Being Dutch – part 1

Dear Diary,

Today, I have decided to take a big step towards being Dutch, and that is to learn how to pronounce the Dutch word “gracht” correctly. Without scaring three people and spitting on twelve, that is. Yes, dear diary, twelve. Makes us wonder, don’t you think, if they dope because they speak that way, or if they speak that way because they dope? I mean, flem and saliva ooze out of the orifice in the face when you pronounce the word a lot more than when you have pneumonia. Yes, Pneumonia. Which … reminds me of something.

You know, dear diary, the word “gracht” is rather deep. Literally. Sixteen feet three inches, to be precise. It means “canal”, and if you drop your wedding ring into it while on a walk with the lady, you will forever live with two metrics for the rest of your life. The depth, as I mentioned above, and the temperature of the water in mid-January. While we went for treatment, the doctor said he had never seen testicles take so long to defrost.

So, back to the canals of Amsterdam, which I think are the most integral part of the city. In fact, if the city were a human body, the canals would be the arteries, with Dam Square being the heart. That, of course, does not imply that the Red Light District is the penis, vagina or any such thing. I think that would suggest that the human body had its reproductive system positioned mighty close to the heart, which is rather freaky if you ask me.

But we digress. The canals, surprisingly, do not cause any flooding during the rains, and that is largely due to the skill of the Dutch administration who are perfectly capable of calibrating the water levels to ensure that it doesn’t spill over onto the streets. Except for on two occasions. The first, in early 2007, was when a crowd of Dutch men and women walked along the canal saying the word “gracht” repeatedly, causing the canal to be filled with saliva and eventually flooding the streets. The second was more recently, just after England won the Ashes. Although tests later revealed that the canals were sixty-percent canal and forty-percent tourist urine from England who chose the Grachten to consume large quantities of beer and let loose larger quantities of liquid waste. Spare a thought for the Thames, dear diary.

The word “gracht” isn’t the only one in the Dutch language that makes the person you are having a conservation with take a few steps back. While Arabic and Urdu certainly has more words that involve the discharge of flem, it is very unique for a country in Western Europe to have a Germanic language, that has so many achhhh-sounding words. As you learn more Dutch, dear diary, you’ll start to sympathize with cartilage in the mucus membrane, and you will perfectly understand why a Dutch epiglottis continually demands a higher billing rate when it fills its daily timesheets.

All in all, though, it’s quite difficult to make strides into understanding the country’s culture without knowing the local language. From the outside, Dutch sounds like a loud, painful mixture of English and German with bits of Arabic thrown in. Like a threesome with Jeremy Clarkson, Heidi Klum and Nancy Ajram, all yelling out simultaneously. I think it’s going to take longer than I thought it would, dear diary.

‘nacht,
S

P.S. Did I tell you? There are hundreds of bicycles rusting down on the canal-bed.