THE SOUND OF FLOWING WATERS

A pleasant meal involving mustard greens, chicken pieces, rice, and sambal (chilipaste). That last being my own addition to everything else as prepared and served by the splendid dining establishment where I went for late lunch. Plus a cup of milk tea and a cup of regular tea. And two aged peasants having a discussion at the next table over tea. I've noticed that commerce and purchases are often in standard city Cantonese (quite intelligible) and conversation is, naturally, in the home town dialect. Garbled, often much louder.

Also, at the table immediately behind me, a Taiwanese person and her Caucasian husband. Partly in Mandarin, partly in English.

So naturally, being entirely by myself, I was all ears.


We Dutch are often nosy parkers.


My own home town dialect (a variant of Kempisch, one of the North Limburgian dialects) is, of course, absolutely understandable and remarkably mellifluous. As everybody agrees.

Toishanese somewhat less so.

Now please note that to the native speaker of only English, Toishanese sounds for all the world like hacking, spitting, and snarling. The first time I heard my apartment mate speaking to her mother on the phone I thought she was having a fit. And, surprisingly, to many English speakers my dialect of Dutch sounds like someone is coughing up hairballs while drooling, even more so than regular Dutch (known as ABN; 'Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands', or "Normal Civilized Netherlandish"). When she heard me speaking to a local person in Eindhoven she thought I had gone rabid or was having a stroke. Very odd.

[The best version of ABN is 'Gooisch'; the pronunciations and cadences of the Gooi region. Because we lived in Bussum and Naarden before Valkenswaard, I speak perfectly so. And slightly Den Haags too. I am quite delightful to the ear.]

Sadly, tea does not influence the impression a different language makes on the un-initiated. Otherwise that chachanteng would have been the most musical place in Chinatown at that time. As it was, it was a very pleasant place evenso.



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