PM's Target Europe - FR, NL and on again off again NO

[Gustav Aschenbach]

Hi Peter

If you really need that certificate and are serious about going to Belgium, I think you've made the right decision. But to be honest, 1.5 hours of desk study every single day seem a lot to me. I couldn't sustain that. Dutch is a Germanic language after all, so attaining a B2 level should be easier than with French.

The more Dutch the better without destroying my French.

Yea but don't exaggerate.

[tungemål]

I think it is a good idea to focus on Dutch first. Studying both Norwegian and Dutch might lead to confusion since they are rather similar. When I was living in Holland I studied Dutch and also decided to brush up on my German, and it was hard to keep things separate in those languages.

Another thing is that there are many loanwords in Norwegian coming from Dutch, mostly sailing and ship vocabulary.

[Tristano]

Hoi Peter,
Hoe gaat het? Ik doe op dit moment niks met nieuwe talen (of 'oude' die wel wat studie eisen), maar ik kom af en toe hier en ik las net dat je echt serieus met het Nederlands bent. Gaat het goed? Wat zijn, als ik mag vragen, de aspecten van de taal die je de moeilijkste vindt? Wat is jouw grootste frustratie? (Iedereen die het Nederlands studeert wordt gefrustreerd voor de ene of de andere reden)

[PeterMollenburg]

heures d'apprentissage mars 2020
NL 32,35 (204,54)
FR 37,00
NO 9,07
= 78,42

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hoi Peter,
Hoe gaat het? Ik doe op dit moment niks met nieuwe talen (of 'oude' die wel wat studie eisen), maar ik kom af en toe hier en ik las net dat je echt serieus met het Nederlands bent. Gaat het goed? Wat zijn, als ik mag vragen, de aspecten van de taal die je de moeilijkste vindt? Wat is jouw grootste frustratie? (Iedereen die het Nederlands studeert wordt gefrustreerd voor de ene of de andere reden)

Hoi Tristano,
Wat leuk om van jou te horen...

Volgens mij, tegenwoordig is niks heel moeilijk. Maar ik denk dat de reden is omdat ik veel nederlands nog in mijn geheugen heb. Hoewel, misschien kan jij veel fouten hier met mijn Nederlands zien?

In 2011 toen we in Nederland waren, vond ik het vaak moeilijk om iets eenvoudigs te zeggen omdat ik altijd over de volgorde van de woorden moest denken. Maar met de tijd wordt het bijna automatisch.

Nu dat ik dat gezegd heb, er zijn nu twee problemen - tijd en woordeschat. Niet genoeg tijd om meer te leren en een beperkte woordenschat, die ook een probleem van niet genoeg tijd is.

Hoe gaat het met jou in NL?

[PeterMollenburg]

I think it is a good idea to focus on Dutch first. Studying both Norwegian and Dutch might lead to confusion since they are rather similar. When I was living in Holland I studied Dutch and also decided to brush up on my German, and it was hard to keep things separate in those languages.

Another thing is that there are many loanwords in Norwegian coming from Dutch, mostly sailing and ship vocabulary.

Thanks, tungemål. I hope your language learning is going well. Yes, I think it's a wise choice and I'm very keen to some day returning to learning both Norwegian and Spanish. Hopefully by then my background in both FR and NL will give me a good boost for NO and ES.

[Tristano]

Hoi Tristano,
Wat leuk om van jou te horen...

Volgens mij, tegenwoordig is niks heel moeilijk. Maar ik denk dat de reden is omdat ik veel nederlands nog in mijn geheugen heb. Hoewel, misschien kan jij veel fouten hier met mijn Nederlands zien?

In 2011 toen we in Nederland waren, vond ik het vaak moeilijk om iets eenvoudigs te zeggen omdat ik altijd over de volgorde van de woorden moest denken. Maar met de tijd wordt het bijna automatisch.

Nu dat ik dat gezegd heb, er zijn nu twee problemen - tijd en woordeschat. Niet genoeg tijd om meer te leren en een beperkte woordenschat, die ook een probleem van niet genoeg tijd is.

Hoe gaat het met jou in NL?

