Welke Taal Spreek Je?...Special Words

It has become apparent to me that the language course I'm taking may not be the best out there. I know for a fact that I am the only pupil in the class that doesn't have to be there. The rest are all from non-EU countries and need to pass the courses to have any chance of being allowed to stay in Belgium. I've always known that my fellow students have as much trouble as I do with certain aspects of Dutch grammatica. During yesterdays lesson I had to read out an answer to an exercise which contained 6 similar questions. Basically, all of the answers should contain dat. My answer was wrong, actually the only wrong answer I had of the 6, surprisingly enough! One of the things my fellow students delight in is reading out their answers as soon as the person who was asked to read out the answer has finished, sometimes before he or she has finished. This usually results in a cacophony of noise like a cross between a chicken coop and a Turkish bazaar, which can be funny or annoying, depending on your mood. On this occassion the whole class got the answer wrong and the teacher supplied the right answer. All of the other answers followed a pattern but this particular one deviated from the pattern leaving everyone scratching their heads in consternation. I have a deep furrow on my head caused by much scratching! We are told that the reason for the deviation is because of the introduction of a 'special word'. Now we have a few special words in English...Beer, Curry, Football...but Dutch is simply crammed full of them! After the final question had been answered the teacher asked if anyone had any questions about the exercise...silence...then she asked if everyone understood the exercise...silence...
This is our pattern. It's something that has gone on throughout all of the courses I have taken. Do you understand what I've just said?
Ja, ja!
Thinking to yourself 'I haven't got a bloody clue but I don't want to appear stupid so I will say yes with everyone else!'
Not one person(myself included) said they didn't understand. The teacher knew we didn't understand and yet the lesson moved on.
The introduction of 'special words' into exercises are a pain in the arse, if the concept you are learning is difficult to grasp, as it invariably is, then 'special words' just completely confuse the entire issue. Let us get to grips with one thing before inserting another.
Despite the teachers insistance on everyone speaking Dutch during the lesson there are usually a few times that she has to explain a word in English. Which is fine by me, she can do the whole lesson in English if she wants! In recent lesson this has produced a rather annoying side effect. A woman who sits in the row behind me has started informing me everytime an English word is used.
"Mike..Mike..Engles!"
Everytime an English word is used.
Unfortunately she will keep this up until she gets a response out of me.
"Mike...Mike...Engles!"
There are not too many things that I can actually say. Sure I can laugh, but I'm not good at pretending to laugh.
I've said, "yes, that's right", "uh huh" and "blimey, so it is, I'd forgotten that one!"
But soon, if she keeps it up, I will have 2 special words for her, the second one being 'off'.

Video of the Day

Welke Taal Spreek Je?...Gloves

It was an auspicious day. The Dutch language had almost been invented and the five men who had been given the duty were sat around a large oaken table, weary, but proud to have completed such an important task. They had one more thing to name and the Chairman, a portly gentleman, tapped the thing they had named a 'glas' with the thing they had named a 'lepel', to bring the room to order.
"Gentlemen," he said, in Dutch, "we have one final thing to name."
"Oh, do we have to?" asked one of the men, who's name was Wim.
" Yes, yes, I'm afraid we do. Come along now it shouldn't take too long," said the Chairman.
He held up the object.
"Anyone have any suggestions?" he asked.
There was a moments silence.
"Why don't we call it a glove, like the British?" said Wim.
"Yes, good idea," said another.
"Here, here," ventured a third.
"Come now, Gentlemen. I'm sure we can be more original than that!" said the Chairman.
The four Linguists formed a huddle, the Chairman could hear the sound of heated discussion from the group. This continued long into the night until finally, the Chairman put lepel to glas again, cleared his throat and asked:
"Well gentlemen? Do you have a word for me?"
There was an embarrassed silence, one of the men found an intresting stain on his jacket which demanded his full attention, whilst another thought it a good time to sharpen the nib of his quill.
"Go on, you tell him," said one of the men and nudged Wim in the side with his elbow.
" And...?" the Chairman asked.
" Hand Shoes, Mr Chairman," he said.
"Hand...Shoes?" asked the Chairman.
" Yes, Mr Chairman, Hand Shoes." Wim picked up a glove from the table.
"They are shoes" he slipped the glove on, "for the hand."
" Hand...Shoes," the Chairman said again, as if his mouth was trying the words out.
Wim wiggled his gloved hand.
"That's bloody brilliant! Right, the beers are on me!"
Ok, so I made that up.
Some time back, during my first language course, when things got really confusing, I said to a fellow student:
"How difficult can it be, they haven't even got a good name for gloves?"
Which made us laugh, and still makes me laugh.
Handschoenen has been a good trigger word for me, when things get tough and confusing, I often think of hand shoes.
A bit too much for my liking just lately...

