The Language of Windmills

This wasn’t what I had planned for today…but after the Dutch Prince Friso unexpectedly died two weeks ago, I switched gears.

The short version is that after being buried by an avalanche while skiing in Austria a year ago February, Prince Friso went into a coma and never regained consciousness.  He was 44 when he died.  Besides leaving behind his recently “retired” Queen Mother (now Princess Beatrix), his King Brother Alexander and younger brother Constantijn, he also left behind his wife and two adorable girls, ages 8 and 7.

It so happens Prince Friso was Protector (“guardian angel”) of the Dutch Windmill Association (just like his father Prince Claus before), and, out of respect to him, all Dutch windmills were at “standstill” from his death to his funeral this past August 16.

  

The “standstill” position of a windmill is what you see above from our De Hoop windmill here where we live.  It’s the eleven/five o-clock position--the position marking death and mourning.  It would be similar to hanging our flags at half-mast.

Not all windmill language is about death, of course.  In fact, far from it!

First of all, windmills in the Netherlands turn counter-clockwise when you face them.  I say “when you face them” because from the backside they’re turning clockwise.  It’s the way they’re designed, mainly for right-handed millers who will furl/unfurl the sails with their right hand.  [Ireland is the one country where they turn clockwise.  Maybe Catherine knows why?]

It’s a huge thrill for me to see a windmill turning because it means IT’S  WINDY.  But did you know that to maintain status in the windmill association, you hope to God it’s windy because your windmill is required to make 200,000 revolutions a year, whether it’s a working mill (draining water, sawing wood, milling grain) or for show!  So, yes, a meter counts out the turns.  If you make the mark, you receive subsidies to keep your windmill painted and in working order, which is of utmost importance to a country dependent on the charm of this historic icon.

When the windmill is not turning, the sails are left standing in one of 4 positions, more or less telling you what’s going on in that miller’s life:

1. If the sail is in the one/seven-o’clock position, the message is JOY.  It’s in the so-called “coming” (yup!) position before it reaches the highest point and usually signifies a celebration:  Marriage.  Birth.  Graduation.  Birthday.  A flag often accompanies this position from the highest sail.
2. In the midnight/six-o’clock position, or the vertical/horizontal position, the windmill is at “short rest” during a work period, like in milling grain, and will turn again as soon as the wind picks up.
3. After passing the highest point, midnight, the sails are then “going” and reach the eleven/five-o’clock position of death and mourning, as in the case of Prince Friso above.
4. In the ten/four-o’clock position, with sails at a 45-degree angle to the vertical, forming a St. Andrew’s cross, the mill is at “long rest,” allowing the miller to perform maintenance chores in and around the mill, often during the summer months.
   
   
   

There are 1150+ Dutch windmills in working order as we speak, more than any other country in the world, and with a database giving details on every single one.  They are still turned to wind by hand and use canvas sails.  None are motorized.

I always knew windmills were soulful to me but…talk about Vision and Verb!  Who would have thought a windmill could say so much!

Like an Angel Peeing on My Tongue

   Nuremburg, Germany, market square in March.

Every time we taste something so good we’re sure we’ve died and gone to heaven, Astrid says, “Als of er een engeltje op mijn tong piest.”  Loosely translated, “It’s like an angel peeing on my tongue.”

“How in Sam’s scratch can something so gross mean out-of-this-world delicious,” I asked her the first time she said it.  Her answer:  “Anything ‘angel’ is out-of-this-world good!”

Okay, then.

IDIOMS:  the utterly ecstatic and diabolical imps of language!   When words are combined in such a way that their figurative meanings can never be translated literally, they make the world go ‘round.

   

And that got me thinking about other Dutch idioms I hear almost every day here where I live (translated into English, of course):

You can’t walk on one leg.
(said when you offer second helpings of something)

What’s now hanging on my bike!
(what strange thing is happening now!)

Don’t put salt on every snail.
(don’t be a nag; don’t complain)

She got out of bed with the wrong leg.
(getting out of bed on the wrong side)

He was pulled off the toilet.
(he was talking nonsense)

The best pilots are standing on shore.
(back-seat drivers)

Be happy with a dead sparrow.
(be happy with nothing)

That is far from my bed.
(I don’t have to worry about it)

The sparrows dropped dead from the roof.
(it was so darn hot!)

Running the socks out of your shoes; driving the crease out of your pants.
(when the cars/bikes ride too close to you)

They’ll drive off the dike.
(when they see you looking/acting like that)

High water in the polder.
(pants are too short…”high-waters”)

You can walk over the heads.
(it’s so crowded)

He’s walking with windmills; he was hit by a windmill sail.
(he’s crazy)

He’s looked too deep into the glass.
(he’s drunk)

That person has loose hands; he should keep his hands at home.
(he’s always hitting someone; often refers to domestic violence)

Like pliers on a pig.
(nothing relates to anything)

Row with the oars you have.
(use what’s available)

And then Astrid will sometimes immediately follow with “You can’t say it to the Queen, of course” (it’s not proper Dutch).  HA!  And did you notice that sometimes the English meaning is also an idiom!