Nou, veel fouten zie ik niet, een paar foutjes hier en daar maar niks ernstig. Het ziet goed uit! Jouw taalgebruik verraadt je een beetje, maar het is normaal, helemaal verwacht en absoluut niet erg.
Het gaat goed hier in Nederland en gelukkig zijn de effecten van de Coronacrisis niet als groot als in andere landen. Verder moet ik vanuit huis werken en moet ik dus gedeeltelijk werken en gedeeltelijk voor de kinderen zorgen, wat niet ideaal is. Maar we genieten van de mooi weer en we spelen lekker buiten en wandelen in de natuur.
Mijn oudste dochter (3 jaar) spreek bijna alleen Nederlands trouwens, dus ik ben gedwongen om mijn Nederlands te verbeteren, en op werk moet ik volledig in Nederlands communiceren. Ondanks deze omstandigheden maak ik nog fouten en klink ik nog steeds buitenlander.
Dus maak je geen zorgen Het is veel tijd nodig en perfect worden is heel erg lastig - vooral als je, weet je, een leven hebt
Hoe gaat het bij jou?

[PeterMollenburg]

My languages are present but not currently at centre stage. My family has grown as I briefly mentioned in a previous post so my language learning focus has been less and my time for learning significantly less. It seems also that much of what I touched on in my previous log with relation to controversial topics or conspiracies now seems blaringly obvious to me, global and omnipresent. Good thing I'm now down to two languages.

Welcome to 1984 - I actually jumped online the other day and bought George Orwell's classic and Aldous Huxley's classic Brave New World (in French Le meilleur des mondes) both in French. I prefer paperbacks as opposed to digital lately as I'd been avoiding my digital copies. I have seen the evidence that this global system of (in many aspects digital) control is now in fully fledged Orwellian operation. Information is power, lack of information is power, misinformation is power, half truths create believers, statistics are manipulated and fear is paramount to meeting objectives. Whether I find the time to delve into these books remains to be seen, but better off owning them than not if there's any chance at all.

That's French, but on the other hand, Dutch learning has been reduced to Assimil Dutch with Ease paperback and a digital copy of Le Nouveau Néerlandais sans peine. I'm enjoying it when I do do it and in particular I'm really enjoying translating the exercises from Dutch to French and back to Dutch. However, as mentioned I'm busy and other things are going on in the world of which I cannot avoid being a part of...

... I have been working in close contact with high risk potential candidates for Covid-19 as a health care worker, but no not in intensive care, so nothing worrying. I know what's going on on the ground, I watch the media in spurts, I read behind the scenes of the official lines and know there's information we are not receiving. I almost cannot believe what is unfolding and am almost expecting to wake up from a bad dream. I am not a denier. I do sympathize with the unnecessary devastation of lives and livelihoods at play, but there's more to this than meets the eye. I'm sad somewhat for my children for what the world is becoming and I have doubts I'll ever get to use my languages abroad as I had hoped. But my learning with the kids continues. And their Dutch is improving gradually.

To end this post, I've been fancifully exploring potential candidates of countries to emigrate to based on freedom and liberties should that need and possibility arise. A quick side note - right now I'd love to have Russian, Spanish (Cuba/ Vz) and even Mandarin under my belt to explore other versions of media. Back on track, according to cato's The Human Freedom Index and Wikipedia's List of Freedom Indices combined with a personal bias, these countries are candidates: New Zealand, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden with Norway and Luxembourg added at a stretch mostly because I just want them to make the cut and they are not far down the index. I don't deny that Australia is one of the better places to be right now, but nothing like Covid-19 to make me question the value of languages based on a new set of priorities or ideals. Stay calm on the inside as the outside is... is... what you make of it...

[Gustav Aschenbach]

I know what's going on on the ground, I watch the media in spurts, I read behind the scenes of the official lines and know there's information we are not receiving. I almost cannot believe what is unfolding and am almost expecting to wake up from a bad dream.

Could you tell us what you mean?

[PeterMollenburg]

I know what's going on on the ground, I watch the media in spurts, I read behind the scenes of the official lines and know there's information we are not receiving. I almost cannot believe what is unfolding and am almost expecting to wake up from a bad dream.

Could you tell us what you mean?

No. Not directly. It's too difficult and troublesome and I can never be sure of my statements.

I inflate my importance, yet ironically have not realised my own grandeur. My ego wants to be perceived as a holder of great knowledge - pay no attention, my ego is full of itself and would serve me better ignored. Most people are troubled by their minds, most don't realise it. I am no exception, I am troubled, although I know it. As opposed to an answer that could either make me look very stupid (which I may well be), reckless or simply land me in hot water I'll instead let some others do the talking and leave you with some quotes from some of my favourite books (and my favourite movie), some of which I have never read, which in turn may make me look very odd at least and that's not such a bad thing nowadays.


