Tag: language

52W Mark II – Week 10: Translation

I had a 20-year “pen pal” relationship with my great aunt, Anny van Kleef (née Komen). This is the first letter I received from her. She wrote about returning home from her trip to Canada, as well as the weather.

I have been trying to teach myself Dutch since I was 12. I’ve had a modicum of success.

I was about five-years-old when I first learned that English was not my father’s first language. I begged him to teach me something in Dutch. All he taught me was the word “groen”, meaning “green”. However, the Dutch “g” was not yet familiar to my ear, so I though he was saying “zoom”. I was more than thrilled to run around saying “Zoom! Zoom!, I’m speaking Dutch!”

While that’s all the Dutch he has imparted to me, my father is more than happy to teach his grandchildren the very useful Dutch phrase “grote blote billen.” When our youngest son was a toddler, he somehow learned to tell me “je bent gek.” Thanks, dad. I’ll leave you to use Google Translate to figure out those phrases.

Speaking of grote blote billen…

When I was in grade school, the principal often asked me if I was Belgian. I couldn’t figure out why, so I asked my mother. “Because you have a Dutch last name.” That made no sense to me. At the time, I didn’t know that Belgium was bilingual, and thought they only spoke French. I also was confused about her answer that suggested that surnames had ethnic and linguistic connections and meaning. There were few Anglo-Saxon surnames in our town, so to me surnames were just random collections of letters – mine included. I had no idea they had meaning. Mom’s answer was yet another of the many sparks that sparked my interest in genealogy and in learning Dutch.

I bought this when I was 12 and still have it.

When I was 12, an aunt and uncle of my father came to Canada for a visit, Tante Anny and Ome Nic. Tante Anny was one of my grandmother’s sisters. I was so excited. I knew we had family in the Netherlands, but I had never met any of them before. I was even more fascinated when I was told they only spoke Dutch. I took some of my spending money and ran to the bookstore to buy myself a Dutch phrase book.

I remember my father being really intrigued by it. He came to Canada as a small boy, so his Dutch never progressed beyond an elementary school level. “So that’s what my mother was saying all those years!”, he said more than once. I still have that book.

Despite the language barrier, Tante Anny and I connected right away during her visit. Shortly after she arrived, I came down with a small cold. She sat with me for hours, chatting to me in Dutch, me answering in English. There was a lot of hand gesturing. After a while, I started to pick up a few bits and pieces. Nothing much, but it was a start.

Me with Ome Nic and Tante Anny in October 1990.

After Tante Anny returned to Canada, we entered into an ongoing correspondence that continued until she passed away twenty years later. I wrote to her in English and her children translated for her. She wrote in Dutch, and my father translated for me. However, I’d pore over those letters, trying to figure them out for myself.

When I moved away from home to start university, I continued my correspondence with Tante Anny, but had to fend for myself with the translation. I bought myself a Dutch-English dictionary (which I still have!) and painstakingly translated each letter on my own. Fortunately, being related languages, some words were not so difficult to work out. As well, after you look up the same word dozens and dozens of times, it starts to sink in. My greatest problem was with idiomatic terms and some of the more informal constructions. Once in a while I’d phone my dad for help, but I had very little grasp of how to pronounce the written words. He enjoyed some gentle teasing at my expense after hearing me mangle the language.

My first trip to Europe was in 1990, with a university friend. Our itinerary had us in the Netherlands for two weeks and we were staying with Tante Anny and Ome Nic. To supplement what I had learned on my own, I enlisted a couple of my Dutch-speaking friends to give me a crash course. One of them loaned me a Dutch translation of a Richard Scarry book. It might have been humbling, but it was a great learning tool.

My family in the Netherlands were very encouraging as I tried to prattle on in Dutch. What surprised me the most was that they all kept saying that I spoke Dutch like my father. That made no sense to me – Dutch was his first language! I finally asked why they kept telling me that. They answered it was because I kept saying “Mijn nederlands is niet zo goed,” which apparently what my father kept saying when he visited the Netherlands a few years earlier. I was also told I spoke Dutch like a book, or an old lady, which was true, because that’s how I had learned.

