Reply to: Contracting in Netherlands

[AlfredJPruffock]

Do you really think the South of England is that bad?

A contractor dies and finds himself in Hell.
Ths Devil appears and ask how is he settling in.

'Actually - I quite like it here - I was from Basingstoke.'

[expat]

Personaly I fail to see the attraction of living in a culture dominated by petty meetings dull food a flat landscape and flat beer - and rather dull people IMHO - save staying for an odd contract/smash'n'grab and moving on to higher ground - but thats just me.

Do you really think the South of England is that bad?

[Joe Black]

"This is not to debate over general tolerancy"



What have the Dutch ever done for us?, they brought us these chaps. The ones on the left and right have unfortunately retired.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Aye Threaded

Thats true.

Personaly I fail to see the attraction of living in a culture dominated by petty meetings dull food a flat landscape and flat beer - and rather dull people IMHO - save staying for an odd contract/smash'n'grab and moving on to higher ground - but thats just me.

Tot Ziens !

What have the Dutch ever done for us ?

[threaded]

The best example I have of the frustration of living and working in the Netherlands was a very good American friend of mine who lived and worked there for 15 years - he took u[on himself as a personal mission to learn Dutch and master every facet of the Languauge and Grammar .

Dutiffuly read all of Dutch Literature and was expert in all manners od Dutch culture - but he left rather bitter after 15 years as he was convinced he was never accepted by the Dutch - any native Dutch folks reading this care to comment ?

Yes, but septics are inferior. The Dutch are probably being more honest when they make it felt, rather than the fake smiles English people give them.

[AlfredJPruffock]

A foreign body
And a foreign mind

Never welcome
In the land of the blind

You may look like we do
Talk like we do
But you know how it is

You're not one of us
Not one of us
No you're not one of us






The best example I have of the frustration of living and working in the Netherlands was a very good American friend of mine who lived and worked there for 15 years - he took u[on himself as a personal mission to learn Dutch and master every facet of the Languauge and Grammar .

Dutiffuly read all of Dutch Literature and was expert in all manners od Dutch culture - but he left rather bitter after 15 years as he was convinced he was never accepted by the Dutch - any native Dutch folks reading this care to comment ?


It's only water
In a stranger's tear

Looks are deceptive
But distinctions are clear

A foreign body
And a foreign mind

Never welcome
In the land of the blind

You may look like we do
Talk like we do
But you know how it is

You're not one of us
Not one of us
No you're not one of us
Not one of us
Not one of us
No you're not one of us

There's safety in numbers
When you learn to divide

How can we be in
If there is no outside
All shades of opinion

Feed an open mind
But your values are twisted

Let us help you unwind

You may look like we do
Talk like we do

-But you know how it is

You're not one of us

Not one of us
No you're not one of us

Peter Gabriel

[threaded]

Actually it gets even worse in Holland. That is probably the only country where the natives get annoyed if you try to speak their own language. A poor friend of mine was so frustrated, he tried to learn it for 2 years and he never got any chance of practicing it as they always replied in English to all his attempts of conversation.

Actually, I have business interests and family in the Netherlands and have never, touch wood, met people with that attitude, although I hardly ever go into the big cities. Though, city-folk being ass-hats generally, I am not so surprised.

[Francko]

you'll never be one of them even after you live half a century there
Compared to?, various EU countries where someone can be born there, a native speaker, second/third generation and all the rest and, well...let's just say the chances of seeing someone like Trevor McDonald, or his equivalent, on German/French/Belgium/Italian TV in the next 25 years is somewhat small.

Joe, in "I used to be a Europhile" mode.

This is not to debate over general tolerancy, of which England can probably teach a lot to the whole world. I was merely discussing linguistic tolerance. Apart from the French who ridicously pretend that their language is universal I feel that only in England there is this theory of a superior language whereby everybody from abroad is expected to learn and speak it perfectly. In euroland you probably have the opposite problem where conflicts start because people have an inferiority complex of having a less "important" language.

[Francko]

If you were not a native you'd be surprise of how little tolerancy there is against no-natives. I'd been in english communities in Italy for a long time and then went on the other end as a foreigner. I could have laughed all the time with the italish being spoken inside the community (a large part of them did not even consider the option of the language) but I never mocked anybody on that. Yet natives were very lenient and encouraging towards them. In England this does not happen. English is the language the whole world must know and speak as well as a native speaker, despite you'll never be one of them even after you live half a century there. And yes, watching TV, listening to music does help in any language. Also consider yourself lucky that, with the exception of Newcastle and few other areas, you don't have many issues with your own language. In many countries you already have to understand several dialects, which in some cases are just as difficult as another language.

Actually it gets even worse in Holland. That is probably the only country where the natives get annoyed if you try to speak their own language. A poor friend of mine was so frustrated, he tried to learn it for 2 years and he never got any chance of practicing it as they always replied in English to all his attempts of conversation.

[Francko]

Maybe this will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Irony

For the rest, I'll leave others to provide the critique...

It's ok, I'll leave others to provide replies for me.

P.s. just to clarify: with studying, I didn't mean the two week course that you do in a dodgy school in Central London but studying it from the age of 10 as a second language until you are 18-19 just as I was forced to do with French too.

