Derk: “You sometimes hear that Flemish and Dutch speak the same language, but nothing could be further from the truth. First article in The standard of Saturday, page 2, on the energy crisis: ‘mitigate the consequences‘. Astrid, you can’t put ‘ren’ after every existing word to make it into a verb. It reminds me of what our informant Johan Remkes once said: ‘The strategic agreement will not be trashed.’”
Astrid: „What a poet, that Remkes. Clearly from the country where the literary boomer Jeroen Brouwers is also rooted. He wins prizes by articulating words. ‘An addictive text circus’, our newspapers write about it. Why should we Flemish not be allowed to do this? By the way, have you heard of the emancipation of Belgian-Dutch? The term is now the perfect standard language in Belgium, marked with a BE in Van Dale.”
Derk: “You also love expressions that are considered cliché or simply ugly to us. ‘Britain’s pork supply chain is in turmoil‘ – is it pork soup then? Or take this unfortunate water metaphor: “With a tsunami of figures and graphs, those responsible for the Walloon waterways showed that the rain was the main culprit‘…”
Astrid: “Can I count myself lucky that you didn’t open our Friday newspaper? There was this headline:Soon no cat will be a vet anymore.’ But, if I may say so, do you think you guys sound more up to date by putting English into the word sausage all the time? ‘It’s just easier to virtual signals‘, ‘The children are reasonable hooked touched screens’, ‘clearance-papers’, ‘show stopper‘?”
Derk: „Wow, you touch a nerve here. Our journalists seem indeed hooked at English. A seventy-year-old from Haastrecht admonished us about this: ‘I am not young and I do not meet anyone who uses these words.’ I have sent his e-mail to the editors as a warning, but I fear that once again people are not listening. Anyway, dear Astrid, you often copy our articles!”
Also read: If you want me, learn to spell first
Astrid: „If you had thought, my dear Derk, that your articles could be in our newspaper, then forget it. Not only are your heads sometimes as dry as rice porridge from which all the milk has been sucked out – page 4: ‘Kaag must negotiate sharply’, page 20: ‘A novel is not a good vehicle for public debate’ – it also doesn’t hurt that there is a translator continues. I’m not talking about the many ‘now’s and ‘that’s sour’ throughout the NRC. But what about ‘little string constructions’ (‘improvised solutions’), ‘abrasion’ (friction) and ‘smoel’ (‘big mouth’)? With this statement from a school principal, ‘We have about one unqualified teacher on any competent’, I have to try really hard not to imagine a swingers school.”
Derk: “I have to admit that I have a weakness for words that sound slightly archaic to us Dutch people. The harvest of the first eleven pages: ‘however‘, ‘head wound‘, ‘anyway‘, An ‘punish‘ performance. Or take ‘through the NRC’ – I’m sold!”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 5, 2021
Derk: “You sometimes hear that Flemish and Dutch speak the same language, but nothing could be further from the truth. First article in The standard of Saturday, page 2, on the energy crisis: ‘mitigate the consequences‘. Astrid, you can’t put ‘ren’ after every existing word to make it into a verb. It reminds me of what our informant Johan Remkes once said: ‘The strategic agreement will not be trashed.’”
Astrid: „What a poet, that Remkes. Clearly from the country where the literary boomer Jeroen Brouwers is also rooted. He wins prizes by articulating words. ‘An addictive text circus’, our newspapers write about it. Why should we Flemish not be allowed to do this? By the way, have you heard of the emancipation of Belgian-Dutch? The term is now the perfect standard language in Belgium, marked with a BE in Van Dale.”
Derk: “You also love expressions that are considered cliché or simply ugly to us. ‘Britain’s pork supply chain is in turmoil‘ – is it pork soup then? Or take this unfortunate water metaphor: “With a tsunami of figures and graphs, those responsible for the Walloon waterways showed that the rain was the main culprit‘…”
Astrid: “Can I count myself lucky that you didn’t open our Friday newspaper? There was this headline:Soon no cat will be a vet anymore.’ But, if I may say so, do you think you guys sound more up to date by putting English into the word sausage all the time? ‘It’s just easier to virtual signals‘, ‘The children are reasonable hooked touched screens’, ‘clearance-papers’, ‘show stopper‘?”
Derk: „Wow, you touch a nerve here. Our journalists seem indeed hooked at English. A seventy-year-old from Haastrecht admonished us about this: ‘I am not young and I do not meet anyone who uses these words.’ I have sent his e-mail to the editors as a warning, but I fear that once again people are not listening. Anyway, dear Astrid, you often copy our articles!”
Also read: If you want me, learn to spell first
Astrid: „If you had thought, my dear Derk, that your articles could be in our newspaper, then forget it. Not only are your heads sometimes as dry as rice porridge from which all the milk has been sucked out – page 4: ‘Kaag must negotiate sharply’, page 20: ‘A novel is not a good vehicle for public debate’ – it also doesn’t hurt that there is a translator continues. I’m not talking about the many ‘now’s and ‘that’s sour’ throughout the NRC. But what about ‘little string constructions’ (‘improvised solutions’), ‘abrasion’ (friction) and ‘smoel’ (‘big mouth’)? With this statement from a school principal, ‘We have about one unqualified teacher on any competent’, I have to try really hard not to imagine a swingers school.”