Video of the Day

I have recieved a good reaction to the Association Football video. I shall leave it on the blog for a while longer. There is such a wealth of great stuff on youtube that I have decided to make a video posting every few days to, hopefully, bring a smile to your face. Today I am posting a video of Laurel and Hardy, in my opinion, the funniest people ever to have walked the Earth.

Video of the Day

To compliment my Homesick post I have added this Video of 'my England'.

Homesick

Occasionally I get homesick. I like Belgium a lot, but sometimes I just need an injection of Englishness. Watching BBC Breakfast just isn't enough somedays. On days like today, when the wind is blowing and the rain can't decide if it wants to be hailstones or not, I imagine that England is basking under a warm sun and I want nothing more than to walk the country lanes near my home with my dog. Of course it's pissing down there too, I don't know where my walking boots are and my dog died over a year ago! Something happens when you leave your Homeland, you start to have selective memory and most of that is made up. My minds eye sees England as a melange of old black and white movies, usually starring Kenneth Moore or Ian Carmichael, where people are 'awfully' pleasent to each other and men smoke pipes. Add Dads Army, The Good Life and Steptoe and Son into the mix and a liberal dollop of those documentries about Britain that the BBC do so well and it's apparent to everyone that, growing up, I watched far too much tv! I don't think I'm the only one to stereotype Britain through the television programmes they watch. There is a running joke in my fiance's family about the tv comedy called Keeping Up Appearences and an old language teacher, when I talked about my home in England, asked jokingly if it was like Midsomer Murders. I haven't seen Midsomer Murders but I took a guess and said that my village was indeed like Midsomer Murders. Funnily enough I've not spoken to him since...

Today I Will Be Mostly Listening To...

If you would like to scroll down to the bottom of the blog page you will find a music player. I intend to have a new playlist every or every other day. Every playlist will showcase a different artist or band and will be a mix of the famous and not so famous, occasionally the playlist will be themed. I would really appreciate feedback from the blogs readers. Leave your suggestions and requests in the comments section. If you have a particular artist you would like to recommend for the playlist then please let me know. For those intrested in music, you may be intrested in The CD Chain and Radio Free Belgium which can be reached via the my blog lists section...enjoy!

Welke Taal Spreek je?....Deel 6

Monday. Language lessons. Let's have a big round of applause for the Infinitief! Come over here and meet the Imperatief, you two have got a lot in common, you both confuse the hell out of me!!
I have a small note book in which I write things that I think will help me learn difficult concepts. I have a page that I wrote last term so we must have touched on it then. The page is neatly written and even has key letters highlighted in bright orange, which leads me to believe that when I wrote the damn page out I knew what I was writing about. It's even written in English...I haven't a bloody clue what it means! If any of my Belgian readers would like to enlighten me as to why some words end in t or d but other times end in te or de, I would be most grateful. Every time I walk down De Meir and look in the shop windows at the English slogans I think to myself "yes! they are seeing the light and slowly switching to English", but it's too slow. Come on Belgium! Speed it up!
My classes at the language school have always had a surprising mix of nationalities and I've found that quite refreshing. I've always been the lone Englishman amidst a sea of Turks, Polish, Russian, various Arabic nations. I would be lying if I said that we didn't speak our own languages when we could. I would like to recount a conversation between a Napalese guy and an Ethiopian guy who sat in the seats next to me.

