Hallo Allemaal!

Hallo allemaal! Ik ben deze maand Nederlands aan het studeren!

If you’re scratching your head, wondering whatever has possessed yours truly, rest assured that Alex has not fallen prey to a bout of logorrhea. Rather, he is learning Dutch this month; and he has decided (since he has been terribly busy and unable to write on the Magical Realm) to give you a rundown on his activities over January.

Firstly, I shall address my experience learning Dutch thus far; and secondly, I shall address the many other important aspects of my literary life, with particular regards to my progress with Fallen Love and my beta readers. But yes, before I go into that, allow me to explain a few pertinent elements of Dutch.

Nederlandse is Gezellig!

The full complexities of grammar, spelling and other such tedious details I shall not be overly concerned with here; I intend, rather, to speak about Dutch in a more general sense. What is the character of Dutch? What does it sound like, feel like? Languages, I believe, are more interesting in the broad sense—in the way they communicate meaning and in the cultural character that they reveal about their speakers—rather in the technical minutiae.

So: what is Dutch like? I think the word gezellig—which translate rather approximately as ‘cozy’—is a good example. A Dutch man or woman, when speaking positively, will often describe a place (or indeed numerous other entities) as being gezellig. In English, there is no real equivalent. We might say cozy, or comfortable, or moody, or characterful; but such words are encompassed by a single word in het Nederlands.

Gezellig can also be used to describe the Dutch character. The Nederlanders are a laid-back, conversant, and expressive people. In conversation, they can seem curiously joyful, with such expressions as ‘dat is moi!’ or ‘Lekker!’ (The former translates, again approximately, as ‘that is pretty’; while the latter means ‘it is great, nice, pleasant’).

I believe part of this impression also stems from the way the language sounds.

Dutch Phonology (and Orthography)

The Dutch language is melodious. In fact, I would say it is the most melodious language I’ve heard, surpassing English and even Italian. (And for the record, French, which isn’t at all as romantic as it’s cracked up to be.)

But you would never guess that from the orthography. No doubt some of you, when seeing the word gezellig, incorrectly tried to pronounce it as /gɛzɛlɪg/ (a bit like geezer) instead of /ɣəzɛlɪɣ/. The Dutch pronunciation of the g grapheme is very unfamiliar to modern English speakers. It is known in the technical parlance as a ‘voiced velar fricative’; basically, it’s like having a sore throat. If you gyrate your vocal cords together, you’ll get it.

You’d think this would make the Dutch language sound harsh, like German or Scandinavian languages. But you’d be wrong: when the voiced velar fricative is introduced in a language that has very pronounced vowels (e.g. as in alleen or allemaal) it sounds quirky rather than harsh.

But yes, Dutch does have a lot of elongated vowels. Duur and straat are examples; indeed in any case where there are two a’s or e’s, the vowel is elongated. But, even in words like deze (this) you still get pronounced vowels, being realised as /deːzə/.

Grammar

I admit I am still very much unfamiliar with the grammar, so I shall make only a minor observation regarding it. As with many languages, the word order can change depending on context: in the main clause (hoofdzin) the verb comes second (Dutch, like English, is an SVO language: we say ‘I love you’ or ‘Ik houd van jou’). But, in the subordinate clause (bijzin) the verb comes last: Ih heb hoofdpijn, dus ik wil een ibuprofen hebben.

In English, the meaning can be subtly changed by the word order as well—particularly when yours truly is writing poetry. For example:

Deep in mountains great and terrible \ O’er the frozen wastelands of the north \ There lies the dwarven hinterland.

What is the significance of saying ‘deep in mountains great and terrible’ instead of ‘deep in great and terrible mountains’? Perhaps nothing, you say. But notice that in the former I use asyndeton (there is no connecting word between the noun—mountain—and the two adjectives, great and terrible). This can give the prose a different character to ordinary conversation.

