Random Dutch Language Things--------which I know are boring and irrelevent but I've been writing them down in the margins of my notebook and I am running out of room so you get to see them anyways

• Dutch is adopting a lot of English words.  My Dutch teacher said that in 50 years, probably no one will be learning Dutch at all.  In the meantime though, instead of creating new words, the Dutch have been making verbs out of adopted words:
• hockeyen--"to play hockey"
• surfen--"to surf the internet"
• gamen--"to play computer games" (especially if you are playing really seriously)
• bellen--"to call someone on the telephone" (as in "to ring" someone on the phone or as in Alexander Graham Bell, I do not know which)

• The Dutch are known for their straight-forwardness and even abruptness.  As an antidote to this, Dutch includes a whole bunch of words which are correct, grammatically and stylistically,  and whose entire and only purpose is to "soften" sentences.  Instead of saying "Ja" ("Yes"), you say "Ja, hoor", which apparently just sounds nicer.  Instead of saying "Give me the bill" you say "Give me the bill, even."  Other words, like "maar" and "graag", which have more traditional uses, have additional uses as "padding" as well.

• I can report a personal triumph!  I made it my personal goal to remember that "trekken" means "pull" and "duwen" means "push".  It is a little translation problem that you don't really think about until you run into a door or two.  I sometimes have to pause a second and think but I haven't run into any doors, this week at least.

• In Dutch, the "ij" combination is a diphthong which means that they are really one letter.  This is why IJselmeer is always spelled with two capital letters--because it is really only one letter.  There is also no "y" in Dutch (except in adopted words-- and then it is called an "i-grech").  Most of the time in handwriting, the "ij" ends up looking like a cursive "y" and lots of times, people forget to add the dots.  It is confusing when you are trying to read handwriting and, apparently, it is confusing for Dutch people when they see "y" in other words and also, they have a tendency to see "ij" in other words (like Dijon) as diphthongs, even when they aren't.  

• If Ella does turn out to be having twins (fingers crossed) then we can say that she is "zwanger van een tweeling."  I have no idea why "twins" is singular in Dutch, but I guess that is just the way things are.

• The Dutch do not tell time easily.  They tend to be a lot convoluted.  They like to make references to half-past the hour and half-to the hour to a ridiculous extent.  For instance, when it is 8:40, instead of saying "eight forty" or "twenty to nine" they say "ten after half nine".  I do not know why.  And, also, they pronounce "half" "ha-LUF". 

• The Dutch, like the Germans, have a habit of mashing words together "because they seem to fit".  The longest word in Dutch, at least as far as my teacher knows, is "hottentottententententoonstelling" which translates literally as "Hottentot exhibition tents" as in a "display of Hottentot cultural and domestic arrangements".  Like a collection of tepees, except from Darkest Africa.