Nepalese to Ethiopian- Parle vous francais?
Ethiopian- silence, furrowed brow and incomprehension
Nepalese- Parle vous francais?
Ethiopian- all of the above but now looking to his neighbours for help
Nepalese- Parle vous francais?
then because the the penny possibly has a further to drop in Nepal
Nepalese- Do you speak french?
Ethiopian- oh...no...

Well maybe you had to be there, but it made us laugh!

Wrong Number

We like to embrace modern technology here in Belgium so we decided to buy a tele phone. It sits in the corner and rarely gets used but it's handy for ordering pizza from the local Italian resturant. I have a love/ hate relationship with the telephone because on the one hand I can order food with it, but on the other hand everytime I answer a phone call it could be someone I can't understand on the other end. We get an awful lot of wrong numbers. Yesterday, the phone rang and expecting my fiance I answered it with a "hello" rather than a "met Mike"(my telephone conversations usually go rapidly downhill after "met Mike"). I haven't been able to find any figures for the number of British people living in Belgium but I would imagine it's around 27...maybe a tad more. So imagine my surprise when the person on the other end of the phone said "hello, am I speaking to Mr Henderson of Rommel?". Imagine her surprise when I said no! I could picture her on the other end of the line thinking to herself, "you bloody liar!", reverse the situation and imagine someone in England wanting to speak to a Mr Janssens and gets a wrong number but with a Dutch speaking person on the other end of the line! The chances must be very slim indeed.

Sunny Days

Anyone living in my part of the world may have been shocked to see a huge blazing ball of fire just hanging motionless in the sky today. Don't worry people, it's perfectly normal. It's called ....just a second please.., ah yes, here it is...it's called the Sun and apparently it's a natural phenomena. Ok, so I'm being silly, but you have to admit it's been a long winter and today was the first truly spring-like day we've had this year in Flanders. A sunny day certainly warms the cockles of your heart.It's strange because 10 years ago I couldn't care less what the weather was like. I got up, I did stuff and then I went to bed. What the weather did whilst I was doing stuff didn't matter to me. I went for a walk earlier and it felt so good to have the sun on my face. You start to notice things when the weather is nice, Spring flowers such as Crocuses on peoples lawns, birds gathering sticks and things to build their nests. I even smiled at people, although after a few attempts I realised that I was worrying people because my smile is not unlike Moe's from the Simpsons! It doesn't belong on my face...
I spent 30 minutes looking for a photo of the Sun on google and suddenly came up with the bright idea to take my own so the photo that accompanies this post is real Belgian sun, taken from the balconey of my appartment, about an hour ago. Who needs a webcam!

Bob Dylans stinkende WC maakt buren ziek

Yes folks, it's official. Bob Dylans stinky toilet makes neighbours ill. My favourite news story today from the Belgian press. This story appears in todays GVA; the stories author mentioned that "the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind" but I wonder if any readers of this blog can come up with something even more suitable...

Yappy

A common sight in Belgium is the lap dog or as we call them where I come from, the Yappy. I like dogs. Man's best friend and all of that nonsense. I don't know an awful lot about the origins of dogs, I know they were domesticated from their wild ancestors many thousands of years ago. I was intrested to read just a moment ago that the Chihuahua can trace it's ancestry all the way back to the Toltecs in Mexico almost 11,000 years ago. It's hard to imagine marauding packs of wild chihuahuas troubling the local population. Sadly, you can see people walking around Antwerp with one of these creatures tucked under their arm, often the dogs are better dressed than I am. I admit I had forgotten about yappies until today and was only reminded of them because I spent an enjoyable hour with one yapping in my ear on the bus. The reason I had forgotten all about them was because in the winter they keep them in doggy bags (no, not the sort you get in restaurants). This particular dog would lay in wait for a passenger to walk by and then it's head would emerge from the bag and a furious yapping would ensue until the passenger, in fear for his or her life, would move out of the dogs exclusion zone. This was quite funny for the first half a dozen times it happened, but after 30 minutes or so the other passengers started to get a bit...antsy. I will own up to growling at the bloody thing when I got up to leave the bus and I wish I could say that my vicious big dog growl sent it diving back into the safety of it's bag but unfortunately it just kept on yapping. real dogs

News Flash!

