In the two-and-a-bit years I've lived here, I've generally tried to use my (minimal) Dutch where possible. Generally, this is limited to restaurants, bars, shops and the cinema as I'm still incapable of stringing a sentence together that doesn't start with "mag ik" (may I) or "Ik wil graag" (I would like).* My feeble attempts at getting my gullet round the guttural "cccch" and "gggggh" sounds that come up in every second word have improved of late, and, shock horror, I'm now finding that most people respond to me in Dutch rather than automatically switching over to English. I've been marvelling at this and was feeling rather proud of myself until last night.
Katie, Anika and I went to see The Constant Gardener at Tuschinski (more on that later). I arrived a little late and popped into the food queue behind them. Both of them ordered in English; I decided to give some cccch-ing and gggggh-ing a try. I ordered an iced tea and a small popcorn and all was well until I sat down in the cinema and started munching away as the trailers rolled. My tastebuds immediately recoiled in horror at - wait for it - the SWEET POPCORN they had just been assaulted with.
How could this have happened, you ask? Well, it's quite simple really. The Dutch words for "sweet"and "salty" respectively are "zoet" (zoot) and "zout" (zowt). I *thought* I'd asked for zout, and my outwardly friendly (but inwardly groaning at yet another stupid expat practising her Dutch) server reconfirmed this to me before merrily filling up my carton. I have yet to decide whether she really deciphered my garbling as "zoet" or if she gave me the sweet stuff to teach me a (Dutch) lesson.
The movie? Visually stunning, brilliantly acted, but didn't grab me in quite the way I'd hoped. As for the popcorn? After the first few mouthfuls, it really wasn't all that bad.
* Readers should note that I've been too lazy to get up off my arse and actually take Dutch lessons; education via the subtitles on Gilmore Girls doesn't really count for much.
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