Het Diminutief

Another curious aspect of Dutch is the use of the diminutive, i.e. ‘little words’. These usually (albeit not exclusively) terminate in -je. Examples would include e.g. kopje or broodje.

It is difficult to describe what exactly a diminutive is for English speakers, but perhaps I can peruse an example from Scots English instead. You will sometimes here a Scotsman using the word wee, as in ‘a wee lad’. The word wee in Scots English acts as a diminutive.

Dutch is in fact not the only language where diminutives exist. In Romanian, a similar rule exists: you can say ‘un scaun’—a chair—or ‘un scăunel’ (a wee chair). In Romanian the use of the diminutive is complicated by the presence of gendered words, so ‘o masă’ (feminine word) has a diminutive form ‘o masuță’. Moreover, there are even some words that have irregular diminutives, so ‘un copil’ (a child; masculine word) has the diminutive ‘un copilaș’.

As you can see, Dutch isn’t the hardest language you can learn!

Writing

And now, finally, I shall address my writing progress.

I have written 22,000 words in Fallen Love so far, and will continue to write more. I have already received feedback from my two beta readers for the first 10K words; and I will receive more soon.

As for the Necromancer, I have finished reviewing the books allotted to me, and I have received the reviews I was owed. I shall seek more reviews for it, though with writing, reading, and learning Dutch, I have more than enough on my plate.

To Finish

The month of januari will be a busy one for me, as you can see, so my blogging will alas cover only the essentials. But, you can expect to see two interesting pieces published in the coming weeks. The first is another poem I have written (but not published); and the second is a piece I wrote for Scriptus, the university journal.

Very well; that is all for now. As the Dutch would say: Doei!

Why Modern Poetry... Sucks

A contentious title, is it not? But unfortunately, I believe it a true one. Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against modern poets (I mean, I technically am one) and indeed some—like Carol Ann Duffy, to name my favourite—produce some excellent works.

And yet I cannot deny the fact that, reading most of today’s poetry—be it online, in a few books, or in literary journals—I have the powerful impression that there really aren’t many real poets out there. What gets classed as ‘poetry’ today possesses a certain… vacuousness, that would make poets—even those of a few decades ago—turn in their graves.

I’m not trying to be hyperbolic. Allow me to elaborate…

A Look Into Today’s Poetry

I shall not be naming and shaming; I don’t consider that kosher. Mostly, I shall be using examples created by myself. Take this one:

In my house
The song of radiators
Echoes into television dreams.

Actually, that’s a little too good for what I’m referring to. Let’s try again, this time with a poem by Anonymous:

So I want
To leave
A deep scratch
Of my mind
On the screen
Of the world
And walk along
With all bards
After my death
Hundreds of years
On soiled paths
And metal streets
Without my limbs
Blood and flesh
In haunting houses
And Joyous classes,
Make them feel
My hovering spirit
In emotional moments
In acts and deeds
Soothing souls
And agitated minds.

This actually isn’t bad, in the general standard of things. It’s biggest mistake is in being too long, having overly short lines, and overly bulky stanzas. (Let me paraphrase: it’s god awful hard to read.)

Closer examination, however, reveals a deeper problem. It’s meaningless. It has neither rhyme nor reason; and with that it no longer becomes a work of art—an expression of emotion, a creation of inherent desire—and instead becomes a vapid caricature.

Let’s delve into some specifics:

On soiled paths
And metal streets
Without my limbs
Blood and flesh
In haunting houses
And Joyous classes,

Does the adjective ‘soiled’ have any impact whatsoever on the meaning of the poem? Does it even create imagery? As far as I can see, it doesn’t. Nor, for that matter, does ‘metal’ in streets; for there are no such things, and neither is it metaphorical or used to evoke imagery.

‘Blood and flesh’ literally has no meaning whatsoever. You could remove it, and nothing would change. ‘Haunting houses’? Really? I know alliteration is effective, but this really is very forced. As for ‘Joyous classes’—why the capitalisation, what exactly is ‘Joyous’ supposed to mean in this context, and what type of ‘classes’ are we referring to exactly?

