Yesterday, Di over in Antwerp wrote a post in Blogger and as she typed the headline in English, foreign characters appeared instead. She's not sure, but she may have posted a headline in Arabic. We hope for her sake that she only said kind, peace-loving things and did not insult anyone. Ahem.

Her dilemma over her mysterious headline made me laugh because a little over a week ago I was over at her site, and when I went to post a comment, the page that appeared with the comment box had all its prompts written in Dutch. I thought she'd re-set her language parameters on purpose since she's a fully-integrated, card-carrying, Belgian-marrying, Dutch-studying Grrrl. The problem was that when I navigated away from her page, ALL the Blogger pages I visited for days afterwards addressed me in Dutch on the comment page.

Clearly Blogger had decided that my posting in English was an insult and that my French was pathetic. The Blogger gods decreed that since I live in Flanders, I MUST speak Flemish. No more excuses!

Y'all, there's a reason I've never learned to speak Flemish (a variation of Dutch), and I'll share it with you. It's not 'cause I'm lazy; I studied Spanish in high school and French in college. Dutch is just different.

The first time I looked at my Spanish and French textbooks, it all seemed vaguely familiar. Some of the words looked just like their English counterparts, the arrangement of vowels and consonants was all cozy and "normal" to the English eye, and the word lengths seemed just right. When you look at Spanish or French you think, "I can learn this language!"

Not so with Dutch. Y'all, Dutch is NOT normal. These folks have a THING for double vowels! All those "aa" and "ii" spellings just hurt my brain. Plus, who knew "g" was such an important letter? In Dutch, if you don't have a double vowel to confuse the English speakers, you can throw in some random "g's" for effect. And if a word doesn't have at least 10 letters, you can always add a "k" or two and fill it out. 

Case in point: Want to know how many people have visited your Blogger profile? Just check your "Gebruikersstatistieken."  Got that? Those are your stats, people!

See what I mean? Dutch is an intimidating language. When I look at Dutch words and try to process them, the image that comes to mind is someone trying to talk while choking on a piece of steak and throwing up in their mouth a little bit.

Don't believe me? Check this out:

"Nog geen opmerkingen oorspronkeliik bericht weergeven."

Do you "hear" the guttural word burp in those words? Doesn't it sound like your mouth is full and you're going to hurl?

Don't be nervous, despite the scary double vowels, that's just Blogger asking me if I want to see the original post while composing a comment.

No thanks, Blogger, I 'll just write my comment and move on to the word verification.

"Geef de tekens op die in de bovenstaande afbeelding worden weergegeven."

Didn't get that? Well hey, Silly, I have to type the characters just as they appear in the box. 

At this point I'm getting uncomfortable. Things are starting to get a little personal.

Now it's one thing for Blogger to ask for my Naam, but when they beg for "Uw webpagina," I just want to slap the monitor. I am NOT revealing my "webpagina" to strangers, Mmmm'kay? Back off!

After sending my comment, I get this: "Uw reactie is opgeslagen en wordt weergegeven wanneer de eigenaar vad de blog toestemming heeft gegeven."

This means someone is holding my "reactie" until it's approved. Hmmm!

I'm sure they want to check out my "webpagina" first before giving me a forum on their site.

Perverts!

Feel free to leave a comment here. I promise not to demand to see your "webpaginas." 

May 3, 2007