I started English lessons in fifth grade. Nevertheless, I have an accent (even though American politeness sometimes seems to oblige native speakers to pretend they never noticed). As I’ve noted before, the more tired I am, the more Dutch seeps through. This results mostly in severe difficulties in the ‘th’ sound. When I focus, I can pronounce ‘brother’ right, but whenever I say ‘first things first’, I mix up the sounds, creating the even harder to pronounce ‘thirst fings thirst’. Also, don’t give me a Bible with the word ‘brethren’ in it.
Like this one.
What’s worse than my accent, however, is that sometimes it’s not really English any more. It’s replacing normal Dutch with Dutch with English words. This means a shift from ‘we’ll all pretend he doesn’t have an accent, just smile and nod’ to ‘what did you just say?’ (I found a wikipedia page on Dunglish; I found myself guilty on all of listed symptoms, although not as bad as the most colorful examples). Below is a great video, because of three things: a Dutch man faking a Scottish accent, an American speaking Dutch (two sentences) and then bursting out in a flawless Dutch accent.
Sometimes, it’s a little subtler than downright wrong. When miss Missouri is trying to learn Dutch and getting ‘nice to meet you’ right (‘Aangenaam kennis te maken’), I tell her to ignore the whole sentence. People don’t say that, especially not in the robotic way the cd will teach you. There is a downside to this, though. I must have met quite a few people who now think I did not take any pleasure in meeting them. Also, I must seem rude every now and then, because the Dutch use of the word ‘please’ is for toddlers that wanted to be lifted only. Americans use it for passing salt, ordering coffee and asking for amnesty alike. Maybe this is the reason I get a dirty look along with my salt all the time…
Sometimes I feel sorry for American tourists that visit the Netherlands. Not always, there are times when I’m cycling and a tourist (and a lot of those are American) hops onto the road without even looking to see who’s coming, forcing me to swerve across the street, while avoiding other cyclist, causing a chain reaction of road rage. Also, don’t think that I’m being too harsh, because I’m counting on enraging half the States by the time I learn how to drive (when I’ve actually mastered the skill it will be okay, but who knows how long that might take). Anyway, one of the times I feel most sorry for American tourists is when they go grocery shopping.
I didn’t want to give away any spoilers, so here’s a very happy woman doing groceries in Holland, Michigan.
You see, in the States there is a certain luxury when you’re doing your groceries. You get your basket, walk up to the register, pile your stuff on the belt and pay while someone else packs your bags. The confusing part in the Netherlands is that it sneaks up on you. You get your basket, walk up to the register, pile your stuff on the belt and pay while you’re at the same time supposed to pack your own bags, that you should have bought before you got to the register. No one is packing your bags for you. I feel a lot of sympathy for those tourists that go through this the first time. As a teenager, this was the worst part of doing groceries. By the time I started packing, a big line had formed behind me. I would get nervous by having all these people wait on me, packing bags and getting my wallet out at the same time. Of course, the nervousness would cause my wallet to burst open and spray coins all over the place, so after picking them up, I’d carelessly pack my bag, throwing the eggs in first and piling cartons of milk on top of them, getting more and more nervous by the minute and walking home with broken eggs, leaking cartons and enough to cry about for the next two weeks. That’s why I feel sorry for those who didn’t even see it coming.
It didn’t help either that half my basket was filled with the stuff you use to fight acne.
Let’s face it: America is basically an independent woman having divorced Europe. One day, America couldn’t take it anymore – all the feudalism, monarchies and free spirits – and moved away. Now, she keeps telling herself she’s better off. At least she’s independent and doing things on her own terms. In this light, it’s a little weird how European traditions seem to be a big marketing asset. Walking through the aisles of any grocery store will have you pondering on how things would be in the old continent. For instance, a can of hot cocoa promised to give you that feeling from a ‘European tradition of drinking hot cocoa on the promenades of Rome and Barcelona’.
All the while being topless, another great European tradition.
There’s a lot wrong with that. As I am an expert on American-European cross culture, I can explain why. There is no such thing as a European culture. Europe is actually a continent, containing many different countries and just as much cultures. There is a Dutch culture, a German culture and, please pay attention all of you in marketing, an Italian and Spanish culture (Rome and Barcelona). It could very well be an Italian tradition to drink hot cocoa on the promenade, but the chance of that also being a tradition in Spain is about as high as the chance of a Mexican family baking an all-American apple pie for their church pot luck next Sunday. Overmore, as far as I know, drinking hot cocoa is not really a tradition on any promenade.
‘And after our pot luck, we’ll watch some football and hunt some deer.’
