Explaining American things to Belgians

One interesting part of moving here to Belgium is that I've had to explain some American things that I've always taken for granted, or never thought about too deeply.

Back in November, one of the professors had us all over for Thanksgiving - we had turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce, and it was great. While we were eating, someone around the table looked at John (a fellow New Englander over here) and me and asked us to explain the origin of Thanksgiving. So we started explaining, and realized we were giving the 'pilgrims and indians sat down and were friends' story from the era of hand-outline turkey drawings and paper pilgrim hats.

The other day in lab, we ordered pizza, and one of the secretaries asked me what American pizza was like. After I got the most stark difference out of the way (American pizza is a lot bigger - here, one pizza is for one person) I started sort of rambling about New York vs Chicago pizza and told them about having to mop the grease off of Greek pizza with a napkin (though I didn't make as many grease/Greece puns as I probably should have).

Then of course American idioms are always fun to explain - 'the early bird gets the worm' for example (my labmate: "why do they want a worm?"), or 'catch-22' or 'petered out' (I explained that one to my friend Elseline, and the next day it had morphed in her head into "Jaspered away').

Of course, they've had to explain a lot to me as well, like why the word for "lawyer" and "egg custard" are the same (advocaat - but actually no one could really explain why) or why people always walk into each other on the sidewalk (it's because the sidewalks are narrow, or because people are aggressive, depending on who you ask).

Luckily when it comes to beer we all speak the same language (being "Chimay alsjeblieft"), and no one's asked me to explain NASCAR yet.

Ink tube?

We've started taking a Flemish class, and we've been practicing with gusto ("Ik kom uit Boston! Ik woon in Leuven, waar woon jij?" "Alsjeblieft, alsjeblieft, alsjeblieft" etc).

Each class is two hours, and we get a 10-minute break in the middle of each class, so we've been doing a little socializing too. Aaron and I are the only Americans out of about 25 students, and here are some of the questions we were asked at break today:

"Why do the political parties have colors?"

"What do you call the tube in the middle of a ball point pen with the ink in it?"

"America is very politically correct; if a man holds a door for a woman, will he get yelled at or sued?"

We also learned that in Russia, roller coasters are called "American mountains" while in Spain they are called "Russian mountains" Moreover, in Russia, the word for "uranium tube" and the word for "tube in the middle of a ball point pen that holds ink" are in fact the same word (upon learning this, I did not crack any cold war jokes, but it took a lot of willpower).

In Australia, are they Spanish Mountains?

bug in google translate

For some reason, google translates "nederlands" the Dutch word for "Dutch," to "English..."

My contributions so far have not changed anything.

I guess they're still working the bugs out.

It's just as well - I'm already noticing that I'm less dependent on google translate. I just began a class a week ago, but just being in an immersion class lets you pick up on (simple, slowly spoken) conversations and a lot of written material.

Re: Flemish vs Dutch.

Katie and I live in the Flemish part of Belgium, so that means we have to learn Dutch. This is confusing because a savvy foreigner will know that the Flemish speak Flemish (or "Vlaams" as they say). So I asked my boss what was up. As an authoritative scholar and expert on everything Flemish (by virtue of his being an actual Flemish guy), he said that the Flemish will definitely get offended if you confuse them culturally with their northerly neighbors, but since Vlaams is not an official language, it can only be considered a dialect of Nederlands, and so it's fine to call it Dutch.

Other things had also led me to this conclusion. First of all, I keep calling the Flemish people's language Dutch, and nobody (except my savvy American friends) has corrected me yet. Moreover, in a couple of weeks Katie and I are going to begin a course subsidized by the Flemish government, and taught by a native Flemish speaker, called "Dutch for foreigners." Other governmental documents and signs refer to the language as Nederlands or in English translations, Dutch.

That said, there are big vocabulary and pronunciation differences between the Flemish and Dutch. Even between Flemish townships you end up with dialects that make the language sound completely different -- news programs on the Belgian public TV often have to translate what someone is saying because their dialect is so strong.

Ridiculous Flemish: