 10, 2006

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, [...]

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