Speech and Racism

And they think that Amsterdam is a country where marijuana is legal and everybody there smokes tons of weed and parties all the time. I actually frequently get in arguments with people about this. And they are so sure that Amsterdam is a country. Then I tell them Amsterdam is THE CAPITAL of HOLLAND/THE NETHERLANDS AND I HAVE BEEN THERE!!!
Then they stare at me with this stupid empty blank look. God I hate living here En :bawl:
There isn't even that much weed smoking going on. It seems a bigger thing in the US than it's here.

Can I come live with you in Heaven? I mean Holland?
LOL sure :D
 
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I noticed that when I was there. Seemed like most of the people walking around being stupid potheads were American and French tourists.

Fuckin embarrassment!
Yep :D
Amsterdam (or The Netherlands for that matter) just got the name because it's 'legal' here.

It's 23.5 degrees Celsius here now, so you picked a lovely day :p
Fucking GW :mad:

Edit: Oh better bring your swimming gear..
 
Getting warm there 'eh? It was pretty chill back in '98. But I spent most of my time in Groningen. It was cool there and it was June.

In summer it gets up to 37 degrees here the last couple of years. And that's where I live, not in the south where it's usually a couple of degrees warmer.

Normally it would be 16 degrees here around this time of year, but it's 23.5 now.
 
I've been to holland 10 or 11 times to rotterdam and amsterdam......

But I also went to a place called Zandvoort which we nicknamed euphanasia town and is truely the weirdest place I have ever been to.....
 
I've been to holland 10 or 11 times to rotterdam and amsterdam......

But I also went to a place called Zandvoort which we nicknamed euphanasia town and is truely the weirdest place I have ever been to.....

lol Why is it the weirdest place ?
 
What do you call variants, then? I'm hitting on the same point again, because at University we're told that there's no dialects in Brazil, only variants (not considering small indigenous groups or some Oriental / European communities that live here and have kept their languages).
Variants are any two consistently different forms of a language that are spoken by two different communities, in two different situations by the same community, in two different times, etc. Dialects, jargon, slang, vernacular, etc. are all types of variants. Variant is a broader category that includes all of them.

I've never been to Brazil but people who have insist that the Cariocas (people of Rio de Janeiro and nearby communities) have a distinct geographical dialect. They pronounce grande, sete, oito, as donhas as (transcribed phonetically in English) grunjee, sechee, oytoo, azh-donyash, whereas other Brazilians pronounce them somewhat more closely to the way they're spelled. Brazilian is of course a distinct dialect from Iberian Portuguese, where final E and O have become silent, e.g. sete, oito, nove are pronounced "set, oyt, nov." ("7, 8, 9.")

British and American English are two dialects (and there are sub-dialects within them, especially in the U.K.) but RP ("received pronunciation") is a variant of British dialect. It is not a dialect itself so much as a jargon, because it is spoken by most educated English people (perhaps not Scots and Irish) in formal situations and especially for broadcast. It is not even a natural variant; it was created by synthesizing various dialects specifically for formal circumstances. I suppose it's an unusual phenomenon that could be called an "un-vernacular." :)
I believe the same happens in the US / UK: different accents make variants, not dialects.
Remember that the definition of a dialect, as a specific type of variant, is based on separation by geography or social class. Therefore, the Southern American spoken in Birmingham, Alabama, and the "Brummy" spoken in Birmingham, England, are dialects. So are the Cockney spoken by working-class Londoners and the "Ebonics" spoken by working-class African-Americans.
German and Dutch are two completely separate and different languages!
Well there is that issue of the spectrum. There are some extreme western dialects of German and some extreme eastern dialects of Dutch that are more similar to each other than either is to the standard speech of its country. Since these are exceptions with small numbers of speakers and since the standard languages are not intercomprehensible, we do indeed call German and Dutch separate languages, but as linguists and linguist wannabes it's important to understand that the distinction is not always easy to make. If you think the decision about German and Dutch is difficult, try Danish and Norwegian, Czech and Slovak, or Catalan and Occitan (the group of cross-national dialects including Provençal).
Most nederlanders I have met would be terribly put out at the idea that Dutch and German are even remotely similar.
Then they're not very well trained in linguistics. To an anglophone, Dutch and German are remarkably similar, especially in writing. Dutch, German and Yiddish are the three surviving descendants of Old German that have not strayed too far from their roots, and the similarities among them are striking. English went through wrenching changes in vocabulary, phonetics and grammar as a result of the Norman Invasion, so it looks and sounds like only a distant relative of those three, even though it is descended from the speech of the Angles and the Saxons, respectable German tribes. Many foreigners look at a page of printed English and insist that it must be a Romance language.
Americans often seem to think that The Netherlands is Germany.
I haven't encountered that. But then my generation is keenly aware that the Dutch were on our side during WWII.
But I also went to a place called Zandvoort which we nicknamed euphanasia town and is truely the weirdest place I have ever been to.....
You must mean "euthanasia," which is the medical term for allowing or assisting a terminally ill patient to die. (In veterinary medicine it also includes animals whose owners can't afford medical treatment or who are simply homeless.) From Greek eu-, "well" and thanatos, "death." "Dying well," or as the movement in America puts it, "Death with dignity."
 
