Cloggie Central
Live From The Land of Windmills, Wooden Shoes and Tulips!Archive for dutch
What Kind of Language is This?
It was bound to happen. Sooner or later the posts about the Dutch language were inevitably going to begin. I had decided not to post on strange pronunciation in words such as ‘uit‘ and ‘alstublieft‘ just yet but a conversation with RC meant I could go no longer without a post.
This evening RC once again decided that I was to learn one or two words a day until I came to Holland. I had managed to delay such lessons by saying I thought it would be better to concentrate on my assignment instead. However with the completion of my assignment just round the corner, RC won this battle.
So tonight we practised a very useful phrase ‘Waar is dat?’ which means ‘where is that?’. Obviously delete out the ‘dat‘ and substitute with whatever you are searching for and you are in business. Until a Cloggie answers back in full speed Dutch of course but it’s a start. So I rattled off ‘Waar is dat‘ six or seven times, spelled it two or three and then RC moved on.
RC: Okay, so ‘Dat is waar‘ means ‘That is true’
Me: I’m sorry what is the last word you are saying?
RC: Waar
Me: Nope sorry one more time
RC: Waar
Me: Can you spell it?
RC: W-A-A-R
Me: Waar?!?!?! As in where? How can where also mean true.
RC: Yes, Dat is waar means that is true as well.
Me: That’s just silly how can it?
Well it appears that the reason why it can be is that in this instance waar is being shortened from the word ‘waarheid‘ which means truth. So making completely no sense? – yes!! Useful – we shall have to wait and see.
Off to convince RC that just because it has gone past midnight in Holland does not mean it is time to learn new words for the day…
Cloggie in Training
The Slow Communication Technique (SCT)
This week has been a good week for me and all my hard work at job searching seems to be paying off. I have had four job related enquiries. Not job offers but more along the lines of ‘we have this job and want to talk to you further’ type thing. Obviously while this is great it does put me in a tricky spot as I do not want to pursue or even accept the wrong job. Luckily however I am planning to utilise the Slow Communication Technique, also known as SCT.
The main components of this technique are:
a) slow communication – that is respond at your leisure, sometimes even weeks after the initial enquiry
b)don’t answer anything fully if even at all
Cloggies are brilliant at this. Basically you get an email – read it, read it again and resist the urge to answer. It’s not rude they won’t even notice. A day or so later respond to the email. However do not answer any questions they ask or at most only one and make sure that the whole situation is left very unclear and needs further communication. Obviously further communication is also done via the SCT.
Before I understood SCT I got very nervous when appointments weren’t sorted out until minutes before I needed to leave to get there on time. However now I plan to beat the Cloggies at their own game and utilise it to my best advantage!
Off to complete some manipulating….
Cloggie In Training