Perhaps Anon is referring to school classrooms? In which case, he is being: a) terribly vague; b) unrealistic; and c) not evoking of the image.

Basically, six entire lines are devoted to nothing at all.

Harsh? Yes: But Not Without Reason

You may think I am being harsh on the author. And indeed, I am: the idea of leaving an indelible mark upon society through art is certainly an interesting and powerful idea.

Trouble is, modern poets seem—on the whole—obsessed with joining words together instead of writing meaningful prose. Turgour is even worse of a problem than it was in the eighteenth century; for now that turgour is devoid of meaning.

And remember: this is actually pretty good for the ones I’ve seen. Most seem to have little relation to anything at all.

The Poet has Killed the Poem

That’s my final message, at the end of it all. There was a time when a poet could bring his work to the masses… and the masses could be expected to listen. They may not have understood everything; but still, the poem would have connected. They would have seen something of their lives, and of themselves. Perhaps they would enjoy life. Perhaps they would reform something of themselves.

At the least, they would feel something.

The killing began with pretentiousness. Poets began writing ever longer and more turgid works. The references to gods became too many and too obscure for the ordinary working class citizen to know or understand. And the structures! Complicated, twisting; difficult to read; harder still to speak.

At least poetry was still read (and enjoyed) by the academics and those of a literary disposition. Now, even writers pay them little attention; and poetry seems mainly to belong to a few niche circles.

This new fall came from the modern era. Poetry is no longer a an art form worth practising: it is now merely a way to express musings. Little snippets of words that just happened to be passing through your mind are now considered serious prose.

At first we stripped poetry of general appeal; then we stripped it of meaning; and now we condemn it to the work of the untalented and poor.

I am giving you two poems of mine to read. They both carry a message—one dramatic, the other subtle. I would submit them to literary magazines, but no one will read them even if they get published. (Which is easier said than done, considering hw pretentious and closed-minded they are.)

I would voice them; but who would listen? The organisations relevant—LGBT rights advocates, reason and science foundations—don’t do poetry. I wonder why. And good luck getting anyone on the street to listen.

Perhaps you, dear reader, are willing to give them look. And maybe you’ll take my message to heart. Don’t pretend they’re any good. Don’t pseudo-analyse and write praise that would seem fake even in an ad.

Repudiate. It’s bullshit, and you know it.

Read The Lover’s Curse—a dramatic fusion of rhyme and hexameter, on false social practice and oppression.

Read God the Sun: a subtle attack on the notion of an omni-benevolent god.

So Long, Holland

I have arrived back in the Land of the Angles and Saxons, and indeed have spent a day recharging my batteries. So now I’m thinking: why not give you lot something to think about?

Well, this will probably be my last post on Holland for the time being. What I aim to do is make some further comparison between it and England (and indeed the UK in general) while—hopefully—amusing you.

Where Was I?

I was in the part of Holland towards the inner continent, in a town called Groningen. Which reminds me—in Dutch, most of the time the grapheme ‘G’ is pronounced [ɣ] (a harsh ‘hrrr’—or voiced velar fricative if you really want to get technical). So ‘Groningen’ is actually ‘Hrrroningen’. Weird, huh?

Now, Groningen has some strange little features. It has two bells, for one; and they both ring at the same time! And they’re pretty close to one another. And they play totally, totally different tunes.

And they do that every fifteen minutes.

So: you know you’re in Groningen when you here that awful, discordant clanging every fifteen minutes or so (for the clocks on those aren’t perfectly calibrated). You can also guess that it’s pretty damn annoying—don’t try to live in the city centre if you ever want to open a window. Or don’t have soundproofing.

The other pleasantry that Groningen has to offer is the rounded street corners. They’re quite quirky, I admit; they also mean that intersections occur on the pavement, so you always have to watch out for cars and bikes.

