Autumn   Between the September 30 date of the last series of essays on this website and now, autumn came to New York, slowly over October and November, and has now finally slipped away in favor of winter. Warm weather stayed unusually long this year into those two months, but now it’s gone. For readers further north, in Germany, Belgium, and the UK, fall probably ended considerably earlier. Readers in Australia, where spring is now turning into summer, might picture an autumn of six months ago, assuming they’re far north enough to experience a seasonal change at all. Readers in Florida and California don’t experience autumn in the same way as those of us in the north, but may have earlier recollections to fall back on (pun intended).

When I experience this season I go back to a recollection of some years ago. It was in the south of France, most likely in Nîmes. I most clearly recall Beverly and me walking down an allée, a tree-lined avenue. I have a fixed picture in my mind of us strolling up the right-hand side of the allée with a brisk wind stirring the trees and blowing the already fallen leaves on the ground. It’s just THE standard image of fall that comes back to me. There’s an irony there, however. School always started for us in early September, so the latest we could have been in Nîmes whatever year it was would have been only late August, so it wasn’t really authentically autumn, just an early blast of it, that remains my quintessential fall recollection.

Autumn Leaves   I cannot experience autumn/fall without hearing in my head the music to Les feuilles mortes/Autumn Leaves. As beautiful as the minor key of Joseph Kosma’s music is, it’s the words that paint the vivid picture of autumn. Right?

Well sort of. It depends if you follow the original French version or the standard English translation, so this all goes back to the subject of just how do you translate and/or interpret an artistic work such as this.

The original French text to the music, here sung on YouTube by an incredibly young Yves Montand: Yves Montand: Les feuilles mortes, was written by the poet Jacques Prévert in 1945, making it primarily a love song of loss, of which Dead Leaves (which is what the title Les feuilles mortes means) are only symbolic. Given the date it was written, although I don’t know for a fact that loss due to war might be part of the imagery, it’s certainly possible. Here’s the first half of the original version of the famous refrain. My translation keeps the meter, so this translation is singable, assuming you recall the famous melody.

The problem arises in the second half of the refrain.

Nothing here talks about autumn, or about leaves. Leaves get mentioned only in a part of the less famous verse, which is shown here just as an illustration, so this translation does not follow the same meter of the original.

This is all heavy stuff, not just a song about seasons. It has nothing to do with autumn, and really has nothing to do with leaves. The metaphor just as well could have been that grass clippings get shoveled up, along with memories and regrets. Yet leaves they are, so from the symbolism of this one subsection, leaves move into the title Les feuilles mortes.

Four years later, in 1949, Johnny Mercer’s English version appeared under the title Autumn Leaves. You cannot call Mercer’s version a translation. It’s almost a complete reinterpretation. The deep melancholy of the original version does continue, but is considerably dampened. Mercer makes the theme of lost love secondary to the image of autumn, and of leaves, not leaves on the ground being unceremoniously shoveled up but leaves that are still in the more attractive stage of falling. Look how different Mercer’s two opening lines of the refrain are from to the original.

Where’s the love story here? There is only seasonal imagery. It’s only next that a relationship appears.

Any love story here is far more superficial. The original French version has overtones of deep loss, if not possible tragedy. Life has caused some sort of separation: la vie sépare. The English version implies a breakup after a summer romance, with some vague regrets: I miss you. Boo-hoo.

Don’t misunderstand me. I like both versions. But then you can enjoy both worlds. Lean on the French version the next time you watch the end of Casablanca. Lean on the English version when walking up an allée in Nîmes, or the equivalent.

Rainer Maria Rilke   I meant at first to say only a word or two about autumn, then have Rilke get you in a properly melancholy autumn mood, but I got carried away (shoveled up?) with all those leaves from Prévert and Mercer, but let’s now move on.

I have a very limited knowledge of classical literature, even if some recent website entries would have you think differently. We actually came across this poem by Rilke (RIL.kuh) in a Middlebury phonetics class. Reciting the poem was a pronunciation exercise, as was Rilke’s name.

