Amsterdam

I Never Knew Their Name…. 

…but he opened up my eyes to my own language. 

If I had to pick one moment in my life to relieve over and over again, I would go back to a starry night in Amsterdam. Amsterdam had stolen my heart. From the winding canals, to the bicycles lining every street, I was madly in love with the city and the lifestyle. 

I was traveling with my best friend, backpacking through Europe one summer during college. We were dying to see this infamous city, so we made it a stop along the way in our journey south from England to Spain. 

It was one rainy day when we parked our bicycles outside a cafe (not that kind) to escape the weather that we met two Austrian footballers whom we would spend the next few days with. 

On our fourth night in the city, we decided to go out dancing and drinking. I love salsa and with the huge Argentinean influence in Amsterdam, I had be dying to go dancing. While wandering the streets, the four of us stumbled upon a tiny cafe with live Latin music. The greatest regret of my travels is not being able to remember the name of the place.

To set the scene: As anyone who has been to the Dutch city knows, the buildings are all very tall and narrow. This was no different. After opening the heavy door, I’d walk down the few steps into a small bar. In the very back was live music, then a small dance floor next to the staircase with the bar crammed into a corner near the door. The place couldn’t have held more than 100 people. It was a true lost corner of the world. 

It was there, watching my best friend dancing with the boy who would go on to steal her heart that I met a bartender who changed my life in the smallest way.

It’s rather obvious that I speak English, but I had never truly appreciated how lucky I am to be a native English speaker until that night. 

I was at the bar, drinking some obscure Dutch beer with the other Austrian boy, watching our friends fall for each other when the bartender came up to strike a conversation. Lucky for me, he spoke a broken, yet excited English when he learned I was from California. We began discussing how he (a native Dutch speaker) and my friend (a native German speaker) can both speak to each other in English and understand each other perfectly. I, however, would never quite understand them as I have spoken English my whole life and would gloss over the specific word choices that they use. He calmly explained to me that I am missing out on the beauty of a language as I’m too close to it. 

I was fascinated by this man. He had an understanding of language and people that I can only dream of reaching one day. It was then, that he reached behind the bottles and bottles of alcohol on the shelves of the bar where he pulled out a well worn book. A book of poetry. 

Excitingly flipping through the pages, he stopped on a poem called “The Chaos.” There, in a loud salsa cafe in the heart of Amsterdam, he asked me to please read the poem aloud. Intrigued, I did as I was told. The poem was written by a Dutch poet who had struggled his whole life to understand the English language. It categorized and mocked the complete chaos that is one of the most spoken languages in the world. 

Before this night I had taken my language for granted. I had never struggled traveling as I could normally find someone who understood me if I was lost or confused. I had never really stopped to listen to my foreign friends as every word they chose to speak in a second (or even third, fourth or fifth) language is well sought out and earned. Vastly different from the gut reaction way that I previously spoke in. 

This bartender, who’s name I will never know, taught me more about my own language than a thousand University English classes will ever teach me. He never learned my name, but he influenced the way I spoke, wrote and listened every single day.

To the bartender surrounded by the canals of Amsterdam, thank you for exposing the beauty of language to me. I hope one day I’ll stumble back into your cafe to read the rest of that poetry book tucked lovely behind the bar. 

Gerard Nolst Trenité - The Chaos (1922)

Dearest creature in creation

Studying English pronunciation,   I will teach you in my verse

   Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy;   Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;

   Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!   Just compare heart, hear and heard,

   Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain

(Mind the latter how it's written).   Made has not the sound of bade,

   Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as vague and ague,   But be careful how you speak,

   Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak ,

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via

Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;   Woven, oven, how and low,

   Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

Say, expecting fraud and trickery:

Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,   Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,

   Missiles, similes, reviles.

Wholly, holly, signal, signing,

Same, examining, but mining,   Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

   Solar, mica, war and far.

From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",

Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,   Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,

   Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.   Gertrude, German, wind and wind,

   Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,

Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.   This phonetic labyrinth

   Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Have you ever yet endeavoured

To pronounce revered and severed,   Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,

   Peter, petrol and patrol?

Billet does not end like ballet;

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.   Blood and flood are not like food,

   Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,

Which exactly rhymes with khaki.   Discount, viscount, load and broad,

   Toward, to forward, to reward,

Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?

Right! Your pronunciation's OK.   Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

   Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Is your r correct in higher?

Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.   Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,

   Buoyant, minute, but minute.

