Dutch Culture from Teenagers’ Viewpoints

63 © LCPJ PublishingVolume 3/1, 2010

European Citizens, from Diversity to Cooperation

Intercultural Project Application

Intercultural Project Application 1 in LCPJ

A very good example of interculturality between Holland and Albania commanded attention and the reward of publishing in LCPJ the beautiful hard work of the Dutch students lead by their English teacher, Hans Kal. Enjoy the structure, the fluent language, and the new cultural things from this unique open intercultural communication between teenagers!

Dutch Culture from Teenagers’ Viewpoints

Introduction Hi there!

We are Joey, Dirkje, Jonathan, Martijn and Dorien. And we are going to tell you something about the Netherlands. Maybe you’ve (never) heard about them. But, the stories that other people have about us (like our windmills, cheese, clothes, or even on every corner of the street a coffee-shop) aren’t totally true. Our culture is much more modern. We are a very well-to-do country, and we’re going to tell you something about our culture. Also, we are very curious about the typical culture and habits of your country, Albania. How is the weather there, have people also prejudices against Albania? We’re looking forward to your reaction!

First we will introduce ourselves:

Joey: Hi my name is Joey. I live in Zuilichem, that’s a small village near Zaltbommel. I like playing on my computer and watching TV. I almost forgot to tell, I am 15 years old and in November I will become 16.

Dirkje: Hi there I’m Dirkje and I’m 15 years old! I live in Wellseind and that’s the smallest Village I ever saw. We have a lot of pets, like cats, sheep, chickens, and we had goats. I love writing stories, that’s why I enjoyed this project. I have acting lessons too and I have ice-skating lessons in the winter.

Jonathan: Hi there I’m Jonathan. I originally come from Germany but I now live in the Netherlands. I live in Gameren and I’m 16 years old. I do a lot of things on my computer, like making films and animation. I hope you will learn more about us trough this project.

Martijn: Hi, I’m Martijn. I’m 15 years old. I swim matches and play bugle (that’s a kind of a trumpet) I live in Aalst, a small village ‘with three houses and a church. But I like it. So, that’s my life. I enjoy reading.

64© LCPJ Publishing Volume 3/1, 2010


Dorien: Hi there! My name is Dorien and I live in Zaltbommel. I am 15 years old and have two pets: a dog and a cat called Skippy and Lady. In my spare time I like to play music instruments, like flute and Er Hu (that’s a Chinese string instrument). I also play guitar and piano, but not often (once in a week or something). Then, I like also running and writing stories (that’s why I like this project and why my subjects are so long..) or just watch the television if I am tired. That’s my life, I think!

The Dutch History:

The ten time subjects:<3000 BC 1600 – 1700 Time of hunters and collectors. Time of the regents and kings Prehistory Golden Age3000 BC – 500 AC 1700 – 1800

Time of Creek and Romans: Time of the wigs and revolutions Antiquity ‘Verlichting’500 – 1000 1800 – 1900 Time of the Knights and the Monks: Time of the citizens and Steam engines

Early middle ages Industrialization1000 – 1500 1900 – 1950

Time of the States and the cities Time of WarsHigh and the late middle ages Second part of the 20th Century1500 – 1600 1950 – 2000 Time of the explorers and the reformers Time of Televisions and ComputersRenaissance and 16th Century Second part of the 20th Age

Explanation Vaderlandse History:

Romans in our country:

When the Romans came to our country, our Barbarian culture despaired for a while. The Romans made us more civilized. The Romans came toward the Maas, a Dutch River.

Karel de Grote in our country:

When Carle Magne came to our country, everything was different. He wanted to



convert our Barbarian people in the North of our country.