[So let’s go another tangent. French and German, and to varying extents other languages, have long abandoned the trilled, tongue R some languages still maintain in favor of a uvular R. The uvula is that thing you see hanging down at the back of your mouth, and this R is made in that back region. It takes a bit of practice. You make the sound KH as in Bach, then add voice to it. Rilke’s name was perfect for this. You’d say KHainer maKHia KHilke, add voice, and end up with RRRainer maRRRia RRRilke. Fabulous.]

Rilke was Austrian, born in Prague in 1875 when that was still part of Austria-Hungary. He’s considered one of the 20th century’s greatest poets in the German language. However, his homeland of choice later in life was the canton of Valais in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, where he died, quite young, in Montreux in 1926. One has to be careful not to limit one’s perception of authors, since this highly significant German-language poet actually also wrote over 400 poems in French, which he dedicated to the Valais. Art transcends language.

As a matter of fact, it was in Paris that Rilke wrote this poem about autumn, on 21 September 1902. He wrote it in German, but let’s see if we can get his art to transcend language via my translation into English. This is Herbsttag or Autumn Day.

My image of autumn frequently involves that allée in Nîmes, and this poem blends in with that image. It’s also ironic that Rilke’s poem ends with walking along an Allee (German plural: Alleen).

Contrary to Prévert’s lost-love story and to Mercer’s more simplistic (yet charming) seasonal sketch, Rilke starts out describing the season, but by the third verse moves into the melancholia and loneliness that autumn often represents. It strikes me that the increasing length of the verses, from three to four to five lines, reflects the increasing shadow falling across the sundials.

Once again, I concentrated on getting the right number of syllables per line in the translation in order to get the right meter, the same iambic pentameter of the original. This was not as difficult as one might think. And again, I made no effort whatsoever to try to follow Rilke’s rhyme scheme, or any rhyme scheme at all. I firmly believe that you’d have to tear the original apart in order to find words in another language that just happened to rhyme.

I’ll also note here the dilemma of Australians and New Zealanders when visualizing poetic imagery written for conditions in the northern hemisphere, since the images have to be inverted. I assume they are used to doing this. For instance Prévert couples le vent du nord/the north wind with la nuit froide/the cold night, but in Australia north winds often bring warm, tropical breezes; it’s the south wind you might want to be wary of. Conversely, Rilke asks for zwei südlichere Tage/two more days of southern weather to ripen fruits, including wine grapes, but with an Australian south wind you might end up with ice wine.

October/November   A number of things of interest happened during these two fall months, which I’ll cover in this potpourri section.

Viva Laughlin In discussing the town of Laughlin in the previous Series, I mentioned that a new TV program called Viva Laughlin was about to appear internationally, which Hugh Jackman produced and appeared in. The purpose of mentioning the show was merely to point out that the name of this small, new, Nevada casino town was becoming well-known enough to be used as the locale of a major television program.

On 18 October, the New York Times wrote: “ ‘Viva Laughlin’ on CBS may well be the worst new show of the season, but is it the worst show in the history of television? It certainly comes close...” I did watch it both times it was on. I thought that having the characters burst out into song periodically and dance on roulette tables got old quickly, but the story was adequate—sort of.

On 23 October, the Times wrote that Viva Laughlin “became the first scripted casualty of the fall television season yesterday, when the network announced it was canceling the show immediately” after only two episodes had been broadcast, to disastrous ratings.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Port Tasting On 29 October, my favorite New York dining venue, Alfama Portuguese restaurant, had another of its wine tastings, where the restaurant was closed for the evening with the tasting being considered a private party. This one was pricier than usual, since it was exceptional, not only a Port tasting, but specifically a colheita tasting.

A small Portuguese Port House named Andresen, which I was unfamiliar with, founded in Portugal by a Scandinavian in 1845, was invited to present a selection of its colheitas. Most Ports are blends. A colheita (col.YAY.ta) is a vintage Port, made from the production of just one year. Colheita years are declared by the Portuguese authorities only when the vintage appears to be specially worthy.