A giant Sparrow crashed into a shop on de Meir, Antwerp early this morning. More info available at www.gva.be.

Welke Taal Spreek Je?...erm...

I think I would learn Dutch faster if it was taught in English! I don't think I'm alone in this. One of the things I have had most trouble with from the very first lesson is sentence construction. Words in Dutch appear in the most unlikely of posititions. I still don't know why. I can ask, but the answer is always in Dutch and for all I care it could be in Swahili because I would understand it no better. What makes it worse is that the rules for sentence construction are not always the same, so whilst a translation of 'kijk naar nederlandstalige programmas op tv would translate as 'look at more dutch language programmes on tv'. A translation of 'het is belangrijk dat ik mijn loon op tijd krijg' literally translates as 'it is important that I my wage on time get'.
I have to translate a sentence into English before I can make sense of it. To me the above sentence should read as 'het is belangrijk dat ik krijg mijn loon op tijd' which makes 'it is important that I get my wage on time'.
People tell me that it will all make sense one day, which I am prepared to except. Understanding a concept is important in learning a language. Yesterday at my language lesson I learnt that I wasn't the only person having problems with certain aspects of Dutch gramatica. One of the problems, in my opinion, is that the pass mark for exams is only 50%. The exams are split into four parts, writing, reading, listening and speaking. Over the past few years I have noticed that some people are good at speaking and some people are good at the reading, writing and listening part. Rarely do you get someone who are good at both. A good speaker can earn 30% in points which leaves them only another 20% to get in the rest of the exam. People are getting through with only a basic knowledge of the important stuff. A guy yesterday had problems with heb, hebt, heeft and I almost convinced him to write bebben instead of hebben (he was looking for clues at the girl writing ben, bent etc). He has been doing the course for 2 years, just as long as I have. This all came about because we had a test last monday and the teacher was less than impressed with our efforts. On the plus side it did give us a chance to air our views about what was wrong with the course and what we would like out of the course, so it was constructive. I mentioned the fact that I thought the pass mark should be a lot higher, maybe 70% and I also asked her how to ask for abdij bread and be understood at the first time of asking but I dont think she took me seriously.

Antwerp.

I like Antwerp, it's a cool city. Lots of nice old buildings and a very cosmopolitan feel to it. I particularly like de Meir, which is a (supposedly) pedestrianised street full of shops. If you have a good imagination you could almost believe yourself to be in England. There are plenty of stores there that you will find in Britain like C&A, Greggs the Bakers and Clarks Shoes, then there are the pigeons pooing all over the place and mad old people driving their mobility scooters into pedestrians. Every 50 metres someone will jump out at you and ask you if you want a new mobile phone or to give money to help the poor people of the Third World or can I possibly help save the whale? Just a small donation, alstableift. What demographic do I fill that makes these people see me and think 'he's good for a few euros'? Even listening to an ipod doesn't put them off! When you are not dodging the above people then you are on the look out for suicide bike riders who act as if they are driving Sherman Tanks and not a 12 kilo bit of metal tubing with wheels at either end!(more of that in a future post). All that down just one road! But I love it!
The streets around the Groenplaats (see photo) are a joy to walk and you get such a real sense of history, shops have been incorporated into the original buildings so that they don't spoil the feel of the place. Even the obligatory Mcdonalds is housed in an old structure. The Cathedral is impressive but BE WARNED!!...one of the statues outside is NOT a statue and people of a nervous disposition should avoid that area. Don't say I didn't warn you! I like to watch the ships take their cargo up the Schelde and always find myself wondering just how the hell the Captain get his car onto such a small peice of deck! And there really is nothing better in the summer than sitting outside a cafe between showers with a glass of Hoegaarden!
Stop press..........I have just been informed by my lovely fiance/editor that Antwerp was voted second best city to live in after Bagdad....correction Copenhagen. See todays http://www.gva.be/ for more details.

