Caught out in The Netherlands
It’s not often that I get caught out linguistically abroad…but I’m ashamed to say that a couple of days ago, just this very thing happened. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no genius when it comes to languages…it’s just that I don’t tend to venture to places where I have not got even a basic smattering of the local lingo; I tend to think that it’s disrespectful to expect to go to someone’s country without making an effort to get along.
You can imagine my horror, therefore, when whilst in the Netherlands; I was caught (metaphorically) with my pants down. All seemed to be going fairly well at first; I had spent a few days happily coasting along fairly well using my broken Dutch, when I decided that I wanted to visit the rugged Southern portion of the North Sea coast (just next to the German border).
All seemed well, as I confidently strode off the bus, but pretty soon I was assailed by a dialect that was totally incomprehensible to me; it had elements of similarity to Dutch and German too…but I was totally lost and started to panic a bit. Although still in The Netherlands, I opted to try some German, as I thought that the dialect sounded closer to it than Dutch…then Bingo…it worked.
Apparently, the language being spoken was Frisian, a Germanic dialect still spoken by around half a million people on the North Sea fringes of Germany and The Netherlands. I was told that it actually resembles Old English very closely indeed…that I couldn’t attest to; but what I could attest to was that I had learned something of great value and interest that day.
Anyone out there been caught out in the same way?