A year or two after my trip, I took a night course in Dutch offered through the local school board. It was the only time I had formal training in the language. I still have my textbook to this day! It was also my introduction to the famous aap-noot-mies leesplankje (“ape nut mouse reading board”). It was developed at the end of the 19th century and generations of Dutch children had it as a tool as they began to learn to read. I still have my textbook from that class, and my photocopy of the leesplankje is still tucked inside.

My decades-old photocopy of the aap-noot-mies leesplankje

By the mid-1990s, I began to acquire some of family history records from sources in the Netherlands. If memory serves, one of the first documents I ever obtained was the death registration for my great great grandmother, Ariaantje Jacobs Bleeker, born February 15, 1865. Other records followed, including the persoonskaart (“persons card”) for my father and his family. Personal privacy rules weren’t what they are today, so it was easier to obtain records like that, given that at the time everyone named on the persoonskaart was still alive. I also became familiar with the burgerlijke stand (“civil register”). Unlike some unfortunate researchers, I knew right away it was not a village in the Netherlands.

Birth registration for my great great grandmother, Ariaantje Bleeker (1865 – 1929). It took me forever to translate this when I first obtained it. I have now read hundreds of similar birth, marriage, and death registrations, so I am well versed in this vocabulary.

I also used my correspondence with Tante Anny to further my genealogy research. I created a simple questionnaire and a pedigree chart that I spent a lot of time writing in Dutch, in order to make it easier for her to respond. I figured the easier I made it for her, the more likely it was that she’d fill them out. She did, although in her reply letter she queried why I’d want to know about something that was so uninteresting as family history. I often amuse myself by thinking she said that only because there is something interesting worth knowing that she didn’t want me to find. However, in the 25 years since she wrote that, I have not found anything that would support that idea.

Between my genealogical pursuits and correspondence with Tante Anny, there were some subjects I could understand with ease. The last time Tante Anny came to Canada, we watched my sister’s wedding video, and I was able to speak about the people and relationships without too much trouble. I was also very good with talking about cabbage farming.

Twee spoorwagens kool bij de zuurkoolfabriek.
(“Two carts of cabbage at the sauerkraut factory.”)
(Yes, I know “spoorwagen” is a “railway car”, but that’s what my family in the Netherlands calls these.)

This is at the Kramer sauerkraut factory in Zuid-Scharwoude, North Holland. My Ome Nic took us there for a tour at the crack of stupid in the morning, because of a query my dad made about possibly importing it to Canada. It was actually a pretty cool (or “kool”) experience! My Ome Nic is the person on the left, in the hat.

Over the years, I’ve tried different ways to teach myself Dutch. Just before my last trip to the Netherlands, I started using Duolingo. It was an amazing tool at the time, and my knowledge of Dutch improved rapidly. I even used it every day during my stay in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, Duolingo is not what it once was, and it has changed a lot for the worse in recent years. With its latest changes, I find it is not a good learning tool at all. I’m inclined to quit the site altogether, but for the fact I’ve got an amazing streak going on there. One of the stereotypes of the Dutch is that they’re stubborn, and I am stubbornly hanging on if only to see how far I can take this streak.

My Duolingo streak as of March 5, 2023.

The other great resource I’ve taken advantage of are the free courses offered by FutureLearn. Again, this was a much better resource in the past, but I have taken a number of courses through this program. I have taken their basic Introduction to Dutch course several times. I’ve also taken some genealogy courses through FutureLearn, including one in genetic genealogy that I’ve stalled out on due to sheer lack of free time.

There are now also so many great YouTubers and Instagrammers who provide some wonderful, fun, and educational videos that have been invaluable. These include Learn Dutch with Kim (YouTube, Instagram), JeDutchy (YouTube, Instagram), and Learn Dutch with Bart de Pau (YouTube).