The CD Chain

Music was my first love...well actually it was Spiderman comics but music followed pretty quickly. The first record I ever paid money for was 'Dreaming' by Blondie. I've still got it somewhere, a delicious photo of Debbie Harry pouting adorns the record sleeve. I count myself lucky that I got intrested in music just as it was re-inventing itself. They say that people can remember what they were doing when they heard that President Kennedy was shot; I can remember what I was doing when the Sex Pistols were swearing their way into notoriety...I was watching it on tv! I never wanted to be a punk, I had enough trouble with one zipper on my trousers, let alone 20. I loved the music a lot, but I found New Wave more to my liking if I'm being really honest. New wave was really the acceptable side of punk and my heroes were Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, The Boomtown Rats. Then Ska made a revival and groups like The Specials and Madness came on the scene. It was a great time for music...but it had to end. Sometime during the late 80's a new sound took over the airwaves of Britain, Dance music. Groups such as S'Express, MARRS and Bomb the Bass seemed to dominate music until Oasis came along to save and change the British music scene. In the barrens years between Dance music and Brit Pop, I sought out new types of music. At that time there was a Hollywood trend for Vietnam movies and most of them had great soundtracks, from Charlie Sheen getting high to Smokie Robinson and the Miracles in Platoon to Robin Williams playing The Beach Boys and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas in Good Morning Vietnam. I don't know if it was watching men getting killed to cool music or the fact that this old stuff was really good that made me seek out music from the 60's but it gave me an education in music and later a chance buy of Steely Dans greatest hits for £1.99 gave me a whole other decade to explore. I've learnt over the years that if you stay away from the pop charts then you can find some really good music. It's constantly surprised me that even though the group Elbow has been around for 18 years, until recently, hardly anyone I spoke to had heard of them. If they don't get airplay, then people don't know them. I used to read the New Musical Express and I constantly would see reviews and posters for a group called The Rezillos. I could point them out in the street if our paths ever crossed, but it was only last year that I actually heard one of their singles! That's why the internet is such a great thing, you can access so much new music. Which is why I've started a new blog. I want people to share their musical knowledge with me and tell me about cd's and groups I may have missed. The rules are quite simple, I want to form a chain of similar music and I want people to give me their cd choice which will be a link. Hopefully, after a while, people will be able to discover groups they have never heard of before and so will I. You can find the blog on http://thecdchain.blogspot.com/, I have posted the first link of the chain and you can even have a listen to the cd by using the rather nifty Amazon widget next to the post. Hope to see you there. Let's Rock!

Mmmm...Beer!

Beer, as we all know, was invented in England. Sadly, it was perfected elsewhere. Order a pint of lager in England and you will be served a glass of wee. I can always remember some years back a bloke in a pub I was drinking in waxing lyrical about German beer, saying how the British were being cheated because the beer we received wasn't anywhere near as good as the beer our European neighbours were drinking. I wasn't the only person there who thought 'why don't you go and live there then, mate?'. The truth is he was right. I had never tasted real beer before I came to Belgium. Belgians lay claim to making the finest beer in the world and I am not going to argue with that statement. One of the problems in Britain is that a lot of famous makes of beer from countries such as Denmark and Germany, to name two, are actually being brewed in Britain. It's obvious that the recipe instuctions haven't been translated into English!
In Belgium, almost every town has it's own beer and most of it is damn fine stuff. However, I have tasted one that reminded me of my own effort with a Boots brew your own lager kit I had some years ago. And the beer is strong, bloody strong! The beer in the photo that accompanies this post is 8.5% and that's a baby. The lucky monks of Westmalle make a beer that is 9.5% and the even luckier monks of Rochefort brew a beer that is 11.3%!
In Britain, we have a culture of drunkeness amongst the 18-30 year old population. Drinking too much leads to problems in our city centres of a friday and saturday night. I'm not aware of a similar problem with the younger population of Belgium but I think that's because after a few glasses of Belgian beer they are incapable of moving let alone causing trouble!

Naar School..

