I was sharing a glass of wine with Peter, virtually and wanted to offer him a lovely toast in Antwerpen dialect.
My in-house expert gave me this ... Da we ze nog lang meuge meuge.
Fluency in this multi-layered, sometimes evolving, language of cubby holes, tricky turns, linguistic gymnastics and dark dusty corners is clearly still some way off.
Da wah za knockgh lang murgher murgher might be a phonetic attempt ... or it just might be pathetic.
LOL - let's have another glass of wine Di, your phonetic effort to reproduce the local Antwerp Dutch dialect really sounds perfect. You do have an in-house expert ;-)
ReplyDeleteBut don't try this outside Antwerp or in Holland, they might assume you were Russian (rest assured, the same would happen to me, and I'm a native)
Integrated? 1,000 % !
You know, I said from the beginning that I'd rather learn the Antwerp dialect but Gert had warned me it doesn't travel far ... however it is that much more fun.
ReplyDeleteI remember my first sampling of the diversity of 'Dutch'. I was sitting a farmhouse near Mesen and conversation was flowing around me. I had learnt some Dutch by then and a kiwi friend saw my face as the 'locals' started talking.
He laughed and said 'Don't even try to understand them', and sure enough, it was all but impossible.