Nederlish

It’s always an experience going back to where I grew up in Belgium. I forget how terrible the driving is, how nobody queues for anything, and how huge the houses are in the area we lived. I didn’d realise they still don’t have a full smoking ban in public places. All of these things haven’t actually changed since my last visit 3 years ago, but for some reason they really stick out a lot more this time round.

It’s also always fascinating for me to see what my Dutch is like after years of hibernation. I still sound like a native, but my vocabulary is very rusty. I’m a lot less chatty because I just don’t have access to the same rich array of words that I possess in English. Because we moved away before I became an independent adult, the Dutch language of adult life is much less available to me because I rarely had reason to use it before we moved to Scotland 10 years ago. On the flipside, my friends seem to have become more patient with my stumblings and the odd thrown in ‘English word in a Flemish accent’. Or maybe I’ve become more resigned to the fact that that’s how it’ll have to be. That said, after only three days, I’ve started thinking in Flemish again…