Grafisch Ontwerp

I would love to learn Dutch but I never could when I was there because of multiple events (the story would be too long to tell).

I do know simple stuff and I can manage to understand when reading. Understanding people speaking is more difficult because there are many accents and the sounds of the language are not very usual to me as a French speaker.

I remember last fall when I went back with my boyfriend, I used to order my food, my beer and ask questions of any kind. Patrick was impressed and so was I sometimes because I didn’t remember I knew so much and I realized that my Dutch learning had been subliminal (working at Sirene, reading the paper, trying to understand people having conversations). The sad thing is that as soon as people would talk back, I’d have a hard time to catch what they were saying.

I had already started to learn German before I went to the Netherlands (and it helped me a lot) and this is something I could easily continue as there are Goethe Institutes pretty much all-over the world. But I feel that learning Dutch would be more useful to me because one of my plans is to go back again and stay there for a while. I don’t know when yet but it’s definitively something I want to do.

I’ve been looking for a Dutch class here in Montréal and there are none. Then I asked the embassy for private teacher references. Any number they gave me turned out to be out of order. OK, so what I am supposed to do now?

You can ask yourself why the hell I want to learn this language that is only spoken by 24 millions people and also the fact that you can EASILY live there without knowing one word of Dutch (if you speak english). Well, it’s because I am linked emotionally to the country and to the works of Dutch people. If I am going to go live back there, I want to show some respect to their culture. I like that people moving in Québec speak French or at least make an effort to do so, therefore I ask myself the same when I go abroad.

If you can teach Dutch or if you know someone who does (in Montréal), please let me know.

If you are curious to hear what Dutch sounds like and hear the special accent from Rotterdam, go see this video about Gyz LaRivère explaining his project on giving Rotterdam his heart back.

Le studio néerlandais Autobahn (Utrecht) s’est amusé à créer de la typographie à partir de dentifrice, de ketchup et de gel, tout ça sur les bases de la merveilleuse Helvetica (oui, moi j’aime Helvetica).

Personnellement je n’utiliserai sûrement pas ces fontes mais ça ne m’empêche pas de trouver ça rigolo. Allez voir ce que ça donne ici.

Samedi dernier je suis allée voir l’exposition «Désolé, plus d’essence» au CCA (désolé, site en Flash mal fait). J’ai vraiment apprécié parce que, non seulement j’ai appris des choses que je ne savais pas, mais parce que j’ai constaté que nous sommes pris dans un loop.

En effet, la question de l’énergie a suscité un grand intétrêt dans les années 70; j’avais l’impression de me trouver en l’an 2050 devant l’exposition «Désolé, changements climatiques en vue» : énergie éolienne, panneaux solaires, maison enfouies sous la terre, etc.

Je vous recommande de vous y payer une visite et de prendre le temps de bien lire la documentation et de visionner les différents vidéos. Si cela vous dit, on offre une visite guidée les samedis. Je ne l’ai pas suivie mais il me semble que cela doit être intéressant dans sa complémentarité.

Vraiment dommage que la ville m’empêche de transformer mon appart…