Surely you have your own idioms that make you giggle with glee and have one or two to share (with their meanings, of course)…unless you’re up to your ears in alligators and don’t have time?

A day not laughed is a day not lived!
(no translation needed)

Dutch Masters

This past week on my photography blog I did a series of these 3 rural Dutch scenes here in Holland, utilizing the PhotoShop craquelure texture to make them look like oil paintings.  When Astrid and I are out-n-about on our weekend car trips, I get inspired by what I see and sometimes can't help but "mess around" with my images, if I can get away with it.

But here is where it gets embarrassing (and shame on me for never taking an art appreciation class in college!).  I had heard the names of many painters all my life---like Rembrandt, Picasso, Dali, Vermeer, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Da Vinci, Raphael, Rubens, Botticelli---names that had meaning to me even if I couldn't tell you whose painting was whose.  However, it wasn't until later in my life that I ever connected "The Dutch Masters" to a country called Holland/The Netherlands...where I now live!

DUH!  Can you explain that...the disconnect we have sometimes between language and meaning.  How could I not connect that there are great painters from The Netherlands who are therefore called DUTCH masters!

That reminds me of something from my early Sunday School days when we sang the "We're going to the mansion on the happy day express" song.  "The letters on the engine are J-E-S-U-S" but what I always heard was "the letters on the engine:  R-J-E-S-U-S." When I finally got it later, I just laughed and laughed.  DUH!  Of course I know how to spell Jesus.

See, language plays tricks on us.  And I'm talking about our own Mother Tongue.  What tricks will Dutch play on me, I wonder!  My second language.  Actually, it's my third language.  Spanish is my second language, which I can speak much better and faster than Dutch.  There are times with Astrid (and even at school) when I know I need to make a non-English reply but my spontaneous, unconscious response will be Spanish.  I know the Spanish word, not the Dutch word.  I know that it's not supposed to be an English word.  HAHAHA!  It makes me laugh when I write it now but DUH!  Language.

Did you know that in English cows MOO but in Dutch they BOE (pronounced BOO).  [Maybe Eliza can tell us what they say in Swahili.]  Oh, and we in English take photos but in Dutch they make photos.  We write things down and they write things up.  We sleep in over the weekend and they sleep out.  Go figure.  This is the beauty and fun of language.

But back to "dutch masters"...there are none better for me than the windmills and the sheep...and anything else that sets foot in the polder.  That includes all the gates as well as the cows and rabbits and geese and swans (almost every polder/meadow has a pair of swans that mates there for life and never leaves).

There's nothing else like it for me.  It's an art museum I enter almost every weekend, ooohing and aaaahing...and I know every "master" by name! 

You Can't Walk On One Leg

As long as I can remember, I have always loved language.  The study of it, that is.  I must have gotten it from Mom who, for instance, not only read The Lord of the Rings trilogy but studied Tolkien's appendix of the language he created.  I never went that far, nor does it mean I speak languages (as in plural) but I do enjoy how they work and the mathematical formulas behind them.

Perhaps nothing charms me more about language than idioms--those peculiar expressions that have a meaning indirectly derived from the literal words and which almost never have a direct translation into another language.  Some examples are beating around the bush, chewing the fat, enough is enough, every picture tells a story, etc., etc.

When the idioms come from another language than my own, they often are funnier or more powerful because I've never heard them in quite the same way.  A missionary-linguist friend told me years ago, for example, that the Filipino tribal group with whom she worked would often say, "That's just like God!" whenever they'd read or hear something they didn't expect.  To this day, I still use that phase when something surprises me.

So far here in Holland, as I get situated into this new culture and language, no one idiom has charmed me more than the one I have now heard several times:  You can't walk on one leg! I've heard it mostly in the context of eating and kissing, as when offered a second cookie or kissed twice...because you can't walk on one leg.  In other words, you can't eat/have just one!

The one time, however, that takes the cake (see what I mean) was when Astrid and I ate at our favorite Greek take-out café here in our neighborhood.  While most customers come and leave quickly with take-out, there are 5 tables for those of us who like the atmosphere and eat in.  With that kind of intimacy, we have grown to know the owner, his son and his mother, all of whom keep the business hopping.  Two weeks before our wedding in February, we told them how excited we were that a date had finally been set...an excitement they appeared to share with us.  That meal we celebrated with a bottle of their Kechri wine because we loved the shape of it and decided we'd make it into an oil lamp...and even told them so.

At the cash register as we left, to our delightful surprise, the son (with father looking over his shoulder) handed us another bottle of the same wine, gratis, and said, with a big grin,  "You can't walk on one leg!"  It was their congratulations to us.

How can you ever forget an idiom like that!  It makes you want to be generous and go out and do random acts of kindness just so you can say it all the time.  Ahhhh.  The power of language.  We could have a feeding frenzy with it!