While my proficiency in Dutch is now barely conversational, I have excelled in learning what I need to know of the language to conduct meaningful research in that language. The Netherlands is one of the non-English speaking countries with the highest degree of English-language proficiency in the world and many of their online genealogy resources are offered in English. As well, the “translate” feature of browsers like Chrome can be invaluable, as is Google Translate. However, while there may be transcriptions of the source documents in English, the original records are in Dutch only, and knowing the language allows me to squeeze out so much more information than I might be able to get otherwise. I’m also able to carry out very basic chats in Dutch with cousins in the Netherlands.

Before leaving, I’d like to share two videos I’ve watched countless times in trying to improve my Dutch. The first is an interview of Audrey Hepburn. Her Dutch is so beautiful and easy to understand. The other is an interview of Eddie and Alex van Halen, who were born in the Netherlands and whose first language was Dutch. I’ve seen her repeat this same interview with the same interviewer in French, and it is equally eloquent and easy to follow. You can click on the images to watch the videos.

52W Mark II – Week 5: Oops

This week’s theme for the 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Oops”. A true “oops” does not readily come to mind, although I know I’ve had a few over the last many years. This is about more of a mistaken conclusion based upon incomplete information than it was an actual “oops”, but it was a misleading error nonetheless.

Helen Lerner, about 1945.
Not English.

When I was about four or five, my maternal grandmother, Helen Lerner, went to England. At the time, my mother told me that grandma was going over to visit relatives. To me, it seemed reasonable to conclude that grandma must have been English. On top of that, at that young age I had no idea what my grandmother’s surname at birth had been, I just knew her as “Grandma Burgess”, and Burgess sounded like it could be English (spoiler alert: it wasn’t).

Meanwhile, I only knew Helen’s mother, my great grandmother, as “Grandma Wright”. Again, I had no idea what her surname at birth might have been or that she had previously been married. Wright also seemed pretty English to me, which only reinforced my belief that Grandma Burgess was English.

By eight or nine I developed my interest in genealogy. I even bought a book to help me along, Digging for My Roots, by Michael Scheier and Julie Frankel, which I still have to this day. When I started, I unknowingly did what one is supposed to do as a beginner in genealogy: ask your parents or other close family members. In addition to asking my mom some questions, I also copied what she had written in the family bible. In doing so, I learned my grandmother and great grandmother’s surnames at birth; however, I didn’t realize that “Lerner” and “Anton” were German. It seemed to me that those surnames could also be English. Moreover, my mother had not entered the place of birth for either of her maternal grandparents. When filling out the pedigree in my book, I can’t recall asking my mom where her grandparents were born. However, what little space there was to write place of birth remains blank. (Needless to say, it is recorded in my desktop database!)

My copy of Digging for My Roots, which I still have. On the right, you can see that I don’t have a place of birth for my great grandmother Ameilia Anton.

When I was in grade seven, I started taking French in school. However, when I started high school in grade eight, there were many other language options. I decided to drop French and take German. By that time, I had already begun trying to teach myself Dutch, so I figured studying German would help me with that goal. I also knew that, for some reason, my Grandma Burgess knew German. How or why she did, I had no clue. It clearly didn’t cross my mind to ask. It seems pretty daft in hindsight, but there you go.

Emelia Anton, around 1920. Also not English.

During Christmas break in grade eight, we visited Grandma Wright. During the visit, my mom said, “Grandma, guess what? Sean is studying German in school!” My first thought was to wonder why great grandma would find that particularly interesting, but my train of thought was quickly interrupted by my great grandmother immediately starting to speak to me in fluent German. I’m sure you could have knocked me over with a feather, I was so surprised. (I was also pleased with myself that I understood some of what she was saying.)

After we left, I asked my mom how it was that great grandma spoke German. My mother responded, “Because she’s German.” She was?!?

Later on, my mother told that my great grandmother was born in Russia. Of course, that confused me further. My mother then explained that her grandmother’s family was actually from Ukraine, but weren’t Ukrainian. That is when I learned about the Germans from Russia, who were colonists who settled in territory held by the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fortunately, none of these misunderstandings resulted in me wandering aimlessly down the garden path. Rather, learning the correct facts sparked my interest and put me on the correct path.