Beeldenstorm & the 80-jarige Oorlog (80-year war):

In the Netherlands were two religions; the Catholics and the Protestants. The Catholics were the master in our country. The Protestants weren’t allowed to pray openly. And when the climax came, there was the ‘Beeldenstorm’. The Protestants broke every statue in the catholic churches. Our king was in Spain, he was very angry, as a reaction against. He send Alva, he executed a lot of Protestants, ‘De 80-jarige Oorlog’ begins.

VOC: In 1602, the VOC (Verenigde Oost Indische Company) was founded. This was very important for the Netherlands. The VOC was very important for the Netherlands in the 17th century. In this period. The Netherlands was one of the most powerful and richest countries in the world. Because the VOC was a trade company, The trade over the world, and competed with powers like England and Spain. So, the VOC was very important for us. It was a time of great wealth.

Napoleon in the Netherlands:

In France, there was the ‘Verlichting’. This was a time when intelligent people began to tell that people have to think about things. Nothing is normal they said. In this period democracy was born. Napoleon, a lord after the verlichting captured the Netherlands and all the French ideas were in the Netherlands. Because of that his ‘visit’ is really important!

Ability to choose:

Part of the democracy.

WOII(world war the 2nd):

Big World War in Europe, Africa and Asia: SU, USA and GB fought against JAP and GER.

The Dutch Royal Family

The Netherlands have had a royal family for hundreds of years. Their name is “Oranje”, which means “Orange”. At the moment we have a queen, named Beatrix. She and her late husband Prince Claus have 3 sons, all of whom are married. Their firstborn son crown prince Willem Alexander, is heir to the Dutch throne. That means that when his mother retires or dies he will become King



of The Netherlands. Willem Alexander is married to Maxima, who originally comes from Argentina, but who now is Dutch. Together they have 3 daughters, Catherina Amalia age 7, Alexia age 5, and Ariane age 3.

The Dutch Royal Family is well liked and loved in The Netherlands. In fact there is even a national holiday to celebrate them, called Queen’s Day. It is on the birthday of Beatrix’s mother, but since it has become such a national holiday it was kept on that day ever since. But you will read more about that later on. So the Dutch Royal Family is a very important part of The Netherlands. In fact The Netherlands without its royal family? I couldn’t imagine it.

Down here you see a picture with some members of the Royal Family. You can see Willem Alexander and his wife Maxima on his right, the Queen in the middle and another son from Beatrix and his wife( his name is Constantijn and the name of his wife is Laurentien). In the front row you see several of the queen’s grandchildren.

Do you have a Royal Family in Albania?

Social life

We, the Dutch people, are very independent in our culture. ‘We don’t need any help!’, we say. In the Netherlands the family isn’t important for our social life. We see our family at the most at parties and special occasions. We don’t visit our family very often, compared to other cultures. We often speak to each other on Hyves and MSN. I hope you understand what it is, MSN? But on Hyves you can upload and send little messages (‘krabbels’ in Dutch) I don’t know if you’ve



ever heard about it? You always can look at www.hyves.nl! To be honest: we communicate very much online. Every day the PC is on, and most of the time we communicate when we are on the bike and at school. We also communicate a lot with the computer. Of course this is different for every person! But, generally you don’t go often to other people. And this is, I think, our social life in the Netherlands!

Rules

In the Netherlands, there are – I think – more rules than people. We just love making rules, but that also means we love to break the rules. There are rules everywhere. At school, at home, in the library, in restaurants, just everywhere! And everyone makes their own rules too. In games too, we don’t read the rules in the instructions, but make up our own rules. And of course we get into a discussion about the rules, because everyone has their own rules. But, I was talking about rules at school, at home, in the library and in restaurants. I hate the rules in the library of our school most! You have to whisper to each other, so the pupils who are there for studying, can study in silence. You must not eat or drink, or else you’re not allowed to go in again. If you want to use the computer, you must have your school card with you, and if you haven’t got it, you’re not allowed to use the computer. You can borrow only two books in each language, and not even one more! You have to pay if your book is in too late. I think there are too many rules in our library…

And our rules in the English lessons are not fair either. When we forget our book or don’t make our homework, we have to make detention-work or we have to go to the PM (PM is an abbreviation of Pedagogische Medewerker, which you can compare with a caretaker). And then the PM says we have to stay behind.

