![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Spending a week in Amsterdam at the moment. I've been enjoying myself! Amsterdam is a very fun city to just wander around in. It's coat of arms, though, from what I have gathered from seeing it everywhere, looks like this:
Which inspires me to do that commiserating wince you do when someone has a name that suggests terrible puns, because XXX just makes me think of this:
(Sorry Amsterdam.)
Good thing it's a city, and not a child who has to go to school. At least it's a nice strong graphical motif to put on every single thing that exists in the city or in souvenir shops.
There are a lot of pretty places and really great museums here, but my favourite part, I think, is the language. I can't say anything about actual Dutch, since I speak about a sentence and a half of it, but to me everywhere I go here there are wonderful little language puzzles to solve. Because to my ears, Dutch is the weirdly skewed merging of English and German. I mean, look at this:
"Ontdek de wereld in 1 week"
Ontdek is pretty easy to figure out (entdecke - discover), as is week, but don't try to tell me wereld doesn't look like the botched merging of Welt and world.
I'm really fond of the emergency exits signs on the buses and trams, too.
"Nooduitgang - Bij gevaar ruit inslaan"
I can't help but parse that as "Notausgang - Bei Gefahr ruhig einschlagen" -- "Emergency exit - in case of danger, do feel free to break glass."
I'm sure everything doesn't sound charmingly silly in actual Dutch, but it sure does to me.
Which inspires me to do that commiserating wince you do when someone has a name that suggests terrible puns, because XXX just makes me think of this:
(Sorry Amsterdam.)
Good thing it's a city, and not a child who has to go to school. At least it's a nice strong graphical motif to put on every single thing that exists in the city or in souvenir shops.
There are a lot of pretty places and really great museums here, but my favourite part, I think, is the language. I can't say anything about actual Dutch, since I speak about a sentence and a half of it, but to me everywhere I go here there are wonderful little language puzzles to solve. Because to my ears, Dutch is the weirdly skewed merging of English and German. I mean, look at this:
"Ontdek de wereld in 1 week"
Ontdek is pretty easy to figure out (entdecke - discover), as is week, but don't try to tell me wereld doesn't look like the botched merging of Welt and world.
I'm really fond of the emergency exits signs on the buses and trams, too.
"Nooduitgang - Bij gevaar ruit inslaan"
I can't help but parse that as "Notausgang - Bei Gefahr ruhig einschlagen" -- "Emergency exit - in case of danger, do feel free to break glass."
I'm sure everything doesn't sound charmingly silly in actual Dutch, but it sure does to me.