The atmosphere was cozy as ever, with a reasonable, though not large turnout. A buffet of Portuguese savory and sweet tidbits was included. I met some people and enjoyed discussions with them and with the owner of Andresen. First, a white port spritzer was offered as an apéritif, then a white port was the first selection, followed by ten colheitas. I will admit at the outset that I do not have an adequate taste memory. All the ports were excellent, some I liked a little better than others, but I would never remember which was a favorite to order again in the future. I’ll continue to take advice from those who know better. Yet tasting all the colheitas was very enjoyable.

It was billed as “A Century of Colheitas”, since the newest was from 1997 and the oldest from 1900. Apparently the authorities require aging for at least seven years. Andresen waits still longer when necessary, so the 1997 vintage aged for ten years and had just been bottled.

The colheitas offered were from 1997, 1995, 1992, 1991, 1982, 1980, 1975, 1968, 1910, 1900. The owner told an interesting story about one colheita that WASN’T there. There’s a big jump in decades in the above list, and Andresen wanted to bring a couple of bottles of its 1934 colheita. One hears how governments will prohibit export of paintings and artwork that are considered to be national treasures. Well, the authorities decided that Andresen had too little left of its 1934 colheita, and did not permit the company to bring its own bottles to New York for a tasting. The Portuguese take their Port very seriously.

Of course everyone was interested particularly tasting the two oldest vintages present. I’d never tasted century-old wine of any sort before. Frankly, they were as good as any other—well, perhaps a bit better, but maybe I just want to believe that because of their age. It was quite obvious with a side-by-side comparison that the younger Ports were redder in color, intermediate ones browner, and older ones the deepest brown-gold. As a point of curiosity, I asked the pourer about the price of the two oldest vintages there. The 1910 Port retails for $1600 a bottle and the 1900 one for $1700-1800 a bottle. Keeping that in mind, they MUST have tasted better, right?

Berlin in Lights Between 2-18 November, Carnegie Hall sponsored a Berlin-themed festival called Berlin in Lights. The Berlin Philharmonic played at Carnegie Hall, there were musical events in the Cathedral of Saint John the Devine, Goethe House had various readings, there were special film showings—and I ended up attending nothing. Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie had a number of cabaret evenings as they usually do anyway, but the one I really wanted to see had been cancelled due to illness, and the others were sold out anyway. Well, I can see cabaret there any time, and I will. I read that Carnegie Hall had a special museum exhibit about all the Berlin artists who’ve appeared there since the hall was opened in 1890. I was also glad to hear that the German Consulate had a special exhibit on a topic that every reader knows is dear to my heart. The entire exhibit is about the new main rail station, the Berlin Hauptbahnhof.

Rail & Sail 1) That’s a nice segue into this next topic. On 14 November there was a great new change in Eurostar (http://stpancras.eurostar.com/). Since its inception, connecting London at high speed through the Chunnel with Brussels and Paris, the Eurostar service has used Waterloo International, a modern add-on to Waterloo Station just to the south of central London. However, while the French and Belgian connections with the Chunnel were really high-speed, on the British side, Eurostar had to use standard track from the Chunnel to Waterloo, slowing it down. A while back, the high-speed connection was finally extended about half-way to London, and now it’s been completed. However, it’s been planned from some time that the new London home would be in the north of central London, at Saint Pancras Station, which adjoins Kings Cross Station and is steps away from Euston Station (the three stations have a growing interconnectability). Waterloo International will now just become an extension to other Waterloo domestic services. But the beautiful old red-and-white brick Victorian structure of Saint Pancras has been redeveloped into Saint Pancras International. The station is to serve as a destination in itself, for shopping and dining. I was very pleased to read that they credit the redevelopment a few years ago of Grand Central Station in New York as an inspiration for redoing Saint Pancras. The updated high-speed service gets you from London to Paris in an incredible 2 hours 15 minutes, center-city to center-city. Better still, London to Brussels is only 1 hour 51 minutes. This is utterly amazing.

