It's Sunday night and Paul and I have spent most of the weekend doing homework!! Yes, we're back to school....language school. Whilst the idea of moving overseas to a foreign land with a different culture and language, sounds all very excting and slightly romantic, the romanticism of living in Europe was certainly killed now that we have to spend hours every week completing our homework from our dutch language class.
In reading my Concise Dutch Grammar book, I was amused by some of the grammar exercises. For example, Exercise 1...Split up the sentence into different parts and underline the subject and the main verb. Here was the sentence we were given for the exercise.
Ik vind jou niet aardig.
I find you not nice (english translation).
Hmmm.....Well, I'm not sure when and to whom I will ever need to say that. Is this a grammar exercise or an exercise in cultural differences? The funny thing is I don't think the straight talking dutch would understand the humour in this....we just don't say stuff like that. It all rests in the word DIPLOMACY....seen as a desirable skill to have back home in Australia. I think it's fair to say there is less emphasis over here in the Netherlands on diplomacy and being politically correct. As commented in one of my previous blog posts, over here it's about the 'importance of being earnest'.
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