For the past year I’ve been studying Flemish (a.k.a. Dutch) at night school. I’ve just had my end-of-year exams, and thankfully I passed (and quite comfortably, with 84%). For my efforts, I’ve been awarded an offical certificate, which felt oddly like the Straw Man in the Wizard of Oz receiving his diploma, as I didn’t really study that hard, and relied largely on my (basic) knowledge of German, which is fairly similar to Flemish.
Overall, the course was fun. We started out with about 22 students in the class (although this was whittled down to around eight by the end of the year) comprised of people from Belgium, England, America, the Philippines, Benin, Israel, Croatia, Turkey and Denmark. This meant that the only common language was Flemish, which made communication slightly difficult, and some exercises nigh on impossible (you try playing Hangman in Flemish with someone who only speaks French, and who has apparently never played the game before and needs you to explain the rules using only the power of mime!). No matter, we did manage, even sharing a laugh along the way (usually at each other’s mispronunciation or word mis-use – such as using soep (soup) and not zeep (soap) in the shower…).
I can’t honestly say I’m fluent in Flemish now, but the class did at least give me confidence to try out what I do know – much to the bemusement of local shopkeepers who now have to witness me trying to mentallly conjugate verbs and juggle the word order before mumbling something as basic as “Trek je mijn frieten niet majonnaise aan, alstublieft.” (“Please don’t put mayonnaise on my chips.”)
How much use it will be to me long-term is debatable. I’m unlikely to settle in Belgium long-term, and with the best will in the world Flemish isn’t the most universal language (being largely limited to the Netherlands and half of Belgium). But I do believe that if you go to live in a foreign country, you should at least make some basic effort to integrate yourself. So although I’ll probably never use it again (unless I visit Pennsylvania…) at least I wasn’t the archetypal lazy expat whilst I was here.
Leave a Reply