Which reminds me: the Dutch are crazy about bikes. It’s quite common to ride to work, ride to a park, ride to a restaurant, ride to…

And good for them. They save themselves money (thanks to the big taxes imposed on cars, along with the fact that car ownership is generally an expensive business) and they get health benefits. I just hope you like the rain, because you’ll be pretty comfortably enured with it by the time you’ve done any serious biking in Holland.

Anyway, let’s move on from all of these oddities to something a bit more concrete.

(Here’s my Google Web Album with some pictures, by the way.)

Holland, and the UK: An Economic Perspective

Anyone with a brain can ascertain that Holland is a wealthier country than the UK, simply by looking at the statistics: higher GDP per capita; a lower Gini co-efficient; lower teen pregnancy; et cetera.

But the statistics don’t tell you as much as the words. And while they are correct on the gist of it, they’re not quite correct on the scale of it. Because Holland isn’t just richer than the UK: it’s loads better off.

There is pretty big class difference here in the UK (unfortunately; a long standing problem worsened by economic crisis and a certain party I know of...)

There is class difference in Holland too, of course; there has to be. The reasons are complex—they range from the fact that some inequality must exist in order to provide incentive for greater risk, and because some people are harder working and more determined (while others are more content); and because, at the end of it all: some professions are more useful to the world than others.

However, class difference is very much pernicious. Firstly, it causes economic problems. This comes in two forms: through the principle of marginal utility—adding a ten grand bonus to guy earning a hundred k is far less meaningful than adding it to someone earning 16k, for example; and through the fact that it is more difficult to make money if you do not have it.

There are many frequent examples of this. Having more cash means you can buy shoes that will last for years, not months; and it means you can buy the more expensive fridge that’s cheaper over the long term due to efficiency; and so on and so forth.

There is also the question of borrower credibility. Banks are generally more willing to lend money to people with more money—the assumption being that the latter are more responsible. (This is quite often mistaken, of course: rich people are just as likely—if not more so—to end up in debt than less rich people.)

But class difference can manifest itself in much more subtle ways than in their economic ones; and it is these differences—these unseen ones—that are more dangerous.

Class

We all know the stereotype: the Victorian ladies and gentlemen sipping their favourite Earl Grey while the peasants are on hunger strike. Perhaps they’re even buying a nice gold chandelier while the peasants are trying to put out a fire.

These things seem silly to us know. But they’re true: the rich so often become heedless of the needs and concerns of less fortunate citizens. They do, to put it more simply, lack empathy.

And empathy is a very important part of a functional society. Those who do not have it are considered psychopaths; those who do are considered saviours. To lack in empathy would make you unable to deal with the emotions of other people (especially those close to you) and it will lower your capability to be a good, responsible citizen.

Which brings me onto a little known fact: a lack of empathy towards those less fortunate does often lead to a lack of empathy in general. Or to put it more bluntly—money damages you as a person.

There is also the age old question of entitlement.

Many of us laugh when we hear about millionaires (or billionaires) giving but a fraction of their money to their offspring. It makes sense, though: money leads to entitlement; and entitlement leads to an inability to cope with scarcity or difficulty.

The economic implications of this are merely an incomplete picture of the problem, of course. (As indeed economics is just part of the issue of class.)

We do not live in a perfect world. Bad things happen. People leave us; relations dull, and colden—and sometimes, disaster strikes. If you feel the world belongs to you, how do you deal with this?

Alex: Why?

I have gone off on a rather long tangent. Pardon me. So: we know that Holland has fewer rich snobs, and that’s a good thing. But how and why is it richer?

If you come from a 1st world country, looking around some neighbourhoods of Birmingham (for example) would come as a bit of a shock. There is a powerful sense of poverty in much of Britain: everything from the small, ugly terraced houses; to the ageing, dying cars; even to the poor taste in fashion—it all paints a gloomy picture.