It’s not all bad news though. We actually do have a few traditions in Europe. Through the ages, a bond has been formed and an identity can be seen. As any culture, Europeans see how certain events bind them together. It is in those events that we remember what Europe stands for, how we set ourselves apart from the rest of the world and how to take pride in that. Still, the number of traditions is very limited and it has occured to us how other continents want to take part in this as well. To conclude, I give you the European traditions:
Having wars between the French, Germans and British (nowadays revolving around a monetary currency, but war it is).
Feeling superior over any other country for being French/German/British.
Mocking the French/German/British for their arrogance.
Mocking the United States for their lack of social security, while also envying their lack of high taxes.
Bonus: This is a somewhat less traditional way of drinking cocoa in the Netherlands.
As I am preparing for a wedding, I’m calling a lot of people. In the Netherlands, phone calls follow a script that would make telemarketers feel controlled. Because the Dutch are apparently afraid of the novelty that is communication on a distance, they pick up shouting their own name, just to establish who is being called before the conversation has properly started. Then, in an immediate response, the caller will pronounce his name and purpose for calling. The first part may seem a little odd, since the caller dialed a number and knows who is calling, but before you giggle too loud, remember the last time you dialed the wrong number and took about a minute to find out. In case you’re ashamed, let me sympathize. When I started calling miss Missouri (which I do at 5am central time), I mixed up the last four digits of her number and got a Spanish talking lady four mornings in a row. Imagine being waked up by a Dutchman at 5am who takes a solid minute to figure out you are not his girlfriend. Four days in a row.
For some reason, searching for ‘angry Spanish woman’ got me a few angry naked latino men, so I went for J-LO with a shotgun.
For some reason, calling English-speaking people at more decent times does not go over much better. I am still used to the idea that a conversation starts with a proper name, so that I can go from there. Let me picture you the first twenty seconds of my phone call yesterday:
Callee: ‘Hello?’
Me: ‘…’
Crickets: ‘Chirp chirp chirp’
Okay, maybe the crickets weren’t there, but it sure felt that awkward. Don’t worry, after I said my name and had him try to pronounce it (he failed, it’s okay), our conversation was perfectly okay. I’ll be better prepared for any calls from now on and make sure our wedding has the appropriate people.
Ever talked to someone who you didn’t know was the wrong person?
Whenever you dive into a new culture, you start noticing differences. Visiting Missouri might thus be described as the attempt to be a cannonball in American culture. To understand a country and its culture, history is all important. Whereas American culture so often seems rooted in a struggle for freedom and the idea to start from scratch; Dutch history, too, could bring forth a view on the culture of The Netherlands. Describing important historical events from my home country can perhaps clarify the culture differences this blog revolves around. Of course, I’m no historian, so this short history is not pretending to be complete, even though the entertaining goal is attained through facts, rather than my own opinion. Where further information could be interesting, I have provided links to wikipedia pages. The one on the bottom is not to be skipped, though. This is the story about a people that are known for their tolerance, their cooperative and exploring nature and the fact that they liked their country so much, they made more of it. As the saying goes: God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland.
Even though archeological findings indicate human activities emerged around 2,500 B.C., the interesting part of history starts with the Roman Empire – as always. Even though The Netherlands were seen as a useless swamp, some cities still show remains from Caesar’s friends (my university uses ‘Lugduno Batava’ in its seal; the Latin description of the city of Leiden). After the Romans left, small communities start to develop and stay quiet for over a thousand years. Around the 12th century, these communities start coordinating the maintenance of the dams and dikes they had built to keep their feet dry. Some scholars still believe this necessity-based regulation still shapes today’s cooperating-government model (I just forgot which ones, so there’s no reference here). What is sure, however, is how this local coordinating can be seen as typically Dutch. As a Belgian girl once told me, the Dutch ‘have quite a fetish to regulate everything and then talk about it for hours, until everyone will agree’.
Say all you want, Belgians, but it keeps our feet dry.
Things get really interesting around the 1550’s. Protestantism catches on in Europe and the local communities have developed into several provinces (Holland being the most important one), who work together as a republic. When the Spanish king wants to raise taxes and force Catholicism through the rebellious Dutch throats, they pull off a classic puberty move: they shut the door, mock in their room and do exactly the opposite of what they were told. In practice, they rise up against the Spanish, even when their cities are besieged for months, and announce Protestantism to be the official religion, while allowing other religions to quietly exist. This draws the attention of the Pilgrim Fathers and other groups in search of freedom.
They called it freedom, but this is clearly a picture of the siege of Leiden.