[Joe Black]

Sorry but I still don't get your point...Just to give an example from you: 'study'

Maybe this will help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Irony

For the rest, I'll leave others to provide the critique...

[Francko]

Perhaps if English speakers weren't so tolerant of mistakes such as shown above and did like a friend of mine here, answering "wat?", "wablieft?" or the equivalent, then such presumptions might change...

If you were not a native you'd be surprise of how little tolerancy there is against no-natives. I'd been in english communities in Italy for a long time and then went on the other end as a foreigner. I could have laughed all the time with the italish being spoken inside the community (a large part of them did not even consider the option of the language) but I never mocked anybody on that. Yet natives were very lenient and encouraging towards them. In England this does not happen. English is the language the whole world must know and speak as well as a native speaker, despite you'll never be one of them even after you live half a century there. And yes, watching TV, listening to music does help in any language. Also consider yourself lucky that, with the exception of Newcastle and few other areas, you don't have many issues with your own language. In many countries you already have to understand several dialects, which in some cases are just as difficult as another language.

[Francko]

oracleslave, you appear to have beaten me on the spelling, but where's the grammar smiley?

"Exceptions don't make the rule."

It's not a case of exceptions, but presumptions.

I'd be the first to admit that the general level of second language skills amongst most native English speakers is not very good, verging at times on abysmal. On the other hand the presumption of many of our European friends that this is always the case, or that because of a few hours a week at school and perhaps watching the Simpsons, or listening to the odd song or two, their foreign language skills are better than their counterpart trying to speak their language is quite often far from true.

Perhaps if English speakers weren't so tolerant of mistakes such as shown above and did like a friend of mine here, answering "wat?", "wablieft?" or the equivalent, then such presumptions might change...

Sorry but I still don't get your point. First you are almost outbreaking into the ridicolous with these cheap tricks as I never double check what I write. You should check out my posts in the italian forum and you will spot just as many mistakes because I write first-hand and no, I can't care less if they are correct or not. And so do you.

Just to give an example from you:

Secondly, as for the suggestion that only years and years of training (or the benefit of that 'study' at school) makes it possible to achieve fluency in a language I will put forward two people I know personally. One my manager who learnt Dutch only in the last year or two and now uses it in all meetings/discussions with Dutch speakers, and secondly a Polish girl I met on a course who passed the Dutch (native speaker level) exams which allowed her to study at university within one year of arriving.

Besides, I claimed since that beginning that my level is not and will never be as a native speaker. Nor an exam can prove it as I have done the Cambridge certificate with very high marks. Also you should consider what languages are similar to your native one, I could master french, spanish and portuguese but certainly not english or german. I guess for a polish person, or a scandinavian, is easier to learn dutch or german and for an english person too. But yet you will never be as good as a native, despite all the exams you can pass. You can suffice with other skills for sure but for the language you will always be one step behind.

p.s: and no, I didn't refer to presumptions but exactly to exceptions. Surely there will be the odd case of someone with a great attitude to learn languages that will be as good as a native. But it's an exception.

p.p.s: xOracleSlave: I tend to make a lot of confusion these days as I am learning lithuanian and german at the same time besides the other three who are already on my head more or less. If I could concentrate on one language only like you do, I would be as good as you in spelling (or I might even be already if I could only pay some attention to what I write)

[Joe Black]

The problem with the european languages is that they are too similar each other so there is a false belief that we are writing well in a foreign language. In reality what appears good to us will not appear the same to native speaker despite being sintactically or semantically correct. You should study japanese to get a better picture of this, then you realise that writing is another skill indeed. Or to make another example the italian that they speak and write in the canton "ticino" in Switzerland might be accademically correct but the language is a species in constant evolution with occasional fallbacks in the past. You won't catch it in its full extent unless you have grown up with it. My posts are an example. I don't make more spelling mistakes than the majority of you (with the exception of Milan who makes way more spelling mistakes than I do) but yet the ones I make are of higher severity because I cannot ponder a proper weight for each word, they are all not native to me so mispelling "laugh" for me is as easy/hard as mispelling Aberystwyth.

oracleslave, you appear to have beaten me on the spelling, but where's the grammar smiley?

"Exceptions don't make the rule."

It's not a case of exceptions, but presumptions.

I'd be the first to admit that the general level of second language skills amongst most native English speakers is not very good, verging at times on abysmal. On the other hand the presumption of many of our European friends that this is always the case, or that because of a few hours a week at school and perhaps watching the Simpsons, or listening to the odd song or two, their foreign language skills are better than their counterpart trying to speak their language is quite often far from true.

Perhaps if English speakers weren't so tolerant of mistakes such as shown above and did like a friend of mine here, answering "wat?", "wablieft?" or the equivalent, then such presumptions might change...

[threaded]

What possible context could there be for this item other than nailed to the wall of a house?

One reason I like old houses, new ones just have a lump of wood nailed to the wall. Lifeless seried ranks of breeze block and concrete monstrosoties with a thin brick facing lacking soul. They're one of the things I blame these problem teenagers on: if you force people to live in an environment that looks brutal, you brutalise the people who live there.