Daedalian Adventures

The road ahead is rarely straight…

By Lynelle Barrett

Ik werk, jij werkt, zij werken

After months and months of waiting for my paperwork to move through various government agencies, I am finally enrolled in school to learn the Dutch language. It started with a phone call from a counselor from the school. Was I available the next day to attend a class? It was a more advanced class, but I had tested well on reading comprehension. Would like to try it? I was afraid that if I refused, it might be months before they called again.

So the next day I attended a class with a roomful of people from all over the world…all already comfortable enough with Dutch to engage in full conversations. The teacher was nice about it, but it was obvious that the class was much too far along for me to catch up. I was told it was much harder for English speakers to learn Dutch. As soon as a Dutch person hears an English or American accent, they will switch to speaking English. Then I was treated to an impersonation of an American trying to speak Dutch. It sounded like a weird John Wayne impersonation. Gee…thanks…so glad I came.

So I was put in an easier class that was also already in progress. The textbook for the class has 15 chapters and the class was already on chapter 11. The teacher decided I should start on chapter 5. So at home, I worked like mad to review all the exercises in the first four chapters. The hardest part is that all the explanations of the grammar rules and instructions for the exercises are in DUTCH….the language I am taking these classes to learn! So before I can even do the exercises, I need to sit with my Dutch/English dictionary and look up all the words I don’t know. People from all around the world need to use these books, so I guess it makes sense. But it does make it very frustrating to get started. So you can imagine what it’s like, here is a rule for spelling plurals from my grammar book:

“Woorden met twee verschillende medeklinkers aan het eind en woorden met twee verschillende klinkers in het midden: blijven hetzelfde en er komt ‘en’ achter.”

And for even more fun, the textbook is full of encouraging statements. For example, "Het participium van onregelmatige verba moet je leren. Er zijn geen regels.", which means, ”The participle of irregular verbs you must learn. There are no rules.” Hmmm, if there are no rules, anything goes…right? Wrong. Next contestant, please.

About a week and a half ago, another group of beginners was added to the class. Now I have students at the same level to work with. Class discussions are much more fun. For four hours a day, I struggle along with my classmates from China, India, Iran, Morocco, Italy, Poland, Egypt and Khazikstan. Most of the other students speak some English, but I have to think back to my high school French to speak with the Moroccan women. Other than the limited Dutch we know, they only speak Arabic and French. Valeria from Kazakhstan speaks Russian, so we are reduced to our primitive Dutch skills.

Because we don’t know enough words, Jeroen, one of the teachers said we are speaking with our hands and our feet. Mohammed from Eygpt showed us how he orders coffee with milk. He mimed pouring the coffee from the pot to the cup. Then he used his fists to milk the teats of the cow. Debora from Italy says that because Dutch has a lot of sounds in the back of the throat (imagine a cat coughing up hairballs), it is not a language…it is a throat infection!

The best part of school is the cross-cultural exchange. Everyone is curious about the culture and views of the other students. Last week our teacher, Petra, went to give a test to the more advanced half of the class and left my group to discuss our lesson. Of course we never discussed how to buy train tickets or give directions in Dutch, but we did try really hard to use Dutch for most of the conversation. Abderrahim from Morocco (Mr. Charisma) was fearless even though surrounded by women. We discussed whether men are more inclined to romance in eastern cultures and warm climates. Then we discussed whether men really prefer to think about just the sex part or whether they like to think about the romance part too. (Good news…he says men do like romance.)

Even though the students in the class come from different cultures and have different religious views, there are some things that bind all of us together. It is easy to find common ground. We are all struggling to feel like part of our new community. We all have families that we love. We all want love and romance. We all want to have fun and be happy. These things translate into any language.

Lynelle Barrett is residing in The Netherlands, where everyday she puts her book bag on the back of her bike and rides to school with the other kids…just like she did in fifth grade.  Check out photos and notes of her adventures on her website at: http://spaces.msn.com/lynelleinholland