Say abscission with precision,

Now: position and transition;   Would it tally with my rhyme

   If I mentioned paradigm?

Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,

But cease, crease, grease and greasy?   Cornice, nice, valise, revise,

   Rabies, but lullabies.

Of such puzzling words as nauseous,

Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,   You'll envelop lists, I hope,

   In a linen envelope.

Would you like some more? You'll have it!

Affidavit, David, davit.   To abjure, to perjure. Sheik

   Does not sound like Czech but ache.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.   We say hallowed, but allowed,

   People, leopard, towed but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,

Between mover, plover, Dover.   Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

   Chalice, but police and lice,

Camel, constable, unstable,

Principle, disciple, label.   Petal, penal, and canal,

   Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,

Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit

Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it",   But it is not hard to tell

   Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,

Timber, climber, bullion, lion,   Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

   Senator, spectator, mayor,

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

Has the a of drachm and hammer.   Pussy, hussy and possess,

   Desert, but desert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants

Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.   Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,

   Cow, but Cowper, some and home.

"Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker",

Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor",   Making, it is sad but true,

   In bravado, much ado.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.   Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,

   Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,

Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.   Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,

   Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.

Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,

Make the latter rhyme with eagle.   Mind! Meandering but mean,

   Valentine and magazine.

And I bet you, dear, a penny,

You say mani-(fold) like many,   Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,

   Tier (one who ties), but tier.

Arch, archangel; pray, does erring

Rhyme with herring or with stirring?   Prison, bison, treasure trove,

   Treason, hover, cover, cove,

Perseverance, severance. Ribald

Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.   Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,

   Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

Don't be down, my own, but rough it,

And distinguish buffet, buffet;   Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,

   Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.

Say in sounds correct and sterling

Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.   Evil, devil, mezzotint,

   Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)

Now you need not pay attention

To such sounds as I don't mention,   Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,

   Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

Nor are proper names included,

Though I often heard, as you did,   Funny rhymes to unicorn,

   Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

No, my maiden, coy and comely,

I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.   No. Yet Froude compared with proud

   Is no better than McLeod.

But mind trivial and vial,

Tripod, menial, denial,   Troll and trolley, realm and ream,

   Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.

Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely

May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,   But you're not supposed to say

   Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

Had this invalid invalid

Worthless documents? How pallid,   How uncouth he, couchant, looked,

   When for Portsmouth I had booked!

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,

Paramour, enamoured, flighty,   Episodes, antipodes,

   Acquiesce, and obsequies.

Please don't monkey with the geyser,

Don't peel 'taters with my razor,   Rather say in accents pure:

   Nature, stature and mature.

Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,

Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,   Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,

   Wan, sedan and artisan.

The th will surely trouble you

More than r, ch or w.   Say then these phonetic gems:

   Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,

There are more but I forget 'em-   Wait! I've got it: Anthony,

   Lighten your anxiety.

The archaic word albeit

Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;   With and forthwith, one has voice,

   One has not, you make your choice.

Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger;

Then say: singer, ginger, linger.   Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,

   Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

Hero, heron, query, very,

Parry, tarry fury, bury,   Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,

   Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,

Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners   Holm you know, but noes, canoes,

   Puisne, truism, use, to use?

Though the difference seems little,

We say actual, but victual,   Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,

   Put, nut, granite, and unite.

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,

Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.   Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,

   Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific;   Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,

   Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,

Next omit, which differs from it   Bona fide, alibi

   Gyrate, dowry and awry.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.   Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,

   Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion with battalion,   Rally with ally; yea, ye,

   Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.   Never guess-it is not safe,

   We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

Starry, granary, canary,

Crevice, but device, and eyrie,   Face, but preface, then grimace,

   Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;   Ear, but earn; and ere and tear

   Do not rhyme with here but heir.

Mind the o of off and often

Which may be pronounced as orphan,   With the sound of saw and sauce;

   Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?

Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.   Respite, spite, consent, resent.

   Liable, but Parliament.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,   Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,

   Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

A of valour, vapid vapour,

S of news (compare newspaper),   G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,

   I of antichrist and grist,

Differ like diverse and divers,

Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.   Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,

   Polish, Polish, poll and poll.

Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-

Is a paling, stout and spiky.   Won't it make you lose your wits

   Writing groats and saying "grits"?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel

Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,   Islington, and Isle of Wight,

   Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,

Saying lather, bather, father?   Finally, which rhymes with enough,

   Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??

Hiccough has the sound of sup...

My advice is: GIVE IT UP!