Derk: “I have to admit that I have a weakness for words that sound slightly archaic to us Dutch people. The harvest of the first eleven pages: ‘however‘, ‘head wound‘, ‘anyway‘, An ‘punish‘ performance. Or take ‘through the NRC’ – I’m sold!”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 5, 2021
Derk: “You sometimes hear that Flemish and Dutch speak the same language, but nothing could be further from the truth. First article in The standard of Saturday, page 2, on the energy crisis: ‘mitigate the consequences‘. Astrid, you can’t put ‘ren’ after every existing word to make it into a verb. It reminds me of what our informant Johan Remkes once said: ‘The strategic agreement will not be trashed.’”
Astrid: „What a poet, that Remkes. Clearly from the country where the literary boomer Jeroen Brouwers is also rooted. He wins prizes by articulating words. ‘An addictive text circus’, our newspapers write about it. Why should we Flemish not be allowed to do this? By the way, have you heard of the emancipation of Belgian-Dutch? The term is now the perfect standard language in Belgium, marked with a BE in Van Dale.”
Derk: “You also love expressions that are considered cliché or simply ugly to us. ‘Britain’s pork supply chain is in turmoil‘ – is it pork soup then? Or take this unfortunate water metaphor: “With a tsunami of figures and graphs, those responsible for the Walloon waterways showed that the rain was the main culprit‘…”
Astrid: “Can I count myself lucky that you didn’t open our Friday newspaper? There was this headline:Soon no cat will be a vet anymore.’ But, if I may say so, do you think you guys sound more up to date by putting English into the word sausage all the time? ‘It’s just easier to virtual signals‘, ‘The children are reasonable hooked touched screens’, ‘clearance-papers’, ‘show stopper‘?”
Derk: „Wow, you touch a nerve here. Our journalists seem indeed hooked at English. A seventy-year-old from Haastrecht admonished us about this: ‘I am not young and I do not meet anyone who uses these words.’ I have sent his e-mail to the editors as a warning, but I fear that once again people are not listening. Anyway, dear Astrid, you often copy our articles!”
Also read: If you want me, learn to spell first
Astrid: „If you had thought, my dear Derk, that your articles could be in our newspaper, then forget it. Not only are your heads sometimes as dry as rice porridge from which all the milk has been sucked out – page 4: ‘Kaag must negotiate sharply’, page 20: ‘A novel is not a good vehicle for public debate’ – it also doesn’t hurt that there is a translator continues. I’m not talking about the many ‘now’s and ‘that’s sour’ throughout the NRC. But what about ‘little string constructions’ (‘improvised solutions’), ‘abrasion’ (friction) and ‘smoel’ (‘big mouth’)? With this statement from a school principal, ‘We have about one unqualified teacher on any competent’, I have to try really hard not to imagine a swingers school.”
Derk: “I have to admit that I have a weakness for words that sound slightly archaic to us Dutch people. The harvest of the first eleven pages: ‘however‘, ‘head wound‘, ‘anyway‘, An ‘punish‘ performance. Or take ‘through the NRC’ – I’m sold!”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 5, 2021
Derk: “You sometimes hear that Flemish and Dutch speak the same language, but nothing could be further from the truth. First article in The standard of Saturday, page 2, on the energy crisis: ‘mitigate the consequences‘. Astrid, you can’t put ‘ren’ after every existing word to make it into a verb. It reminds me of what our informant Johan Remkes once said: ‘The strategic agreement will not be trashed.’”
Astrid: „What a poet, that Remkes. Clearly from the country where the literary boomer Jeroen Brouwers is also rooted. He wins prizes by articulating words. ‘An addictive text circus’, our newspapers write about it. Why should we Flemish not be allowed to do this? By the way, have you heard of the emancipation of Belgian-Dutch? The term is now the perfect standard language in Belgium, marked with a BE in Van Dale.”
Derk: “You also love expressions that are considered cliché or simply ugly to us. ‘Britain’s pork supply chain is in turmoil‘ – is it pork soup then? Or take this unfortunate water metaphor: “With a tsunami of figures and graphs, those responsible for the Walloon waterways showed that the rain was the main culprit‘…”
Astrid: “Can I count myself lucky that you didn’t open our Friday newspaper? There was this headline:Soon no cat will be a vet anymore.’ But, if I may say so, do you think you guys sound more up to date by putting English into the word sausage all the time? ‘It’s just easier to virtual signals‘, ‘The children are reasonable hooked touched screens’, ‘clearance-papers’, ‘show stopper‘?”
Derk: „Wow, you touch a nerve here. Our journalists seem indeed hooked at English. A seventy-year-old from Haastrecht admonished us about this: ‘I am not young and I do not meet anyone who uses these words.’ I have sent his e-mail to the editors as a warning, but I fear that once again people are not listening. Anyway, dear Astrid, you often copy our articles!”
Also read: If you want me, learn to spell first
Astrid: „If you had thought, my dear Derk, that your articles could be in our newspaper, then forget it. Not only are your heads sometimes as dry as rice porridge from which all the milk has been sucked out – page 4: ‘Kaag must negotiate sharply’, page 20: ‘A novel is not a good vehicle for public debate’ – it also doesn’t hurt that there is a translator continues. I’m not talking about the many ‘now’s and ‘that’s sour’ throughout the NRC. But what about ‘little string constructions’ (‘improvised solutions’), ‘abrasion’ (friction) and ‘smoel’ (‘big mouth’)? With this statement from a school principal, ‘We have about one unqualified teacher on any competent’, I have to try really hard not to imagine a swingers school.”
Derk: “I have to admit that I have a weakness for words that sound slightly archaic to us Dutch people. The harvest of the first eleven pages: ‘however‘, ‘head wound‘, ‘anyway‘, An ‘punish‘ performance. Or take ‘through the NRC’ – I’m sold!”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 5, 2021