The Further Adventures of O'Neill in Holland. Brown John Irwin
eng meaning ‘narrow’, that engert would work out something like “fine strapping fellow and in excellent training”. If that was it, my landlady had hit the nail on the head. For Terence had just been carrying all before him at the last Trinity sports.
Her admiring criticism I duly entered in my notes and kept for use.
Some days after Terence had left, the landlady was praising her son’s cleverness to me; and to please her I just said that he was a wonderful boy. ‘Mirakel van een jongen’ was the expression I employed; and I was quite proud of it. But she didn’t seem appreciative of my effort, so I fell back on her own idiom. Fortunately the lad was quite slender, and I could dwell with satisfaction on the suitability of my new word.
“Hij is zoo eng”, I said. “Ja juffrouw hij is een engert! – een echte engert!!”
She received my encomium on her boy with speechless indignation, and rose and left the room. You can’t be too careful”, added O’Neill thoughtfully.
“Jack,” said one of the students. “I prefer your own notes even to Boyton. Haven’t you some more? Ah, what’s this?” he enquired, turning to some pencillings inside the back. “Dat zou je wel willen”, he read aloud, “‘signification doubtful!’
“And here’s one marked ‘commercial’: ‘We’ll consider the transaction as settled’: Dutch apparently something like, ‘Dat zal ik u betaald zetten’. Here’s another labelled, ‘not deftig, but very popular’: ‘Ben je niet goed snik?’ Translation seems to be: ‘you’re not quite able to follow my meaning.’
“Ah! No more? That’s a pity.”
“Oh I have plenty more,” interposed O’Neill; “but not here. And you want to read this Boyton volume.”
“Let me finish the ‘Dialogue between English gentlemen’, and you may have The Work.
The first Englishman says: “Ik bid U, mijnheer; laat mij geene onheusheid begaan.”
Then the other, the man who had been so disappointed that his friend wasn’t murdered, answers politely: “Ik weet zeer wel welke eerbied ik U schuldig ben.”
Up to this moment the two acquaintances seemed to have got on fairly well together in spite of some difficulties. Why two Englishmen when they met in Paris about the year of grace 1805 should plunge into a complimentary dialogue in Dutch, is not very clear. But that there was a lurking feeling of antagonism in the gossip’s mind towards his compatriot, seems to be shown by the remark that he now makes to wind up the dialogue.
“Mejuffrouw (!) ik bid U duizendmaal om verschooning, indien ik heden eenige onheusheid omtrent U bega.”
That was final. The returned traveller hasn’t a word for himself, after he is called ‘mejuffrouw.’
“Mind you, gentlemen,” continued O’Neill, holding Boyton aloft like a trophy, “if I did try to stop too prolonged conversations in that gracefully irrelevant fashion, I had caught the trick of it from Brandnetel himself. You have only to go on heaping civilities on your wearisome talker’s head, but take care to call him, just once, Mejuffrouw, and he’ll have to go. It’s a neat way of saying Good-bye. I never found the method to fail.
Some day I’ll tell you how supremely effective I found that unexpected little turn.
Why it’s nearly as good as Zanik nouw niet.”
CHAPTER III
HOW O’NEILL LEARNED TO PRONOUNCE
“I never could quite understand,” said Bart van Dam, the big Cape giant, who had carried off Boyton the week before, “how O’Neill managed, out of such an extraordinary book, to pick up anything of the pronunciation. For, as a matter of fact, he does get quite close to some of the sounds; and I can nearly always guess what he is trying to say.
“When he is talking about that interesting Rotterdam street, the Boompjes, he doesn’t make the first part rhyme with the English word loom, and then add cheese, a thing I have heard Britishers do who should have known better. And actually, I have noticed he can distinguish goed, groot, goot. That’s promising.
“Some of my British friends at the Cape, even after I graduated on English Literature and History, used kindly to drop Dutch words into their conversation, either to make it easy for me, or to keep up my spirits, so to speak. Oh never a talk of over five minutes, but little familiar terms like taal, zolder, maar, and so on, would begin to be showered in, here and there. One of these linguists had taken me into his own back garden, (he was very fond of animals of all kinds and we had gone out to inspect those he had) when he began to explain the new improvements on his premises.
We got into a deep discussion on the right way of draining a flat roof. “Come here”, said he, at last. “Look up there, and you’ll see a goat of mine running all round the open space!”
“Goat!” I exclaimed; “it’ll fall!”
“Nonsense”, he said, “not unless lightning strikes it. Firm as a rock! Now, isn’t that the right sort of goat to carry the water off?”
He thought he had said goot in Dutch!
Well now, Jack’s beyond that. Who had been coaching him?
Naturally I turned up Boyton on pronunciation the very first thing at home – and the mystery was solved! I was amazed. Boyton excels in teaching the sounds. Here is an extract or two from his
REMARKS ON THE DUTCH PRONUNCIATION.
There you have some of the Rules! They won’t lead you far wrong, in any case. Then, to crown all, for fear the diligent reader wouldn’t have caught the point yet, Boyton goes back to his favourite “Doctrine of the Native.” Here it is:
The Editor places the learner on his guard against receiving wrong references, and directs him to an Instructor, or Native, whose Dialect it is, for the sound peculiar to each letter.
Bravo, Boyton!
Three kinds of Natives he recommends the beginner to consult. He has them arranged in a sort of ascending scale —the Civilized, the Intelligent and the Polite.
The two former classes will help you with the pronunciation, or with Het.
From the latter you get idioms.
CHAPTER IV
AN INTERLUDE AND AN APPLICATION
“So our friend Jack had to ask always for the sounds of the words. That would be right good for him,” said Bart, “and should have made his talk intelligible.”
“Well of course it did,” said O’Neill. “They always understood the words I used. It was the applications I made that hampered them.
“I had great trouble with a chatty old gentleman in the tram one morning going down to Scheveningen. It was just seven – I was hurrying to get an early dip, and he seemed bent on the same errand.
Attracted by my blazer and towel he opened conversation about sea-bathing, and then proceeded to discourse on the beauties of the landscape. He seemed chilled by the poverty of my adjectives, though I worked them vigorously.
“Deze weg vin je zeker wel mooi?” he said at last, looking up at the arched green overhead. “Of houd U niet van de natuur?”
“Ja, zeker wel!” I hastened to assure him. “Ik houd er erg van – Het is prachtig! Net een tunnel van geboomte – van loofgroen.”
Then