Monday, July 27, 2009

Persoonlijke gegevens

That's "personal details" in Dutch.

And you thought that completing UK Tax Returns was difficult?

My Dutch has improved slightly since my visits to Santpoort-Nord, Velsen and Ijmuiden and I can now understand a bit more than the bare essential "een bier tevreden".

('A beer, please')

It certainly makes for a different Monday night!

5 comments:

  1. A colleague of mine knows only one phrase - "Two beers please, and my friend is paying" - in all the main European languages. He says it's the most useful thing he knows.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2:28 pm

    Looks like its a dentist with an extremely powerful drill!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:40 pm

    oh, *snort* long words in a funny language. Har har.

    Seriously, silverprite (who I trust is joking) and Angus (who I suspect is not), can we try for a moment NOT to be the resolutely parochial dweebs who think all other languages are just perverse.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anon 12:40

    I wasn't having a laugh at foreign languages. If anything I was demonstrating my lack of knowledge of other languages, which has left me as a poor monoglot.

    Our business has expanded to include a lot of non-UK issues and last night it was the completion of a Dutch tax return for a client. (advert!)

    I have fairly successfully taught myself tax-related Norwegian and now I am learning tax-return Dutch. I can struggle (very slowly) to say the basics in Greek and Spanish, and I wish I had some ability in languages.

    Thankfully, our kids seem to be interested in trying to speak other languages; but they are getting only a thin smattering of languages (Gaelic) in school/nursery and are probably more fluent in Spanish.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous12:04 pm

    give 12:40 a bib to spit his dummy into!

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.