You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.
-Ray Bradbury

Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.
All problems are illusions of the mind.
-Eckhart Tolle

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
-The Matrix

Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?
[Takes a bite of steak]
Cypher: Ignorance is bliss
-The Matrix

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them
-Aldous Huxley

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
-Eckhart Tolle

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle
-George Orwell

We laugh at sheep because sheep just follow the one in front. We humans have out-sheeped the sheep, because at least the sheep need a sheep dog to keep them in line. Humans keep each other in line. And they do it by ridiculing or condemning anyone who commits the crime, and that’s what it’s become, of being different.
-David Icke

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind
-George Orwell

The greatest prison people live in is the fear of what other people think.
-David Icke

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
-George Orwell

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
-George Orwell

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious
-George Orwell

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
-George Orwell

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.
-George Orwell

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship
-George Orwell

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.
-Eckhart Tolle

...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution
-Aldous Huxley

...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....
-Aldous Huxley

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
-Aldous Huxley

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.
-Aldous Huxley

When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them
-Aldous Huxley

This concern with the basic condition of freedom — the absence of physical constraint — is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free — to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.
-Aldous Huxley

The reason we are so controlled is not that we don't have the power to decide our own destiny, it is that we give that power away every minute of our lives. When something happens that we don't like, we look for someone else to blame. When there is a problem in the world, we say "What are they going to do about it". At which point they, who have secretly created the problem in the first place, respond to this demand by introducing a 'solution' - more centralisation of power and erosion of freedom. If you want to give more powers to the police, security agencies and military, and you want the public to demand you do it, then ensure there is more crime, violence and terrorism, and then it's a cinch to achieve your aims. Once the people are in fear of being burgled, mugged or bombed, they will demand that you take their freedom away to protect them from what they have been manipulated to fear.

Create the problem, encourage the reaction "something must be done", and then offer the solution. It is summed up by the Freemason motto 'Ordo Ab Chao' -order out of chaos. Create the chaos and then offer the way to restore order. Your order. The masses are herded and directed by many and varios forms of emotional and mental control.

When we give our minds and our responsibility away, we give our lives away. If enough of us do it, we give the world away and that is precisely what we have been doing throughout known human history. This is why the few have always controlled the masses. The only difference today is that the few are now manipulating the entire planet because of the globalisation of business, banking and communications. The foundation of that control has always been the same : keep the people in ignorance, fear and at war with themselves,. Divide, rule and conquer while keeping the most important knowledge to yourself.
-David Icke

La liberté c'est la sécurité, la sécurité c'est la surveillance, donc la liberté c'est la surveillance
-Jean-Christophe Rufin

Look at the baby,
Clean, fresh and trusting.
It can teach you how to seek
Happiness through love,
Not through man-made dreams.
The babe is a picture
Of perfection and innocence,
Until you begin to teach it the Illusion,
And to gradually fall asleep
With the rest of Humanity.
You expect others to behave as you;
But what is behavior?
Nothing but a carbon copy of all others,
Who, like you,
Accept the reality of the Illusion
Over many millennia.
When you wake to the truth of your Being,
Moving your consciousness through the Vortex,
And surrender all desire to the Light,
You will become as a small child. 
Wide eyes, seeing the truth of existence,
Unhampered by education and
Man-made rules,
Which cloak and cloud all that is
One Light. 
-Sizzond Zadore

I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats
-Eckhart Tolle

No one rules if no one obeys.
-David Icke

[Cavesa]

I wish you a lot of strength. I am extremely lucky for someone in the healthcare, I am really well "hidden" (but yeah, I was in contact with covid+ too, nowhere is totally safe), but you seem like you are not. It's not just about those in the ICU. Don't underestimate the situation, protect yourself as much as you can. I live in one of the most hit regions of France, and it is really happening, the danger is not exaggerated. Yes, I am scared about the future after this too, including travelling and free movement. But that's why we'll need a strong pressure on the politicians in every country. We must not exchange our freedom for false promises of security. As there is now a second wave of covid in China (good bye sweet dreams about herd immunity), such promises are false anyways. And we are seeing already how much damage are the closed borders doing too.

As I said before, I find your choice of languages great. Don't forget to also read something by the Russian opposition or random citizens and healthcare workers. Nope, they are not doing fine, they are not handling the pandemia better (it just started later) and they are not any freer than us.

The world will change, but we'll see. I wouldn't give up on any language, your dreams might actually be easier to achieve after this, as you are a nurse. Europe will be hungry for nurses and other healthcare workers, and it has even started rethinking some of the bureaucracy and economic strategies. Not all the changes will be for the worse.

And multilingual people will be extremely important. More and more people are finally realising the power of the internet, to just listen to somebody with 1st hand experience with something, rather than just the filtered and translated news. We'll need languages in the months and years to come.

Take care.