Not fair!

In restaurants, you can’t smoke. I think that’s a nice rule, because I hate smoking. It smells bad and it’s very bad for your health. But some people think it’s not fair, because they are smokers. I think they’re just stupid since they smoke, but that’s their own choice.

At my home, we have rules about cooking and cleaning. My little brother and me have to clear the table on Thursdays and Sundays and I have to cook on Saturdays. We also have to clean our rooms on Saturdays or Sundays. But, just like I said, we like to make our own rules, so I don’t think everyone has the same rules at home.



The text on this picture means: We don’t smoke ever since 1 July.

It’s a poster which hangs in restaurants or cafés.

Do you have so many rules in Albania too?

National Holidays

I’m going to tell you something about the national holidays in the Netherlands. We’ve got a lot of them, for example: Christmas, Sinterklaas, Carnival, Easter, New Years Eve and Queen’s Day.

Queen’s Day is a typical Dutch national holiday. We celebrate the previous queen’s birthday. Our present queen’s birthday isn’t on Queen’s Day, but because our queen’s day is so traditional, we still celebrate her birthday on Queen’s Day, even though it’s her mother’s birthday then. On Queen’s Day, there are a lot of flea markets in every city, town and mostly in villages too. You can bury second-hand stuff there or you can play games like koekhappen, that’s also typical Dutch, so I’m going to explain it to you:

Above you, there’s a very long clothes line but there are no clothes on it, instead of clothes, there are cookies on the line. Then you stand beneath the line and you try to get one of the cookies with your mouth. If you use your hands: you’re out! If you get a cookie, you can keep it.

Here you see our royal family playing “koekhappen” on Queen’s Day.



In the middle, you can see our previous Queen, Beatrix.

Well, that’s one of the very many games you can play on Queen’s Day. It’s also very funny that everything is orange, the national colour of the Netherlands. The clothes of the children are orange, the decorations are orange, even the cookies of koekhappen are sometimes orange! The whole of the Netherlands is orange on Queen’s Day. Last Queen’s Day, I saw a girl wearing a grey shirt with letters on it: Orange doesn’t look good on me. I think that’s a good example for how important orange is to us.

“Orange doesn’t look good on me” Everyone’s orange!

In my hometown, there’s nothing to do on Queen’s Day, but that’s because my hometown is a very, very little village with – I think – less than fifty houses. Because of that, on Queen’s Day, we go to a village further on and there we join the flea market. But, we don’t really SELL our second-hand stuff, we raffle it in a envelope lottery. I’ll explain to you how our envelope lottery works: We put numbers on our second-hand stuff and we put the same numbers in envelopes. Customers may buy the envelopes and if you’re lucky, you win a prize, because there are also envelopes with “You got the wrong one” or “Bad luck” on it. And believe me – it works! Everyone likes it and all our second-hand stuff is always sold out. We also get pocket money and it’s fun too.

I think that’s it for Queen’s day.



Now I’d like to announce our next topic:

Sinterklaas!

I really love this day! Sinterklaas is a very old man with a beard, a red coat and a red hat, called “mijter”. He lives in Spain and in the end of November, he comes to the Netherlands with his helpers: Black Peters (or in Dutch: “Zwarte Pieten”).

Sinterklaas and his Black Peters Sinterklaas

When Sinterklaas is in our country , all the children put their shoes under the stove (or the window, if you don’t have a stove) and when it’s night, Sinterklaas and his Black Peters run across the roofs. (It sounds very weird, now that I’m writing it myself.) The Black Peters are going through the chimneys and put presents in the children’s shoes. And in the morning the children run to their shoes and find a nice present and they scream through the chimney: ‘Thank you Sinterklaas and Black Peter!’ On December the fifth, it’s Sinterklaas’ birthday. But he doesn’t really like to get presents, he’d rather give them away. (Really, I don’t understand him at all!) That’s why every family gets a box with lots of presents for the whole family. December the fifth is called Pakjesavond in Dutch, or in English, it’s called: Presents Evening.

