Dammitohell

In my ongoing effort to not be one of those people who can never learn anything new, I keep struggling to make sense of this impossible language.

Even basic sentences are all out of order. Ik begrijp het niet. That literally says "I understand it not". See, it's all backwards.

And if that weren't enough . . . the Belgians and Dutch are famous for stringing word after word together and calling it one word. Actually, the Dutch language can form compound words of limitless length. And still be following all the rules. Using no spaces like everything's a potential website.

Like this one.

On nearly every door of every business. Open hours becomes just one long word "openingsuren". Of course they are closed on Monday - a day when Belgium is closed.

This is on a carton of fruit juice. Nutritional information becomes the one long word "voedingswaardeinformatie". And not to be confused - every package in the entire country has at least 2 and usually 4 languages. Just pick one. Unusual this one actually has English as one of them.

On the Shout container, "Vlekkenoplosser" means stain solver. All one word, of course. That other is French. Translated literally says eat spots.

Here's a bill we got in the mail . . .

This invoice, which took me an hour to translate, is teeming with 20+ letter words. That one at the top - "Uitvoerbaarverklaring" translates as executable statement. This, by the way, is a bill for our "family tax". Since Belgians don't pay nearly enough income tax (~50%) and sales tax (~21%), there's also an annual family tax. Actually a bargain at only €35,00.

This is a picture of the book bag we received when signing up for our Flemish class. "Volwassenenonderwijs" means adult education. It takes 20 letters to say what we can say in 14 and we leave a space!

Dammitohell. My mother used to say that. Not often, but when something went to hell in a handbasket, this was her line. All one word. Dammitohell.

FYI - going to "hell in a handbasket" may have had British parentage, but probably originated in the U.S. It is rarely heard outside the U.S. and most likely indicating a guillotined head falling into a basket - then straight to hell, of course.

So with all these ridiculously long Dutch words/potential websites, as with English, you can't just break it down and make sense of it. Examples: break-fast and butter-fly. See?

I'm not giving up! Dammitohell. All one word.