2) While Berlin is duly proud of the fact that it now has a north-south through rail connection to cross with the east-west rail connection it’s had for a century, London in 1988 did open its 225k/140m Thameslink, a north-south rail connection connecting northern destinations up to Bedford with southern ones down to Brighton on the coast, including Gatwick and Luton airports, through the center of London, including Saint Pancras International, Blackfriars, and London Bridge stations. Parliament is now considering the construction of Crosslink London, which will make a similar east-west connection by 2017. Coming from the west, it will connect Heathrow airport to Paddington Station in western London, to Liverpool Street Station in eastern London, then proceed east. It doesn’t seem at first that the two routes will cross, as in Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof, however it does seem that they will both have a Farrington station, yet no one’s making a big point about interconnectability.

3) Glasgow apparently is also trying to solve a rail problem. Evidently Queen Street Station in the north serves northern routes, and Central Station in the south serves southern, with no through service. A tunnel connecting them would be two expensive, but Glasgow is trying to promote its Crossrail Glasgow program, which will make appropriate connections by going around the east end of the city.

4) The picture isn’t as hopeful in the US. Years ago, when Boston’s Big Dig was first being planned to put a freeway underground, NARP (National Association of Railroad Passengers), of which I’m a member, urged that a rail tunnel be included to connect North Station, with routes north to Portland (Reflections 2006 Series 12) to the larger South Station, which serves the major interstate rail routes (Back Bay Station is already connected as the first stop out of South Station). The good news is, the rail tunnel was built. The bad news is, there is no financing and no plans to actually start up the connection.

5) In New York, the good news is that the Long Island Rail Road connection into Grand Central Terminal is being built (the LIRR has served Penn Station for years), plans are afoot to build a second rail tunnel from New Jersey into Penn Station, and Penn Station is expected to be rebuilt/restored (that’s a long story). However, there has long been a call to extend any new service into Penn from New Jersey further across Midtown to connect with Grand Central as well. This is not yet happening. With such a connection, instead of every single train coming into Manhattan from New Jersey, Long Island, or Westchester/Connecticut just ENDING there, then going back to where it came from, there could be through service to all these places, say Newark NJ to Stamford CT. As a matter of fact, New Jersey-Long Island connections (Newark-Jamaica) are presently feasible, but the connections have never been made. Only Amtrak has a through service crossing Manhattan, between Boston and Washington (Reflections 2006 Series 12).

6) Cunard’s new Queen Victoria will be launched on 10 December. On 13 January, three Queens will sail under my windows up and down the Hudson, the new Queen Victoria, the Queen Mary 2, and the retiring Queen Elizabeth 2. Cunard wants to keep three Queens afloat, and it’s started building a new Queen to follow the sensibly-named Queen Victoria. However, I think they’ve foolishly decided to name the newest ship the Queen Elizabeth. No new name, not even a new number (QE3?), but the same name as the original one from the 1930’s. This whole naming concept is beginning to get old very quickly.

Antarctica On 23 November, the Explorer sank in Antarctic waters. Just exactly one year ago, in the second half of November 2006, I sailed, along with several Australian friends reading this, on the Explorer II to the same destinations. Do understand that what sank was NOT the same ship we were on.

The Explorer, run by a different company, was registered in Liberia and built in Finland. All 154 aboard were safely rescued, 100 passengers and 54 crew. Our Explorer II was registered in Germany and built in the UK. I remember it carried 199 passengers to get just under the limit so as to be able to dock in most locations, but the ship could have carried twice as many, so we were on a much larger ship. Yet it was eerie to read of the similarities, of their going to their lecture hall where scientists gave lectures on wildlife, geology, and climate change, and of their trips in the zodiac rubber rafts. The left Ushuaia on a trip scheduled from 11-29 November. They stopped in the Falklands, and on South Georgia Island, and were near the Antarctic peninsula when they hit a submerged iceberg on the 23rd, which suggests they were arriving there and hadn’t seen it yet. The Times called it a “modern Titanic”, although without any tragic results. While a research ship, the National Geographic Endeavour, was also headed their way, a Norwegian cruise ship, the Nordnorge took on all the evacuees. I see irony in the name of that ship, since, as you might guess, it means “Northern Norway”, which, including Spitsbergen, implies the same cold weather conditions you can get in Antarctica.