One of the great things about being an adult is that you can share your carbon footprint with the whole world by getting from a to b in your car. Let's face it, it's a human right and one I will defend to my dying breath!...ahem, sorry about that, I got a bit carried away...So imagine my pleasure at having to take the bus into Antwerp twice a week. Don't get me wrong, I like buses. I really like buses, especially Belgian buses. They bend in the middle. Going off on a slightly connected tangent here but I personally think it's great that the Belgians were allowed to keep their bendy buses when we English couldn't keep our bendy bananas(if you haven't been reading the blog then you will wonder what the hell I'm going on about!). Ok then, we've established that I like buses. I just dont like to travel in them. The British think there is something slightly exotic and mysterious about buses on the continent, this is mostly to do with the fact that they run on time. Unfortunately, it's only when you get on a Belgian bus that you realise that they were made for children...or maybe the Chineese...because it is near impossible to squeeze 2 adults into one double seat. Luckily, there are single seats dotted throughout the bus and next to each single seat is a small sign which I think says 'please give up this seat to an Englishman'. I don't think I'm the only person to hate the seats on the buses because on the route I take it's quite common to see more people standing than sitting and often there is an intresting game taking place of people swapping seats when one is vacated. It didn't take me too long before I realised that the prime seats were actually situated on the turntable which makes the bus bend in the middle. These are quite often left empty and I discovered why the first time I sat in one. The movement of the bus when it turns, if you are not prepared for it, makes your brain shout 'WRONG' and leaves you feeling light headed and woozy for a second! Once you get used to it it's fine and those seats are a great place to watch people try to get to a safe place place before the bus starts moving. It' a bit like watching a Japanese game show sometimes, peoples coordination goes all over the place and it's not unusual to have someone end up in your lap!
I could go on, and I will! Does the bus have to stop at every bloody bus stop? Why do people get on the bus only to get off the next stop? Why do teenage boys think the rest of the bus want to listen to Puffing Daddy or 50 Pence blaring out of their phones? Occasionally I can hear something that is either Arabic music or a Muslim call to prayer, not sure which...could be both. Buses, I hate them!

The Great British Chip vs Belgian Fries

Fish and chips, cup of tea, Mary Poppins...these are a few of my favourite things. Ok I was lying about Mary Poppins and it has to be said that a spoonful of sugar actually makes the medicine stick in the back of your throat instead of 'helping it go down'. But the above favourite things are very British,iconic, along with the double decker bus and London taxis. Imagine my delight when I first came to Belgium and learned that the chip shop was as big a part of the Belgian make-up as it is in Britain. Sadly, walking into a frietkot(chip shop) is a bit like taking the wrapping off of a Christmas present and finding it empty inside! A British chip shop is a veritable wonderland of artery clogging goodness, usually have a choice of 4 or 5 species of fish, various pies, sausages, hamburgers, fried chicken, kebabs, pizzas...the list goes on. In a Belgian frietkot there is a choice of 2 or 3 sausages and some sort of breaded balls, all of which are deep fried.
It gets worse.
The Belgians fry their chips twice. Once is enough, believe me, it's cooked. Frying a chip twice renders it useless once it is cold. Try to eat a Belgian chip 30 minutes after it's been cooked and you will think you are eating the wrapping it came in. The reason for stiff chips is that the Belgians like to dip them in mayonaise. You can't dip a floppy chip. The proper way to make chips is to cut them thick, fry them once and be sure that they are firm enough to hold a liberal splashing of vinegar, a sprinkling of salt and a good dollop of tomato ketchup. You could leave a plate of British chips in the fridge for a week and, once heated, they would still taste as good as they did when you first bought them. Hurrah for the British chip!

Two nice sites for your perusal.

www.belgianfries.com/bfblog:
www.fishandchips.org.uk

Welke Taal Spreek je?...Bluffing

I could pass as a local in most western European countries. I think that's half the problem with the surprised reaction I get when trying to speak Dutch. If I looked a bit foreign then I think people wouldn't be as startled by my indecipherable Dutch. It's only when I return to England that I realise how small talk fills up much of one's day. In Belgium I actively avoid it. The slightest attempt at small talk leaves me tongue-tied after a few words and the person I talk to open-mouthed. I once found myself in a three way conversation at a party and managed to bluff my way through 20 minutes of nodding, smiling and laughing in the right places; it was only when I was asked a direct question that I had to admit to not understanding a word the guy had spoken. I don't know who felt more embarrassed, him or me, but to his credit he just said that he thought I was a bit quiet! I regularly pass an old chap riding his bike when I walk past one of the local farms. He always has something to say to me but I have no idea what it is. The thing is that he never stops pedalling so I respond to him with something that sounds like real words but actually isn't because he doesn't really care what I say, just that I have responded in a tone of voice that he expects to hear from me. Of course there is a chance he is doing exactly the same thing as I am...let's not go down that road.