NOOOOOOO!

Perhaps you misunderstood my EngRish, hehehe...

I meant that in some dialects of Germany they say "ik" instead of "ich". ;-) "Coincidently", "ik" is the Dutch for "ich" (I).

Anyway, I'm glad you thought I was American, that means my English is not that bad... or that means it IS that bad, hehehe... ;-)

cheers
 
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lol Why is it the weirdest place ?

the place was like a ghost town (admitedly it was winter), the house's don't blend in with each other they are all randomly designed,and each one looked like it was owned by the local serial killer.
There was this scary old couple who were staring out the window of a corner building who seemed to be looking at us as we walked past, (but it was like the feeling when you look at a portrait and the eyes seem to look at you which ever angle you are standing) we even walked up and down the street a couple of times...

Oh we went there to play crazy golf at the holiday camp near the train station, which was the cr*ppest I've played played 2 holes, left and on the way back to the train station we looked to see if the old couple was still there, and a local biker gang trundle down the road with ,german biker hats,leather jackets with denim style waistcoats over the top slow down and proceed to stare at us.
Needless to say we left asap....it was a good idea at the time "Hey I know lets do some mushrooms and go and play crazy golf".....PPffff

It is the wierdest place I've been to :fright:


Fragglerocker........You must mean "euthanasia," which is the medical term for allowing or assisting a terminally ill patient to die. (In veterinary medicine it also includes animals whose owners can't afford medical treatment or who are simply homeless.) From Greek eu-, "well" and thanatos, "death." "Dying well," or as the movement in America puts it, "Death with dignity."
That's the one,(learn something new everyday).

sorry off topic
 
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the place was like a ghost town (admitedly it was winter), the house's don't blend in with each other they are all randomly designed,and each one looked like it was owned by the local serial killer.
There was this scary old couple who were staring out the window of a corner building who seemed to be looking at us as we walked past, (but it was like the feeling when you look at a portrait and the eyes seem to look at you which ever angle you are standing) we even walked up and down the street a couple of times...

Oh we went there to play crazy golf at the holiday camp near the train station, which was the cr*ppest I've played played 2 holes, left and on the way back to the train station we looked to see if the old couple was still there, and a local biker gang trundle down the road with ,german biker hats,leather jackets with denim style waistcoats over the top slow down and proceed to stare at us.
Needless to say we left asap....it was a good idea at the time "Hey I know lets do some mushrooms and go and play crazy golf".....PPffff

It is the wierdest place I've been to :fright:

Ha.. ok :p
I'm sure there are even weirder places in The Netherlands then ;)
 
African Americans are negro Americans. . . .
The term "African-American" has indeed been co-opted to include only those people who carry predominantly the DNA of the sub-Saharan tribes; the original Africans who did not migrate to Asia and the other continents in the great Homo sapiens diaspora around 60kya. It does seem a bit peculiar to not count Americans whose families came from Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, etc. in that group since all of those countries are in Africa and all of the people who live there are Africans. They carry the DNA of the people whose ancestors migrated out of Africa and then came back in later generations. Some, like the Ethiopians, have been there for so many millennia back into Stone Age that we don't really know the date; others, like the Arabs, are very recent returnees. If we count Madagascar as part of Africa then we also have to count its people, whose ancestors sailed over from Polynesia less than 2,000 years ago.

But as imprecise and confusing as this practice is linguistically, we're at least consistent in our own odd way. No one counts people whose families came over from Turkey, Yemen, Israel, Syria, Iran, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. as "Asian-Americans."
. . . . fool. Holy #### you are a dumbass.
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