OT: If you ain't Dutch ...

At 2:12 PM +0000 1/28/03, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
> --- Dirk Elzinga skrzypszy:
>
>> >> And what happens when Jan and Boudewijn and Christophe and any others
>> >> start posting in Dutch and we can't ask them not to?
>> >
>> >Hey, as a two-quarters Dutch person, you are always welcome to join us!
>> >And don't forget Irina, Rob, Vaksje, Maarten...
>>
>> *ahem* What about me? I came to my name honestly (of course it's not Dutch,
>> it's Frisian; I'm only Dutch on my mother's side).
>
>Yes Dirk, you are right indeed. My humblest apologies... ;)
No need. I was being tongue-in-cheek.

>By the way, in Sally's survey you wrote that your mothertongue is English. How
>does that work? Were you born in the US?
I was. But my parents spoke Dutch exclusively at home until I was about 3 or 4,
and continued to speak Dutch to each other until I was well into high school. I
think I stopped using Dutch when I realized as a pre-schooler that none of my
friends could understand me. I retained a passive knowledge of the language
until I went to Tilburg for a year of study at the KUB as a college junior.
That was 13 years ago and I'm back to passive mode, though I'm sure that I
could bring it back after a couple of weeks of immersion.

My next challenge is to actually learn Frisian. I can read a good deal of it
because of its similarities to both Dutch and English, but I'm almost
completely at a loss when I hear it.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                               Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the appreciation of
fact." - Stephen Anderson