Day 7: The Hague, Dutch Politics, and Language

Today we boarded a train to The Hague to learn about the political system of the Netherlands. I wish I could say that there was something else going through my mind this morning other than OH GOD WHY AM I UP SO EARLY, but unfortunately that is not the case. I hate waking up early. Absolutely despise it.

We got a tour of the Dutch House of Representatives, which has a very neat history to say the least. The Binnenhof, formerly known as the Hall of Knights, was one of the first buildings of The Hague in 1229. It took three generations to complete, with the final design being that of a church since one ruler wanted Catholic influences in the architecture. The building was originally intended for parties that were held after hunting.

With the republic government in power at the time, the Binnenhof’s purpose would later be modified to serve as a court. An example of a “trial” that took place would be between Maurits van Nassau and Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Maurits, the Prince of Orange, had Oldenbarnevelt tried. Oldenbarnevelt was found guilty and executed in the courtyard, and from then on, Maurits was sovereign ruler of the Netherlands.

When the Golden Age ended in 1672, the house was turned into a military school and stable for the French. Now imagine this…

Sadly, this is my only picture of the interior. :(

…turned into an indoor version of this:

Oh, and they’re storing these, too.

Horses, not little kids.

Needless to say, the place was trashed quite thoroughly. Its next purpose was to be a marketplace where the first lottery would actually be held. The people of The Hague finally decided that the Binnenhof needed renovating in 1850. However, it took 50 years to find the right person to do it: Pierre Cuypers. This same man planned the Rijksmuseum and Amsterdam Central Station.

Some other tidbits: The ceiling looks like a Viking ship because while they didn’t know how to make high ceilings that well, the Dutch did know how to make ships. The ceiling does kind of look like it is a ship turned upside down. Also, I have something in my notes about hats and how they were important. I apparently didn’t think I needed to write anything else, though. I'm told that people in the Hall of Knights would often wear crazy hats in order to increase their chances of making it on TV. That makes sense, I suppose. Hats have always been a status symbol, like in the recent royal wedding or in Team Fortress 2.

Taken from Mad Hatters: 13 Ridiculous Royal Wedding Hats.

I don't know when this blog became a shameless Team Fortress 2 plug, but I am totally okay with it.

The modern House of Representatives is actually split up into many buildings where meetings are held based on subject. There is also a bar in the lower level where politicians can talk about issues over a drink. It’s a very selective group, though. You have to be invited in, and it’s limited to politicians and journalists. There is to be no leaking of information, though, and members can lose their license if information gets out. It’s kind of like a secret society, or a frat.

The first thing that came up when I Google searched "politicians drinking". It's probably safe to assume these guys aren't Dutch.

The House of Representatives is voted on by the people. A multiparty system is currently in effect: there are ten parties dedicated to a number of beliefs…even one for animal rights! What tends to happen is that the larger parties seek compromise from the smaller parties to get a majority vote of 76. The main purpose of this elected body of people is to control the cabinet. Here's a picture giving you an idea of the party distribution.

NO I DIDN'T GET THIS FROM WIKIPEDIA WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.

We then received lunch and a lecture on US-Dutch relations from Peter Potman, the top advisor of the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs. The foreign policy theory that is kept in mind is managing decline. The world economy is in decline (as much as the US refuses to admit it) due to the fact that many of us borrow too much money that we cannot repay. There is also the event known as the “Rise of the Rest”, in which smaller countries are starting to grow and increase in power. There is also a lot of monetary instability, though the world is working on it with the International Monetary Fund. There’s also a national level to the financial crisis as well. There is a double deficit in both budget and trade, and global unemployment has recently reached 10%.

In terms of politics, global politics is in a state of multipolarity. This means that the more power a country has, the more influence it has. This leads to tensions and great power probing, creating an unstable world. On the national level, there is political infighting and polarization in Congress.

Okay, so we already knew that the world is heavily in debt and that politics is messed up on all sorts of levels, but what are the relations between the USA and the Netherlands? As Potman put it, the Netherlands has changed from a loyal ally to a capable partner of the United States. Both nations have interests in security, stability, and economic growth. They were allies during the Cold War, both combating the Iron Curtain. They changed to partners with the waning of United States power. There has been a greater focus on economic aspects and military missions, as well as progress toward women’s rights, Internet freedom, and the Middle East Peace Process.

The economic relation between the two countries relies heavily on the business policy of a very export-led economy. Another factor in this is the Top Sector Approach. That is, focus is given to the top nine sectors, which are agrofood, horticulture, high tech, energy, logistics, the creative industry, life sciences, chemicals, and water. There has been a move from subsidies to loans, as well as more generic dregulation. The Netherlands focuses on markets with the biggest potential (so right now, the United States and the European Union). They are also helping start international businesses go abroad.

The Netherlands have always had close ties with the United States: the Netherlands are currently the 7th export market to the United States. Imports from the Netherlands to the United States are increasing. The Dutch were also the third investor in the United States, and the United States are the number one investor in the Netherlands. California is actually one of the top three states benefitting from trade with the Netherlands.