However…

That’s how adults tell their children the story of Sinterklaas…

In reality, the adults sneak to their children’s shoes, when the children are asleep, and they put the presents in the children’s shoes, instead of Sinterklaas and Black Peter. So, Sinterklaas is a beautiful and imaginative story, but Sinterklaas and his



Black Peters don’t exist. It’s all a play. I was heart-broken when my parents told me Sinterklaas didn’t exist. When the whole family doesn’t believe in Sinterklaas anymore, they make surprises for each other. Surprises are presents, hidden in a surprise, that’s something you make yourself, like a football of polystyrene (if the person the surprise is for likes football). On Pakjesavond people eat pepernoten and chocolate letters. Pepernoten are sort of spiced biscuits. And chocolate letters are of course letters made of chocolate. Mostly you get the first letter of your name as a chocolate letter. (It’s not fair, because the M is bigger than an I or a L!)

Pepernoten A chocolat letter

That’s enough of Sinterklaas, next is

Carnival

Carnival is a catholic national holiday and because the South of the Netherlands is catholic, we only celebrate it in the south of the Netherlands. Carnival is becoming popular in the North of the Netherlands too, but originally we only celebrate it in the South of the Netherlands. Luckily, I live in the South of the Netherlands, so I’m able to explain something about Carnival. Carnival is in the middle of February and every city and town in the south of the Netherlands has a different name from their usual one when it’s Carnival. For example Den Bosch, a town close to my hometown, is called Oeteldonk. And the town where our school is, Zaltbommel, is called Mispelgat. In a lot of towns and a few villages too, there are parades with people who wear strange clothes, they’re (for example) dressed as a frog or a muffin. It’s very nice to go to a parade! In the parades, there are also floats, that people have especially built for Carnival. At the end of a parade, people choose the coolest float and the coolest dressed up people and the winners get a prize.



A parade Two frogs on carnival (the right one is Dorien from “Dutch music” and “Entertainment”)

There are also lots of parties in discotheques or cafeterias where dressed up people come and have a party. When it’s Carnival, catholic people celebrate the beginning of their lent. But, I have to admit, that most of the people don’t even know what Carnival is about. They just like it and join the party.

Now I’m very curious about your national holidays in Albania. Could you tell us something about you national holidays?

Transport

In the Netherlands the lands are flat. This makes it easier to travel by bike. So many Dutch people have a bike and cycle every day to their school or to the places where they work, but only if that isn’t too far away from their homes. For a longer distance we take the train, the bus or the car. But travelling by car is sometimes hard, because you can stay in a very long line without moving (that’s called “file” in Dutch). This is every morning and evening around big cities and on important roads (that’s called “spitsuur” or rush hour in English). Because of this long lines, there are many people who take the train. This is most of the time quicker and you can have more fun, because you don’t have to look where you are going to.



On this picture you can see a Dutch file. The train is driving above it, so it don’t have to wait. So you can travel faster.

In the Netherlands we can let our cars or bikes stay at the station where we leave them, until we come back with the train and then we drive or cycle back to our home. When we often go to school by train, we can rent a bike to our destination. Another thing what’s very special about the Netherlands is that we have many rivers that cross the land. There are only two ways to go to the other side. The first is over a bridge and the other way is to take a ferry.

This is a bridge, it is in the same place a ferry

where our school stays.

In the Netherlands we have to pay if we want to take a ferry to the other side of the river. The most bridges in our country are free.

I have some questions for you. How do the people in Albania travel? Do they also use their cars or do they rather use the train? Could you tell us more about the way you go to school and if you go to another town how do you get there?

