lingo

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Gelukkig nieuwjaar and bonne année, and isn’t it wonderful to be living once more in a land with a government?

Well no, not so much. I’ve been saying all along that we’re better off without the buggers, and the first thing they do when they finally get their act together is ban the fireworks, close the Christmas market, shut down the Big Wheel and drag the little kiddies screaming from the arms of Rudolf, well okay maybe not the last bit.

Meanwhile the factional differences that created the six-month schism have been papered over, as we saw with the ordeal of Alizée Poulicek, who was booed after she couldn’t understand a question put to her in Dutch. Part of the reason was that the crowd resented the way she had been elected and then took power without waiting for the courtesy period of half a year, and didn’t even give the chance to Jean-Luc Dehaene or Herman Van Rompuy – both considered great beauties in their day – to try for her job.

The other reason was her lack of language skills, which might seem a little extreme to outsiders – the story made international headlines – but is even more extreme to us insiders. It illustrates once again the ambivalence at the heart of the Dutch-speaking soul.

The reason for the inability of foreigners to speak Dutch is often said to be the Dutch-speaker’s unwillingness to let you practice on them. They speak better English than we speak Dutch, the excuse goes, so you never get a chance. That’s perhaps true with your cosmopolitan Dansaert-Kaaitheater élite. It’s hardly the case with your average market-trader, say, or communal functionary, or the cop behind the desk.

It’s my observation that Dutch-speakers don’t actually want you to speak their language, and go to a lot of trouble to learn English just so they can steer you away from any attempt to do so. Why do you think it is that while other countries in Europe pay bad actors to put terrible dubbing over the dialogue of films, Holland and Flanders don’t? That’s right, they’re making sure even the couch-potatoest and ill-educatedest still pick up a smattering of the language of Ricky Gervais, even if it’s only “Fork handles, eh-oh Tinky-Winky, e’s bleeding snuffed it!”

It’s my considered opinion that they don’t want you to learn their language because it’s their last hold-out in the face of the crushing weight of being surrounded by bigger countries in this European Union of ours. Gone are the days when Dutch ships could sail up the Thames to bash the English in their moorings. Gone are the days when Netherlandish painters ruled the world. Gone are the days when scientists from the Low Countries like van Leeuwenhoek, Huygens, Bidloo and Tulp enlightened half a continent (the half above the Rhine, give or take). Nowadays Holland has coffee-shops and chocolate sprinkles you put on your sandwich (allegedly) while Flanders has some ridiculous fashion and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Ah yes, but they can still talk about you behind your back, even when you’re sitting right there in front of them. And that’s an enviable ability, as any Macedonian or Estonian or Finno-Ugric or Geordie will tell you, though you won’t know that’s what they’re doing. It’s something I used to think we could do in Glasgow, so that when I hitch-hiked to the continent with Pat Barrett, and we were getting tanked up on tiny 20cl glasses of foamy Heineken on top of a stomachful of chips with mayonnaise, we cheerfully made rude comments about our neighbours at the bar, thinking ourselves incomprehensible (in the way a baby thinks he’s invisible if he can’t see you) when in fact those guys most likely not only spoke perfect English, but also knew all of Stanley Baxter’s Parliamo Glasgow routines into the bargain. There we were laughing at them, and all the while they were laughing at us. An illustration of European relations that’s as valid today as it was then, you might say.

Toodle-pip, and tot ziens!