The Times quoted a rescued passenger, who had been seated in a zodiac for some time before getting on to the Nordnorge, as saying it “was very surreal, because it was a very beautiful morning with the sun glistening off the relatively calm sea.” I can relate to that. On our very last zodiac stop last year, we set foot on the Antarctic peninsula itself for the one and only time, then we taken a short distance away, and around a bend, to just enjoy the atmosphere. It was a totally blue sky, and warm enough to open your coat. There was ice on the land around the bay, with ice fragments all over. The motor was turned off so we could hear the silence, or actually, the sound of ice creaking and cracking in the sun. The eight of us plus the driver were away from the ship, and felt isolated, yet euphoric. I think of this positive experience when I read the quoted passenger’s more nerve-wracking, yet equally surreal experience.

Dutch   Let me do a triage of language experience. On the one side you put languages you’re fluent in, your native languages, and any others. For me, aside from English, that would be German, Spanish, and French, in that order.

On the opposite side, you put languages you know absolutely nothing about, but in which you might have enough passing interest while traveling so as to look at a sign or two and try to figure a couple of words out. That would include my talking about Hungarian in Hungary (2004), Finnish and Estonian in Finland (2006), and Basque in Spain (2007). But that’s just having fun and fooling around.

Left in the middle would be languages you have had some experience with, maybe more, maybe less, but know little about, or worse, have forgotten. Many people who’ve studied other languages and haven’t used them find themselves in this area.

I have five here. Usually, passive use is easier, especially in writing. A menu or newspaper might have enough that’s recognizable to make you feel good, and if you’re in the country in question, the atmosphere alone might inspire you, to say nothing of a pressing need. I can manage (and fumble) my way pretty well in Italian (2002, 2003), where I could read a paper and managed to carry on somewhat extended conversations with a talkative waiter over several nights in Naples. I reviewed some Portuguese (2007) and managed quite well in Portugal as well. Swedish (2006) needed some brushing up, but I managed. Russian is were I had lost the most ability of the little I’d had, yet when confronted in the train from Moscow to Berlin (2005) with a need to order and discuss dinner and fill out customs forms with Russian-speaking train personnel, somehow inspiration overtook me and I managed to pull through.

And then there’s Dutch. Beverly and I had studied it quite a bit years ago at home (we both knew the same languages). We had never taken a course in it, but frankly, we didn’t need one, other then for practice. Yet at the time, traveling in the Benelux area, I remember getting minimal use of it. It only occurs to me now that on our most recent trip to what I called “Dutch-Land”, which was Beverly’s last trip (2004), it didn’t even occur to me to review any Dutch to try to use. It might have been that we had also been traveling in Central Europe the first half of that trip, or that I didn’t have the time, since I was taking care of Beverly, but that wasn’t it. It just didn’t occur to me.

Last year in Norway I had a frustrating experience. It was the day I took the ferry along the Sognefjord. People were sitting at large tables, and I was writing on my laptop. At one stop a group of 7-8 Dutch speakers filled the rest of my table. They spoke English to me, and I listened to some Dutch spoken, but I was so out of it, I didn’t recognize anything (I would have, in writing, though). And I certainly couldn’t say a word.

Then an interesting thing happened a couple of months ago. When traveling I keep on meeting the most interesting people. This year was exceptionally good, and I met quite a few, and we exchanged e-mail addresses. In the Southwest I was particularly fortunate, having met quite a number of people who I’ve written to, and who I’ve added to my mailing list. Some have written back. But one stands out.

Checking my travel diary (a habit inherited from Beverly), it was on 3 September that I went to Bryce Canyon in Utah. I had gone to the far end and had stopped at viewpoints along the way. I was at the last viewpoint over the particularly spectacular area called the amphitheater, and had one more stop after that. From the rim, you could look down, maybe 12-13 stories, at the sea of stone pillars below. Although it was late afternoon, it was still hot, yet people had taken the dirt trails down from the rim to walk around the area way below. Given the exertion needed, and the heat, I was not one of them.

