After these efforts I judged it wise to take a day or two’s rest from the actual practice of Dutch conversation till my nerves had recovered their tone, and until I had mastered more of the grammar and the idiom. I was the more concerned to do so as Enderby, to whom I had related my purchase of the pens, told me that my language on that occasion had been much too stiff and formal. For the purpose then of acquiring an everyday vocabulary I listened attentively to the talk in the streets and tram-cars. Most of it was unintelligible to me, but I caught up some vigorous and happy phrases here and there. These I soon learned to pronounce in a kind of way, but it was difficult to get at their exact meaning, for many popular idioms did not appear in my dictionary at all.

There was a vocable that occasioned me some perplexity—indeed a haze envelopes it still. It sounded like Eris, but had nothing to do with the Goddess of Strife. It doesn’t seem to have any particular signification, and you can introduce it anywhere to give a finish to your style. Some people were fond of evetjes, a word of the same class, on which none of my books shed the least light. Though my authorities were likewise silent about Toe! toe dan, I perceived that this was the proper expression for courteous appeal, and as such I have always used it, with confidence and success.

Two curious imperative moods, which were popular at the street corners, I did find in my grammar. They belong to that provoking category of words that, as you touch them carelessly, break up into smaller verbs and prepositions. I used to compare them mentally to those lizards that drop their tails when you handle them roughly. Only instead of tails these werkwoorden drop their voorzetsels, which turn up again unexpectedly in distant parts of the sentence. One of these “lizards” was schei uit, which means indifferently, ‘stop talking now’, ‘analyse it’ and ‘go away’. It was pleasant to hear so scientific a term as schei er uit or schiet nouw op (shoot up now, aim high) used so often. I soon became quite dexterous in employing them myself. On the whole I got little help from my dictionary in tracing out the idioms of everyday live. Two interrogative particles, for example, without which the lower classes, when excited, could hardly ask a question, were quite ignored both by Boyton and the Woordenboek. The were Zaliku and Woujeme. I was left to conjecture the force of these particles—that they were forcible I could see—might remotely resemble that of the familiar num or nonne of Latin.

Occasionally animated interlocutors became suddenly oracular: their flow of language stopped and they uttered some one solitary syllable such as Gunst! or heus! or mis! or raak! These single shots were often most effective, but I never could imitate them successfully. Ach! was safe mostly for “I’m sorry”; Och! for “I don’t care”; and I discovered a treasure in HÉ! That is a contraction for “Do you really mean it?” On the other hand HÈ! I found was “Shocking!” “How very dreadful!” When I used these little words I seemed never quite to hit the bull’s eye, however. Invariably I said either more or less than I intended. But I made very good play with pretty triplets like ’t zal wel, and schei er uit, and with expressions of approval: da’s leuk, aardig hoor, och kom. It gives a vivid local colour to your conversation if you drop in now and again a homely fresh idiom caught from the lips of the people. That prevents one’s vocabulary becoming too bookish. You can give quite a realistic flavour to your remarks by interjecting occasionally waarempeltjes or Wel van mijn leven! Among the encouraging ejaculations of every day I soon concluded that none was more likely to prove useful than “Zanik nou niet”, a popular favourite which one may render roughly by “Pray, don’t mention it”, “Don’t trouble about it”. This idiom has been simply invaluable.

Anomalies of pronunciation were not numerous, but they existed. Nouw, a common word, must be spelt nu; and the advice duwen, which was printed up on the inner door of the Post-Office, was pronounced douwe. Most enigmatical perhaps was the contrast between the barber’s notice on the window of his establishment, and what he said to you when you entered. Outside it was haarsnijden and never anything else. That is the printed form; inside, however, you must pronounce it haarknippen.

Still these are trifles compared with the real puzzles. I witnessed a street dispute one evening. It was about herring, I think, but I really couldn’t follow the one thousandth part of the vigorous debate. Picturesque idioms were bandied to and fro; happily no harm was done. One could not help noticing that the Grammar-book was right. Jij and jou were freely employed, and the disputants did not once address each other as U or UEdele. On that occasion there was another epithet or pronoun or interjection, which none of my previous studies had at all prepared me for. Turning it up in the dictionary as well as I could, I learnt that it might be translated by ‘lightning’, and that it was an ordinary noun. Next day I enquired of Enderby if the word for lightning could ever be employed as an interrogative particle or a pronoun. He was horrified and said “Please don’t be vulgar”.

“All right,” I replied, “I don’t intend to be, but what about that personal pronoun?”

“Hush!” he said. “Stop; it’s not a pronoun.”

“Well whatever it is,” I told him, “noun or pronoun, if you had heard it used as I did, you would admit that it was very personal.”

“Don’t be frivolous,” he retorted solemnly, “and let me give you a piece of advice. As long as you are in Holland never let anyone hear you utter that word. Say onweer or weerlicht. The other word is not decent, it is almost wicked.”

“There now; don’t be surly”, I reasoned, “the thing is in the dictionary.”

“Never mind. That’s for science or for poetry. Then it’s all right. But you had better have nothing to do with it. Try and forget it.”

I did try. But I didn’t succeed.

For the more trouble you take to forget a thing, the better you remember it. At least that’s my experience, and if I strain every nerve to get a word out of my head, it simply never goes! So if there be a Dutch noun that I recall accurately and without effort, it is just the scientific and poetical term for ‘lightning’.