After two years in the Netherlands, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen this level of poverty. Indeed, most of Groningen seems to be swimming in cash: the restaurants are full; the fashion houses seem busy; the trains are running on time—no complaints to be heard. Everything just seems so… smooth.

I do not claim to know exactly why this is the case. Neither do the economists, as much they as they wish they did.

I will merely present to you some hypotheses.

Infrastructure

Do you live in the UK? If so, you have probably complained extensively about:

1. The fact that the damn motorways seem forever clogged in a mass of rumbling, grumbling cars filled with even more rumbling, grumbling motorists;

2. The fact that the trains are bloody expensive;

3. The fact that the trains are slow sons of a b****;

4. The airports—they’re too full;

5. The ferries—they don’t go anywhere;

6. And more…

In holland, the motorways don’t get traffic jammed for hours (barring force majeure), the trains are fast, on time (and affordable); the airports are big enough; there are better sea-links, and so on.

A weak infrastructure means time and fuel lost by lorries idling idly in packed motorways. Fuel is expensive. Time is expensive—especially when foodstuffs are concerned.

Basically, infrastructure is a good investment; and one that the UK doesn’t do enough of.

Vocational Training…

In the UK, there exists a certain contempt of the word ‘vocational’. Yuck. Vocational. The images typically conjured are of lazy teenage boys sitting around in their DiDa classes (or whatever the hell they call them now) doing ‘ICT’ and ‘Game Design’.

And there’s a reason for this: training in the UK is very, very weak. The fact of the matter is, we can’t get those less fortunate to become competent craftsmen, IT personnel, or even shop-assisstants. (Some supermarkets have implemented their own numeracy and literacy tests for first time employees.)

Try going to a Dutch supermarket—Albert Heijn, let’s say.

Shop Assistant: ‘Hallo.’

Moi: ‘Hallo.’

BEEP BEEP

Moi: ‘Dank u vell.’

SA: ‘Astublieft.’

Fast, efficient, polite. In the UK? You’d likely have to wait a fair bit more and be asked a fair few more unnecessary questions before you’d get anything done. Let’s not even get into the quality of Dutch vocational training—they have separate universities for people like that (unlike here, where the best you’ll find is a poorly paid apprenticeship) and those universities are affordable (ditto), and have better facilities than UK ones.

And it’s not just at the tertiary level, mind you. Dutch highschools are better funded and have a much wider range of courses (that are taken seriously) available for non-academic students. Moreover, I have never seen Dutch schools as bad as some of the ones we have here.

EU

Britain has always been an insular country with insular tendencies. And recently, the bastards that borrowed money from fools banks to be spent profligately on swimming pools, jewellery, fashion and various other things they couldn’t afford—they’ve decided to jump on the anti-EU bandwaggon (ah, scapegoating) to cover up their irresponsibility.

Going into the merits of the EU is a topic for another time. I’ll leave it at this for now: every other EU country that has historically been comparable in wealth to the UK (e.g. Holland, Germany, France, Belgium) is both significantly richer, prone to less inflation, has less class division, and is growing faster than we are. That’s some coincidence, eh?

Let’s Finish

The Dutch are an odd, arrogant bunch with a terrible taste in food outside of cheese and waffles—both of which are fantastic, by the way.

(I’ve seen vegetables in hot water called ‘clear broth’. Oh, please.)

They also have a weird obsession with orange—they sell lots of orange shirts, trousers, mascots, and even suits in the colour. And of course they turned all the carrots orange, like I’ve previously mentioned.

But despite all this, they have a country with fantastic civil liberties (in how many parts of the world can two brothers marry and be on the drug user’s list?) and they’re rich too. We could learn something from them.

Just don’t think boiled, baked and fried vegetables are a good idea, okay?

PS: I’ll be posting the Poem of the Week soon. And that essay on The Essence of a Good Tale that I’ve been talking about. It’ll be really philosophical—indeed, I plan to hand it to my philosophy teacher in September, in lieu of doing whatever weird summer work they’ve chosen.