Showing posts with label Dutch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dutch. Show all posts
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Take A Walk On The Wilders Side
Dutch MP Geert Wilders was found guilty --schuldig-- of hate speech. But, there will be no punishment. linkage
Imagine if Donald Trump were convicted of "hate speech" but there was no punishment.
Imagine if Donald Trump were convicted of "hate speech" but there was no punishment.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Voor Pampus Liggen
There's an old Dutch expression, voor Pampus liggen, which literally translates as "to lie before Pampus." Today the phrase means passed out drunk or in a food coma as after Thanksgiving. But there's more to the story than that; I first heard it from a Dutchman on a sailboat in sight of the island of Pampus in the Zuiderzee -- that big brackish interior of the Netherlands.
In the olden days -- before the dikes were built and Amsterdam was still a major seaport -- heavily laden ships returning from the Far East used to lie anchored a few scant miles from Amsterdam waiting -- sometimes for days --for favorable tide conditions to allow them to pass over an enormous submerged sandbar (actually a submerged silt channel) which blocked easy access to the port. There was no proper island then (that came later) and Pampus referred to the murky submerged shoal.
Someone devised a plan to ease the boredom and impatience of the randy sailors. Smaller craft, bearing vices: food, liquor, and women, plied the waiting ships like a captive audience. The sailors were easy marks. There must have been some commercial collusion going on for who would pay a seamen his wages before disembarking the ship? Anyway, the phrase came from the condition many a sailor found himself in after coming so close to and yet so far way from home.
In the olden days -- before the dikes were built and Amsterdam was still a major seaport -- heavily laden ships returning from the Far East used to lie anchored a few scant miles from Amsterdam waiting -- sometimes for days --for favorable tide conditions to allow them to pass over an enormous submerged sandbar (actually a submerged silt channel) which blocked easy access to the port. There was no proper island then (that came later) and Pampus referred to the murky submerged shoal.
Someone devised a plan to ease the boredom and impatience of the randy sailors. Smaller craft, bearing vices: food, liquor, and women, plied the waiting ships like a captive audience. The sailors were easy marks. There must have been some commercial collusion going on for who would pay a seamen his wages before disembarking the ship? Anyway, the phrase came from the condition many a sailor found himself in after coming so close to and yet so far way from home.
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