I was on the rim, leaning on the wall at the end of the uphill path when two guys came huffing and puffing back to the top. I thought I heard German spoken, not unusual in the Western US nowadays, so I said something in German. The first guy did answer in German, but said they were from Belgium, and were speaking Dutch. We chatted a bit more, and then left. When I got to the last viewpoint and turned around, there were the two guys again, so we joked who was following who, but, since it was the end of the day, we relaxed and had a pleasant conversation for well over an hour. It turns out that Alex and Ludo were colleagues headed for a computer convention in San Francisco who were first seeing some National Parks and Las Vegas. They were from Hasselt, in the eastern part of Flemish Belgium. Needless to say, I talked about Dutch and vented my frustration at not being able to say a single word. I wasn’t even sure how to say Yes or No any more. My mind had become a blank when it came to Dutch, although I was sure there was still quite a bit of water massed behind the dike, to use an appropriate metaphor.

When I later wrote a quick note to the people I had met in the Southwest, several responded, including Alex and Ludo. But Alex, the rascal, knowing of my frustration, wrote his first paragraph in English, and the rest of his e-mail in Dutch. The gauntlet was tossed. What could I do? It was now either put up or shut up.

I had picked up a good, newer Dutch grammar book in Florida a few years ago, and had actually made a bit of progress in it, but even that progress was lost again. I also had a Dutch dictionary. So off I went. I continued a correspondence with Alex, including from the Dominikaanse Republiek when I was there for a week on business in early October. I finally managed to get my first paragraph composed in Dutch. The dike blocking what I had known had finally burst, and the flood was coming. I wrote Alex (he had to subsequently correct one word and one spelling, all at my request): De dijk is gebroken, en de vloed komt. I’m also picking up things beyond what I had known. And it’s great fun.

English speakers are so frequently impressed by similarities between the Italic (“Romance”) languages and English, usually involving longer, more complicated words. But English is a Germanic language (Reflections 2006 Series 2), and, as close as North Germanic languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) are to English, the three West Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German) are the closest to each other. Consider the three language regions lining up side by side across the channel (English area, Dutch area, German area). Given that proximity, Dutch bears a great similarity to English (see Wordplay 4 in Reflections 2006 Series 3), as it does to German. Indeed, as explained earlier, what we call German is technically High (= in the mountains) German, and Dutch and Plattdeutsch in Northern Germany are Low (= coastal) German. Flemish is the slight variation of Dutch as spoken in Northern Belgium.

I like to use Eurostar to illustrate language connections. As the trains from London go through the Chunnel, some turn south toward Paris and enter the Italic Language area (French and others), some go straight to Brussels and enter the continental Germanic area (Dutch and others). Take a look again at the Saint Pancras website and change the country selection in the upper left to België for Dutch. You can also change it to Belgique or France for French. After you’ve first read what it says in English, so that you’re familiar with the facts, take a look at the Dutch, and you’ll see that Belgians can go “van Brussel naar Londen in 1u51”, that Saint Pancras is the “nieuwe station in het hart van Londen” and if you want tickets, you should “boek nu”. See what else you can pick out, especially after comparing it with the English version. Speakers of German will have even more of a field day, since in addition they’ll recognize things such as in the last part of the first paragraph: “om te genieten van onze snellere verbindingen” as similar to “um unsere schnellere Verbindungen zu genießen” (in order to enjoy our faster connections).

[Note: it also occurs to me that when I said earlier this year that Herbert Nelson and his father fled from Berlin to Amsterdam in the 1930’s (Reflections 2007 Series 6), yet was still able to write cabaret performances, the similarity between the two languages must have been very helpful. The same can be said for Anne Frank and her family leaving Frankfurt for Amsterdam.]

There is no secret that I’ve been enthusiastic about the Dutch language and its speakers for years. I referred to the Dutch in the Dutch-named Spitsbergen (Reflections 2006 Series 6) and their arriving at Easter Island (Reflections 2006 Series 14), to say nothing about the discussion of the Dutch in New York and the Hudson Valley (Reflections 2005 Series 18).

