My Dutch assessment turns into an assessment of the Dutch

The Dutch course is over now, and I'm please to say I passed. I'm afraid to say however that this blog post is mainly going to be a moan about the way the school grades exam results.

The UvA grades Dutch language course exam results on the following scale:

• good
• satisfactory
• weak
• very poor

This seems very strange to me. All the grades are on the bad side of good, there's no "excellent" grade achievable, the best you can achieve regardless of your performance is "good". Personally I'd rather ditch this assessment scheme and use numbers instead, at least you know where you are with numbers. These terms are so open to interpretation and cultural differences. One American peer of mine at school really found the lack of an "excellent" mark unbelievable, and I am always very disappointed to get a "satisfactory" grade. Satisfactory for me is "only just enough to pass, but a close call", but this is the second best mark you can get at UvA.

After 72 hours of Dutch practice in only 6 weeks, this scheme seems a little unfair but this scoring scheme turns out to be typically Dutch.

To be "excellent" in the Netherlands is to be "uitstekend", literally translated into "sticking out", or in other words "freakish". To be different from everyone else, surprisingly, is frowned upon here. I'm amazed by the contradiction in Dutch society which is supposedly one of the most liberal and open-minded in the world, but yet hates to see people achieving above the norm. Doing just enough to pass has become the accepted way to be in the Netherlands. And I worry for the nation I really do. Don't they realise that the rest of the world, especially the developing world, is trying very hard to be outstanding (a.k.a competitive). I can see the Netherlands slipping down a well greased slope unless they pull their socks up, try harder and forget their inhibitions about being uitstekend.

Dutch celebrities - who are they?

I just found a Dutch Celebrity Internet Quiz and I don't know anyone on the list: http://ifarm.nl/quiz/dutch.en.html

I don't watch much Dutch TV, just a little bit, the language practice exhausts me. The only Dutch celebs I know are:

• Robert Jensen
• Ruud van Nistelrooy (Footballer, in England)
• John de Mol
• Queen Beatrix and family
• Famke Janssen (from X-Men)

Who else should I know?

As far as I can tell Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey are the most famous Celebrity Chefs here, except that bald fat guy, and I have no idea what his name is....

“I bet you don’t miss the English weather!?”

Many times when I have introduced myself to a Dutch person, or when I’m speaking to a Dutch person about England, they will say “I bet you don’t miss the English weather!?” By this they are, of course, referring to the fact that it rains a lot in England. It does rain a lot in England, I agree, but I certainly don’t think that it rains a lot more in England than in the Netherlands. And it certainly doesn’t justify this, oh so very common, comment.

So I looked it up today, on the BBC website, to see whether these people really did have a point or not.

Turns out they are wrong. On average it rains more here than in London. See chart below. (The location of this place in the Netherlands “De Bilt” is unknown to me, but apparently it’s pretty much the most average place between Rotterdam and Amsterdam.)



The average precipitation and the number of wet days per month are higher every month of the year in De Bilt than in London. The Dutch are lucky to have a few more hours of sunshine during the course of the year – but not many. The temperatures are pretty much the same, except the Netherlands is colder in the winter.

So next time someone says “I bet you don’t miss the English weather!?” I can say “Yes, actually I do miss the English weather, because on average it rains less in London”.

First contact from the Dam

Before I met my husband, all I knew about Holland was that it was responsible for some painful, and questionable, defeats over the English football team. The only living Dutch person I had heard of was Dennis Bergkamp, who I thought of as a penalty-box diving blonde cheat. If prompted, I would think of windmills, clogs and edam cheese. But I was completely incapable of distinquishing the Dutch language from German. I had read Anne Frank's diary at school and had some van Gogh's paintings as prints, but hadn't really realised that these two historical and cultural icons were Dutch.

All said, I was completely ignorant of the who the Dutch were, their history or the rather sizable impact they have had, and still have on the world, despite their tiny population and percentage of the earth's surface.

I think that most Dutch people, who tend to have great pride in their country and a huge amount of self-respect, would be very disappointed to know how little the rest of the world knows about their nation. I've learnt some interesting facts about the Netherlands in the last three years, but ashamedly I still haven't committed the Prime Minister's name to memory - all I know is that he looks like Harry Potter. And if after spending 27 years living in a neighbouring country this is how little I know, I'm sure I'm not the only one surprised to hear that the Dutch have a royal family and a colonial history as rich as the British Empire.

Today I live in Amsterdam, and I have learnt more about the Dutch in the last three months than I did in my previous 27 years. Most of what I have observed has been unconciously, but immediately and directly compared to my life in England. The majority of this blog will inevitably be dedicated to these comparisons, and I welcome your thoughts and comments on my impressions as I recognise that my impressions are only one, very narrow, point of view.