After that, we visited the Maurithuis Art Museum. There were many paintings by some of the artists we learned about earlier. The most famous, of course, is Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring. There was also a very nice painting of a bird that I liked, and of course more Ruisdael paintings! I talked a lot about the painters in previous blog posts, so you can just look back a few.

We got to see the Panorama Mesdag painting, which was breathtaking. The painting is of the view of the North Sea and The Hague from around 1880. This was around the time that health-giving effects were first attributed to seawater. It was painted in less than four months with assistance from his wife and many painters from The Hague School of art. Mesdag then took the sketches he made and projected them onto a huge screen encircling an area to make the panorama. Restoration of the painting began in 1996 and took ten years to complete. A panorama painting…what an interesting concept! And this is the oldest one, which means there are more of them! I think I’d like to see more of these kinds of paintings in the future.

Finally, we visited the Dutch Language Association and received a lecture on the history of Dutch language. Dutch is a West Germanic language, meaning that it comes from a very old language group that was spoken by the majority of Europe. It has many characteristics in common with German and English. It is the native language of the Netherlands, Flanders, Surinam, and the South Caribbean islands. There are around 23 million native speakers of the language, and 6% of the EU can speak Dutch, making it the seventh most spoken language. However, most people (including the speakers themselves) believe Dutch to be a very small language.

Unfortunately, I was so exhausted by everything we did today that I was in this continual state of fading in and out of consciousness throughout the lecture. Here’s a picture of my notes, to give you an idea of just how bad my alleged narcolepsy is.

I wish I could make sense of this. :(

I know, embarrassing. Anyway, this embarrasses me as a linguistics major, so I decided to do some research on the language on my own. And by "research", I mean "looked through Wikipedia", but I know from experience that it's difficult finding reliable websites dedicated solely to the history of a specific language. Sadly, Wikipedia is probably the most reliable in these cases.

The Dutch language can be further categorized into Low Fraconian, a category shared with Limburgian. Both of these languages mix the characteristics of Low German and German. Originally, Low Franconian differed from Low German and German by a three-way plural verb conjugation. Now, the language has a single plural verb conjugation: -en. However, it still differs from German (who maintained the three-way split) and Low German (which differs in one of the tenses). In turn, Dutch gave rise to Afrikaans and some Dutch-based creoles.

While Dutch refers to the language as a whole, there are many dialects within the language (such as Flemish, commonly used in Brussels). The Dutch language was influenced heavily by the migration of peoples into the Netherlands upon its independence. The different provinces experienced different rates of this, though, so there are even different dialects within the Netherlands. The northern province of Friesland, for example, also recognizes Frisian as a language. Holland also experienced many changes in the Dutch language during the 16th century when Antwerp fell to the Spanish, forcing many to flee to this region.

Interestingly enough, Dutch usually does not have an official status in the colonies. In an earlier blog post, I wrote that the Dutch were only interested in business during their initial time in Indonesia, and not colonization or religion spread as other nations were. You can probably assume that this applied to language as well: the Dutch did not feel that teaching their language to the natives was a necessity. This changed during the cultivation system period, when the elites learned Dutch, the "language of power". There is still some influence, for while Dutch was dropped as a language when Indonesia gained independence, it is argued that some 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words. There are also many calques, or literal word-to-word translations of certain terms or phrases, that exist within the Indonesian language.

As for influence in North America, a dialect called Jersey Dutch was spoken on the east coast until around 1921. It was mostly based on Zeelandic and Western Flemish. You can click the link above to see a passage written in Jersey Dutch, modern Dutch, and English. Yes, it's from Wikipedia, but it doesn't matter. Why? Because shut up.

Now the more linguistic (specifically, phonology) stuff.

Dutch has 13 vowels, 4 diphthongs, and hella consonants. Dutch uses a lot of consonants that are not used in the English language, and is mainly known for its use in velar fricatives. What is a velar fricative? The velar region is used when you make sounds such as "k", "g", and "ng". Fricatives are sounds that involve constant air passage, such as "f", "s", and "sh". Now imagine combining the two. If the resulting sound is the mix between coughing up a hairball and an over exaggerated German mimicry, you're probably getting there. Uvular and glottal fricatives are used in Dutch as well, so imagine trying to locate the sound further back. Dutch demonstrates final obstruent devoicing (for example, a /d/ will sound like a [t] to an outside listener), a characteristic reflected in the spelling of some Dutch words, such as the plural huizen to the singular huis. Due to assimilation, the initial consonant of the next word sometimes becomes devoiced as well.

Syllable structure follows a CVC format, though Dutch words can begin with three consonants and some words can end with four consonants. Technically, this means that a syllable structure can look like CCCVCCCC. Put two words that look kind of like this together (Dutch also makes compound nouns similar to German), and things can look a little crazy. The Dutch word with the longest string of consecutive consonants is slechtstschrijvend, which means "writing badly". Yes, wut indeed.

So yes, interesting for me. Maybe not so interesting for you, but who knows?

Finally, finally, we arrived back in Amsterdam. I think I’m just going to go to sleep. I’m far too exhausted to even think about leaving the hostel right now.