Just one mistake. With that extraordinary score, Patrick van Aarle (47) from Eindhoven took home the win at the Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal on Saturday morning. And although he is a great language enthusiast, that score also came out of the blue for the big winner himself. “It’s never been as good as today.”
In good spirits, Patrick traveled to Groningen early on Saturday, where the dictation in Radio 1 program De Taalstaat was recited by former Chamber President Gerdi Verbeet. “I’ve been writing enthusiastically since I was fifteen. Although the dictation escaped my attention a bit when it was moved from TV to radio a few years ago.”
Still, that didn’t stop the physics teacher from signing up for this year’s edition. “I like to play with language and write some pieces now and then. All purely hobby. But when I saw that they were looking for candidates, I thought that would be fun.” Not that he really expected to be invited. “I didn’t even finish the entrance test in time.”
“I just made some practice texts last night.”
But a month ago the invitation came. Enough time to practice a little extra, you would think. “That was indeed the plan, but I didn’t really get around to it. In the end, I only made some practice texts last night.”
It turned out to be more than enough. Without too much effort, the words rolled out of Patrick’s pen on Saturday. When did he realize that things were going in the right direction? “Actually only when we got the correction sheet. Then I saw that it was very similar to what I had written down.”
It turns out. In the nine extended sentences full of exceptions and pitfalls, he made only one mistake. “I wrote Iron Age with a capital letter. During the dictation I already doubted whether or not periods should be capitalized. I thought: let me just do it. Behind the wrong choice.”
“You would almost think that I had a chat with Wim Daniëls.”
Forgive him. Thanks to the great score, Patrick can now join the list of handsome language heads. “I received a beautiful bunch of flowers and a signed fountain pen. But above all, of course, eternal fame.” And a piece of cake on the Groningen market. “I treated myself to that. I had to recover with a cup of coffee.”
As in previous years, the dictation was written by linguist Wim Daniëls, who also lives in Eindhoven. Is it a coincidence that the maker and winner have Brabant roots? “You would almost think that we had a chat beforehand. But that is not the case, you know. And the dictation itself was about Groningen, by the way. So I had no advantage in that either.”
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