While William of Orange (and his offspring, after he’s murdered) fights off the Spanish, the rest of the country starts developing rapidly. As they are acquainted with water, the Dutch have a superior fleet that swiftly discovers the whole world. The Dutch East India Company and the Dutch East India Company introduce new trading mechanisms throughout the world, including globalization and stock exchange. Their trade and colonial business expand the economical range of the republic to the east coast of North and South America, Australia, India, Japan, Indonesia and South Africa, some of which are official colonies, up until WWII. At the homeland, cultural live really flourishes, resulting in memorable names such as painters Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer and early scientists Huygens and Leeuwenhoek.
An overview of the Dutch Empire, as provided by wikipedia
By the time the United States had announced its independence, difficulties arose among the Dutch. Internal quarrels combined with the imperial forces of Napoleon lead to both occupation by the French and later the start of Dutch monarchy when sovereignty is gained back. Being occupied is never fun, but at least the French gave us the metrical system; a blessing that’s hard to measure, even with those wonderful standardized indicators. After 15 years of renewed independence, the Belgians decided to go their own way and should still regret that decision. The last constitutional change occurs in 1848, when the current Dutch constitution is written. Even with all its colonies, the superiority that was evident in earlier ages never comes back.
While WWI skips The Netherlands, Germany doesn’t care much for its neutrality when May 1940 comes around. The barely equipped Dutch soldiers fight for all their worth, but nostalgic defense tactics like flooding the battlefield prove useless against paratroopers and the rigorous bombing of Rotterdam. German occupation lasts from 1940 to 1945. After WWII, the world as we know it takes shape. In the Dutch case, you can take this quite literally, as a new province is added after drying the land in the middle. Alongside with increasingly rapid economical growth, the sexual and social revolutions take place. This, again, is where Dutch tolerance regains its name and its current reputation. In hindsight, the years 1970-2000 are years without major problems and of flourishing. The murder of an upcoming populist politician in May 2002, even when just an incident in the bigger picture, is generally marked as the moment where the country lost its innocence and joins the Western world in all its problems and new millennium struggles.
This is nowaday’s shape of The Netherlands. The highlighted area is our newest province.
As I said, Dutch history could perhaps provide a deeper view on culture. I think this is still the case. Some of the characteristics I have highlighted above match cultural expressions. There is a pride amongst Dutch, comparing the relative small size of the country with the big role it has played in the Western world. Between people, businesses and all sorts of stakeholders, there is a constant need to cooperate, compromise and talk things out. Labor strikes are very rare, as are huge demonstrations. Trade and globalization are still ever present in Dutch thinking and economy, as is their stubbornness demonstrated in the straight-forward way they communicate. More on Dutch culture can be found here in bullet points on wikipedia (while reading it, I agreed with all points, all the while finding it hard to believe these points are that noteworthy).
Drawing from personal experience or the bullet point list, what strikes you most about Dutch culture?
Extra:
A video clip that recently became popular and explains both the difference between Holland and The Netherlands and today’s constitutional organization:
One of the things you notice when shopping in an American supermarket, is the tendency to promote domestically made products. A very normal tendency. Home-made products would do good anywhere in the world and I believe that it’s important to support small, individual businesses. So any product that is made within American borders will make sure that you won’t miss out on a great characteristic like that. Sometimes, I feel like they’ve been taking it too far.
That’s a box of peanuts I ate on my way home last month. For those of you who are blind (and reading this blog nevertheless): it says that the product was ‘made with pride in the USA’. I always thought a box of peanuts was one of those products that are made by people lucky to have a job in the first place who might not even speak English. I was wrong. Apparently, those peanuts were packed by real patriots who take pride in serving their country by stuffing small boxes with little nuts. Good thing they told me, of I wouldn’t have tasted the American spirit in them. They were delicious. Another good example was miss Missouri’s shampoo bottle. Every time I was in the shower, I went reading the back of the shampoo bottle. A little disclaimer always caught my eye: ‘made with ingredients from USA and/or other countries’. That is the emptiest message of all time. You can in fact put in on literally everything. In fact, after doing a little research, I found out that 100% of all the products in Dutch supermarkets are made out of ingredients from the USA or other countries. How patriotic is that?
In a discussion on Twitter I recently had, this stadium came up. That’s a high school football stadium worth an astonishing $60 million. It surprised me. Of course, I wasn’t alone in being surprised, because $60,000,000 is a lot of money. It may have surprised me even more, however, because I am not used to the combination of high schools and sport. In fact, I always thought that high school stadiums were build by volunteers who just happened to have a few bored Saturdays and devoted the attention they normally spent on fixing their truck to build a few stands and have a beer afterwards. Apparently, I need to alter my image.