Antwerp from above.

Sledging

I hope you will excuse the self indulgence, dear reader, but this post is a direct follow on from the previous post. There is a famous old quote that has been attributed to a number of people and it goes as follows:
"Football isn't a matter of life or death...it's more important than that!"
The same could be said of Cricket. Every few years that quote becomes reality when England play Australia for a trophy called the Ashes www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_ ashes if you are intrested in the details of how it came about. All you really need to know is that when these two countries play each other at any sport it is usually as hard a fought game as could possibly be.
Sledging has probably been around for as long as cricket has; my Collins English Dictionary describes it thus:

Sledging-to bait or insult an opponent especially in Cricket.

Sledging can be very amusing, the Aussies have it down to a fine art. Over recent years both countries have used the media to wind each other up long before they meet each other on the field of play. Even though the first test isn't until july 8th the next few months will see an endless back and forth of verbal sniping between both countries.
I think the news about Cricket being invented in Belgium is a classic piece of Aussie sledging; the very idea of Cricket not being invented in England would have every member of the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club),which is the oldest Cricket club in the world, crying into their cucumber sandwiches!
It did not take me very long to find the following newspaper article:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23123078-23375,00.html
It's really worth reading.

It's just not Cricket!

Yesterday I was shocked to see in the online version of Gazette Van Antwerp that Australian academic Paul Campbell claims that Cricket was not invented in England but was actually invented in Belgium. The tea-cups will be rattling in their saucers in the hallowed halls of Lords Cricket Ground after this bombshell! It's actually an intresting article, and after a bit of researching I found it first appeared in the Sunday telegraph on 1/03/09. The evidence for the claim comes from a poem written in 1533 which contains the line:
"O lorde of Ipocrites/Nowe shut vpp your wickettes/And clape to your clickettes!/A! Farewell, kings of crekettes!,''
Well just look at it, does that make any sense at all?
The Australian was helped by German academic Dr Heiner Gillmeister of Bonn University who believes that the word Cricket comes from the Flemish phrase " met de krik ketsen" which I've had translated as "the jack ricochet".
I personally believe there is a far simpler explanation for this; it was just a bunch of English blokes having a quick knock around after popping over the Channel for some cheap beer!

Welke Taal Spreek je? Deel 3

It's true that many British people have a problem with Europe(that noise you can hear is my fiance shouting at me for the upteemth time that Britain IS a part of Europe!).I think the final straw for most people was when the EU told us the bananas we were importing were the wrong shape, too bendy. You can do a lot of things to a Brit but NEVER criticise the shape of his banana! But after a busy weekend of travelling I have to sing the praises of one European invention that I like a lot. Ladies and Gentlemen I ask you to raise a glass to the humble Kilometre.
As we all know the Imperial Mile is the correct way to measure distance, but a mile is so bloody long. That's why travelling in Europe is such a joy, you always arrive at your destination sooner than expected. Kilometres are wonderfully short!

Don't try to translate the word upteemth because you wont find a translation for it. It basically means 'a lot'. I'm still trying to work out what alstublieft means so don't think too harshly of me. For my English speaking readers the word alstublieft is used as often as possible, at the start of a sentence and at the end as well. This is confusing to me because I consider myself well mannered and like to say please and thank you when appropriate and I never know when to slip it in. This is largely due to shop assistants who will pepper their conversation as much as possible with this word:

Shop Assistant: alstublieft meneer?
Me: agehdlklfkl bieeedbkkl
Shop Assistant: alstublieft?
Me: abdij brood
Shop Assistant: ah...alstublieft (sound of bread machine cutting)
A neatly packed loaf of bread placed in front of me.
Me: dank je wel
Shop Assistant: alstublieft!

I like the word a lot, even though I'm not entirely sure what it means.