boerenkool

My stats showed an all time high. And only because I wrote an entry about the word "oma" being one of the last Dutch words still common among third generation Dutch immigrants. I would never have guessed this would arouse so much interest. It's become a freaking meme, all sorts of language blogs in Holland have picked it up. So I'll tell you some more, since you're so interested. About the corner store in little Portugal that sells "stoepkrijtjes". They can even pronounce it. (Much unlike the beerstores selling Grolsch and Hoegaarden) The Portuguese shop sells all sorts of Dutch products, griotjes, hagelslag... One day I asked them why. The answer was very profanic, there are enough people to buy the stuff, so they sell it. I think they buy it off Niemeyer, the only official Albert Heyn importer, who has a store in the suburbs where you can eat Tom Poezen and broodjes haring. There's approximately 70.000 Dutch descendants living in Toronto alone, so you really would expect a little more than one shop in the suburbs. But Dutch immigrants have allways been known for having spoken their last Dutch word before getting off the plane that got them here. Unlike any other immigrating nationality. So nobody should be amazed that the Dutch expect all immigrants to their country to assimilate immediately. Some things are stubborn though. The words oma and opa, and fooooood. Boerenkool! It's called kale here, but I have seen labels with some strange phonetically spelled distorted I don't remember how "boerenkool". Once a Chinese woman asked me what it was and how to cook it. I explained and the disgusted look on her face! She didn't buy it. My Dutch friend Bianca -she's a professor at the university of Scarborough for god's sake- did not know she could buy boerenkool in Canada. Why? She didn't recognize it in the uncut version. OMG. We had some Dutch friends over for dinner tonight. Real Dutch Canadians, they can't even pronounce their own last names, now isn't that tragic. Verheul, try say that if you're not Dutch. Not possible. I asked her if she knew of some surviving Dutch vocabulary. Sure, she remembered her mother saying "ouwehoer" all the time. For the longest time she didn't know it meant old whore. And when going back to Holland for holidays her mother used to warn her to not say "vuile klootzak" like she often did. I tell ye, the old days. Nowadays the "f" word gets children suspended from school. My dear father-in-law the chess champion still remembers the first English words he ever heard. From a Canadian soldier, at the end of world war II. With an unwilling motorcycle: "Fuck! The fucking fucker won't fuck!"

Oh Ineke, if you read this, do you know if they sell tuinbonen in the St Lawrence market?