Also, nobody ever came to watch any of my games. Well done, high schools. Thanks to Burril Strong for using the picture (click it!)
As I said, I am unfamiliar with the idea of high school sports. I played team handball throughout the time I was in high school , but that had nothing to do with the school I was on. There was no curriculum concerning sports outside school hours or any organized team sport connected to school. How different is this situation from American schools. It seems as if everyone I meet has played at least one sport during their school times and people take it quite seriously. It’s one of the things that seem to shape one’s future, up to the point where they pay for college having played a sport. That’s serious sports. Some people even take it $60 million seriously. It seems like a lot of money, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned ever since I have been visiting Missouri, it’s how Americans get absolutely crazy when it comes to sports.
Dear Americans, specifically not excluding my beloved fiancée,
I like beds. As far as furniture goes, I think a kitchen table and a bed constitute the most important aspects of a home. Whereas the kitchen table is the center of everyday life and meeting as a family, the bed is the center of private life and rest. As I value rest, a good bed can be very important.
A bed. As the founding fathers would have wanted it to be.
Now, if we consider what makes a good bed, a few characteristics come to mind. First of all, the size and softness of the bed are important. Secondly, its decoration and neatness can bring a small joy to start every day with. Thirdly, and this is where Americans baffle me, bed-related accessories can be brought onto the bed to further improve the resting experience. I like a pillow to lay my head to rest and a set of sheets to cover me and wrap myself in. American beds, however, do not come with one pillow and a set of sheets to wrap oneself in. They come with a pile of pillows and a cover that is tucked in the mattresses, so one feels mummified all night long. Before you go to bed, you remove all pillows besides the one (mind you, just one) you actually use, leaving a mess of at least six pillows on the ground. The next morning you put all those ground pillows back into place in the exact same order, for the sole purpose that you can remove them all later that night. Sure, it looks amazing, but I have yet to encounter someone who walks up to his bedroom just to check the cute pillows.
People say having a pool is a lot of work, but it pales in comparison to a bed like this.
I know an overload of pillows is as American as apple pie (I mean baseball, for probably even Zimbabwe has its own apple pie), but I’d like to argue a case for a more pragmatic approach. Pick a pillow you like and stick with it. Free the covers from their suppression of the deep tuck and wrap yourself in them to conquer the cold winter nights. Not having to put all the pillows back into place might just save you another five minutes of sleep, every day. That’s thirty five minutes a week. Just saying. That’s a nap. Weekly.
I was never too good at geography. One of the things I do when I’m flying from Chicago to Saint Louis, is guessing the different states of the United States by the last page of their in-flight magazine (helped by the abbreviations). I might get better at it, but I wouldn’t know really. I don’t fly enough to really succeed. In my own country, I don’t travel all that much, but when I meet somebody new, there’s always the same guessing game.
‘Where are you from?’
- ‘(Inserts small town nowhere near a city I know).’
‘What’s the closest city?’
-’(City that still is really small and not helping).’
‘I give up. Is it north, west, south or east from here?’
Driving around in the US, I noticed how the size of the country changes the sense of directions as well. Saint Louis uses four different directions and orientation points (I believe): Chicago, Kansas City, Indianapolis and Memphis. I can totally see how this works out perfectly, but the distance between Chicago and Memphis gets you from Amsterdam to Prague. This use of cities is just one of many realizations of the biggest difference between cultures: size, distance and how to deal with it.
Americans are an orderly people. I’m from a country where getting in a train seems to be a chance to get a step higher on the food chain, but Americans have developed a nice little system. They’ll wait for others to get off, and only then walk inside. It’s really miraculous. Instead of elbowing your way through common men and commuters, a sort of equality presents itself in public transport (I mean Chicago O’Hare’s trolly trains, people here are afraid to let me on the bus, because of the general public that takes buses).
A Moroccan stop sign. I’ve been in Morocco and they don’t really do signs. Or stopping.
One of the things that makes this crystal clear, is the stop sign. A stop sign along the road means any car has to stop, wait for the first car that drove up to the crossing to move on and in that order everybody will ever get to their destination. It’s a perfect system in the States, for only one reason: cars always stop. If it’s 3am, the middle of a quiet neighborhood and you haven’t seen a car in the last half hour, you’d still stop. I’d guess if the zombie apocalypse ever breaks out, stop signs are a perfect place to wait for cars of fresh meat pulling up. I have never seen someone not stopping. I do realize I make Americans sound like nerds right now, but opposed to the Dutch way of Darwinising traffic, I really like it.