Here are a few very minor points about the language. One diphthong it has is EI, which is essentially pronounced as in the English word EIght, so you should know how to pronounce: trein (train), ei (egg), eiland (island). But EI has another spelling, that particularly strikes the eye, since it’s a uniquely Dutch spelling. EI in some words is spelled IJ (!), such as: mijn (my), Rijn (Rhine), dijk (dike). Here’s a silly little exercise that’s just for fun to get USED to how IJ is pronounced. It involves the most famous pronunciation exercise ever, used in Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and its musical version, “My Fair Lady”. If you ever wonder how to pronounce the name of Rembrandt van Rijn in its entirety, think of these ENGLISH words using the DUTCH spelling IJ:

Look at the similarity of the following Dutch verbs to English.: They mean to do ... what?

They tend to often be closer to English than their German equivalents are: helfen, trinken, hangen, machen, brechen, singen, sitzen, reiten, fallen. Yet if you know German, you can figure out a lot more verbs:

There are two spelling oddities, one just like English. Note the single versus double consonant variation in English words like sit/sitting, bid/bidder, tan/tanner. In English, it frequently happens that a single syllable word uses the single letter, while longer words need the double (short word/short spelling, longer word/longer spelling). This is ALWAYS so in Dutch, and you have to be careful, because it comes up everywhere. Look at the required spelling changes between whether “we” are doing something or if “I” am:

The rarest plural in English is –en, found in only one plural (ox, oxen). This ending is frequent in German and the most usual one in Dutch. But note the spelling differences (these are all Dutch words):

The quirky F/V variation that English has (elf, elves; wolf, wolves; knife, knives) is quite frequent in our sister language:

But the second spelling oddity is unique to Dutch. It also involves a single or double letter variation, but with vowels such as: a/aa, e/ee, o/oo. Remember it this way: you have to use the short form (one letter) in a long word, long form (double letter) in a short word, so it’s the reverse of the earlier consonant rule. E (as in café) appears in the plural “weken” (weeks). But if you want the singular, it’s “week”. Watch:

And it’s quite frequent in verbs:

Anyway, I also worked with Alex on two language mysteries, and we solved them both. The first was the problem I brought up in the discussion of the Hudson Valley. There are so many place names in “kill” that it has to be considered a New York regional word, but one that has to have come from Dutch. It seems to mean “river” as in Kill Van Kull, Arthur Kill, Dutch Kills, Peekskill, Fishkill, Catskill, but I’ve never been able to find it in a Dutch dictionary. Alex looked into it, and here’s what he sent me, copied from an online source:

I’m sure you can piece together what it means, but let me translate:

The first thing that should bowl you over is the similarity between the two sister languages. Is there any wonder that, with a bit more practice, you could follow some newspaper headlines?

The second point is the reason why the word isn’t in current dictionaries. Remember the Dutch were here for forty years, from 1624 to 1664, and that’s between 383 and 343 years ago. No wonder a word could have gone lost from Dutch in that amount of time.

The third point here is the spelling. It’s obviously spelled “kill” in comparison with the other English word “kill”. In Dutch it has to be “kil” according to the spelling rule you just learned, although the plural would be “killen” with two L’s.

The second discovery we made was even more fun. I live steps away from where Nieuw Amsterdam was. It’s all long since gone, with the exception of two things that remain always, the street grid and place names. People visiting the area, now called the Financial District, wonder about the tall buildings on the small streets, but those streets were put there when there was a small village with simple, small houses. Some street names in Dutch are still there in a sense. For instance, tiny Bridge Street was translated from Brugh Straet (modern spelling: Brug Straat), where a bridge crossed a canal.

But the most famous street in the area, in the city, possibly in the world, is Wall Street, which even gives its name to the whole Financial District. Yet I found something odd about that name, and in discussions back and forth with Alex, we discovered a little secret about it. You may think the street is actually named after a wall. Dat is niet zo.

There really was a wall at one time that lasted from the Dutch period into the British period. It was started in the 1640’s along the northern edge of the settlement and was strengthened in 1653 to be a 4m/12ft timber and earthen wall, put up to protect from intruders. In 1685, surveyors laid out the street on the town side of the stockade. The British finally removed the wall in 1699.

