Dutch Scrabble

My culture shock/reassimilation continues. After fixing my Dutch partner a bloody mary (which he commented was like drinking an odd, alcoholic soup), we sat down to play Scrabble. In Dutch, of course, which allowed me to "cheat" with the dictionary. Amongst the useful words I learned were "eigen teelt" or homegrown, the Belgian word for poofter, and "bink" meaing a hunk of a man. I seriously need to start taking lessons again or I'll end up sounding like someone with Tourets syndrome. My partner won by more than 100 points, catapulting me into a slight depression--especially when I leafed through my bilingual dictionary, noting there were 461 pages devoted to Dutch. An uphill battle, metaphorically of course, because there's no hills in sight...

I'm back!

After much too long a cyber hiatus, I'm back and all over my PC. I had a magnificent vacation--so good I somehow forgot I lived in Amsterdam and had to return to a cold spring and eventually, non-existent summer. But I'm content for the moment.

Thought I'd start with an easy entry. Now that I'm back, I've heard "lekker" and "leuk" all over the place, so thought I'd weigh in on "lekker."

The word "lekker" is usually one of the first Dutch words foreigners pick up—easily done after hearing it repeated ad infinitum (and to the untrained ear, it sounds a bit like “liquor.”) What’s the meaning? “Lekker” suggests great, attractive, cool, pleasant, enjoyable alluring, enticing, nice and, frequently, delicious—just about anything considered marginally above average. Applied to physical things, the word focuses on the idea of tastiness, like lekker eten (great food), lekker ding (nice piece of ass) or lekkere stoot (a hot chick/hunk, something you’d like to—or have--sampled.)