And luckily there is comedian Katinka Polderman, this time in Our language† The maker of the handy decision trees in the ‘Day in, day out’ section in de Volkskrant is doing something similar in the new magazine, with language. In the first episode, A Chilling Small Talk Maze, she gives a guide to meeting a vague acquaintance. The point is to reach the exit in a smooth chat. This can be done via ‘nice weather’, ‘humouring in agreement’, ‘yes, we really should do that’ and ‘you wouldn’t have thought this a year ago’.
Because she uses the English word ‘small talk’, note in Our languageshe takes a risk. She knows: ‘Yes, this makes some people very sad!’ In Our language the language, the Dutch, is honored exuberantly and with love by the Society of Our Language. In order to reduce costs and create more editorial space, the magazine will only be published six times in 2023, instead of eight. The circulation is 22,500 copies.
The cover story is about ‘Rainbow Linguistics’, or the language of LGBT people. The supplied ‘rainbow lexicon’ is useful, for example for those who have lost their minds for a moment about which groups the LGBTI community also consists of and how someone works who says that he/she is cisgender.
Rodaan Al Galidi, a writer and poet who grew up in Iraq and has sometimes referred to himself as the Asylum Seeker, talks jokingly about a multilingual life. His seventh novel, The unknown experiences of Prince Willem-Alexander, appeared recently. He struggles with the language, the Dutch. ‘I stay in a diaper in Dutch while I wear flexible swimming trunks in Arabic.’
Interviewer Katrien Steyaert’s question why he doesn’t publish in his native language, Arabic, yields a striking answer. “Give me 1 square meter in the Arab world where you can be yourself and sing for peace and I’ll be there.” Why, Al Galidi wonders, is the region a ‘factory for asylum seekers and terrorists, while we are people of good quality?’ His answer: ‘Because our Middle Eastern leaders don’t have a rich language.’ After which he draws a comparison with Hitler. ‘How did he speak? Only in numbers.’
Lighter in tone is a top-5 of the most beautiful song lines about language. Our choice falls on number four, two lines out Enter without knocking van De Dijk: ‘She came in without knocking, and left without a word.’