So much for the construction of the wall (and its removal) and the street. But there’s a problem about the name. In most languages, the word for an outside wall looks like the German Mauer, French mur, Spanish muro, and sure enough, the Dutch word is muur (plural muren). So why wasn’t the street running along the wall Muur Straat?

There is a Dutch word that looks like English “wall”, but its meaning is a little different. The word is “wal” (plural wallen), but it refers to a low, earthen wall, perhaps a berm, something more like a levee to keep water out. But we still have a problem. It wasn’t called Wal Straat, either.

What it WAS called was Waal Straat, which is a whole other kettle o’ fish. A Waal (plural Walen) is the Dutch word for a Walloon, a person from the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium, the Flemish being from the northern, Dutch-speaking part. But you also must keep in mind that Belgium as we know it wasn’t formed until 1830, and we’re talking here about the mid 1600’s, so when we say the Dutch settled Nieuw Amsterdam, that certainly has to have included the Flemish, and also included a rather large number of French-speaking Walloons. Just as you might name Chinatown or Little Italy after the ethnic groups living there, the street next to the stockade was named Waal Straat/Walloon Street for that ethnic group. It was a coincidence that the wall also bordered the street.

This name problem is an example of Folk Etymology (Reflections 2003 Series 14 and 2004/1). The Dutch themselves probably confused Waal Straat with a potential Wal Straat, after all, the concept of Walloons living near the Wall could have caused confusion (Did I hear Waal? But there’s a Wal there. I must have been mistaken. I’ll say Wal from now on, since that surely makes more sense). Then assuming the English weren’t all that clear on just who the Walloons were, anyway, a wall being a wall, the Walloons were presumably forgotten into the English period, time marches on, and the street becomes definitively Wall Street.

So, we know it’s Wall Street today, but every once in a while, give an ethnic group some credit and at least think in terms of Wall(oon) Street.

Faust   Earlier this year (Series 9) I compared the Portuguese version that I’d found in a bookstore of the opening line of El Quijote to the original Spanish version, to show the similarity of the two languages. Later (Series 12) I presented to quotes in German from Faust, all built around the word “wissen” (to know). Now that we’ve seen that the stem of the Dutch word “weten” is even closer to related English words (wit, witness), it’s worth comparing the Dutch version of the two quotes. I’ll copy my original English translation first, then the German from Goethe, then my Dutch translation, the first one of which had to be corrected by Alex to a more idiomatic way of saying it.

In this second one, I had gotten the Dutch right in the first place.

Poe   You will wonder what Edgar Allan Poe has to do with anything here. Well, he knew how to write a poem, but that isn’t it. Alex is good with a challenge, and he asked me to translate The Raven (1845) into German. Well, I wasn’t about to do the entire lengthy poem, but I did do the first verse. And if I’ve done it to resolve a challenge, why not also publish it here?

But I have my own challenge for the worthy reader. The Raven in German is Der Rabe, but in Dutch, it’s De Raaf. What’s the plural of “de raaf”? Hint: find two required changes, and the correct result will be interesting. But first, here’s the first verse of The Raven by Poe, in the original:

And here’s my German version of this first verse of Der Rabe:

Once again, the meter matches the original, but there’s no rhyme, which is a shame, since Poe’s rhyming system here is so interesting. Lines 1 and 3 don’t rhyme at all, but the other four are lore/door/door/more, two words being the same. But Poe also has INTERNAL rhyme. How great to rhyme “dreary” and “weary” all within the first line. He does it again in line three with “napping” and “tapping”, then goes wild with “rapping”, another “rapping”, then “tapping” in the next two lines—three rhyming words appearing a total of five times. How could anything like that be translated?

Of course I couldn’t leave out the four most famous words in the poem, which don’t occur until quite a bit later:

As to the challenge: the plural of “de raaf” involves two changes before adding the ending. De spelling van het hollands woord is “de raven”. As it turns out, the Dutch plural looks like the English singular.