Entertainment in the Netherlands

Hi there! I am going to tell you something about the entertainment in the



Netherlands.

The people who live here amuse themselves in very different ways. One likes to sport in his or her spare time, the other likes to play computer games or watch the television. A few things of Dutch people for entertainment are: sporting (a couple of sports we like in the Netherlands: soccer, tennis, dancing, hockey, athletics), watching the television, playing computer games, doing things like MSN, hyves (that’s a kind of Twitter, Facebook, and if you don’t know both of them: those are sites on the world wide web, where you have an own account. On your account, you can put photos of yours, for example with your friends of your family, of just you alone. If you see a photo on the account of your friend and you like it, you can give a respect or reaction. You can also ‘ scrap’ your friends, as it’s called. That’s just a kind of mail, but by this it is that all your friends can read that message! (if they have nothing else to do..). And you can make a blog, and other things like that).

On this photograph you can see Dirkje (who wrote National Holidays and Rules) playing on computer

We also like playing an instrument (a few instruments we like to play are guitar, piano and a lot of more, but you can find that at Dutch music, but also going out, for example to a pub, stand-up comedian, musical, concerts, festivals, and things like that. About a festival I can tell you something more, just to give you an impression of it: every year, around Whitsun there is one of the biggest festivals in the world, called ‘Pinkpop’. First I will explain the name of it to you: Whitsun means in Dutch ‘Pinksteren’. So they took the first four points of the word and they put ‘pop’ behind it. Pop is just the genre of the bands and artists who come to sing there. Now, a hundred thousand of people from different provinces (and



some diehard fans of famous people who come to sing there come from another country) come for three days to Landgraaf, the place where it all happens. By Pinkpop there come every year other people to sing, or doing their things (the most of the people come to sing their song with their band, but the Metropoolorkest will come this year too). This year bands like Rammstein, Green Day and Destine will come, but also singers like P!nk, John Mayer and Mika. When I wrote this to you, it hasn’t been yet (it is around Wothsun, so this year it will happen on the 28th, 29th and 30th of May), so I’d better tell you something about last year. A couple of famous artists of last year were: Milow, Amy McDonald, The Killers, Katy Perry, Snow Patrol, James Morrison and Keane. Total there where 125.000 people to visit it. They were ‘divided’ on the three days, and one of that days the tickets were sold out in 18 minutes!

This is a photo of Pinkpop last year

I hope you had a clear impression of the entertainment in the Netherlands and of course to see you soon! By the way, I would like to know how the entertainment is in Albania, so I’m looking forwards to your reaction!

Dutch music

Hi there! I’ll try to give you an impression of typical Dutch music. I expressly say ‘try to’, because it’s a little difficult to explain it, you know, you’ve got a lot of different genres which Dutch people are singing. But real, typical Dutch music (and I don’t like it at all), sung in Dutch, is mostly very happily, and my opinion about it is that you only can enjoy it when you are drunk, but other people will have another opinion about it. I will give you an example: Jan Smit. That is a famous singer in the Netherlands, almost everyone knows him. His style of music is hardly to describe, but I’ll translate the first couplet and the chorus of one of a famous number for you, it’s called ‘Als de morgen is gekomen’, what means: ‘when the morning has come’:



Ik weet niet meer wat ik doe I don’t know what I’m doing anymore waar moet dat toch nou naar toe Where does it have to go soms loop ik maar te dromen Sometimes I’m just dreaming het is een ratjetoe It’s a mess

Mijn leven was naar de maan My life flew away meteen toen ik jou zag staan Just when I saw you standing there wat mij is overkomen What has happened to me kan ik niet langer aan I can’t take it any longer

Als de nacht verdwijnt en de zon weer schijntAls ik jou zo zie, klinkt een symfonie En je weet hoe veel ik van je hou When the night disappears and the sun is shiningHeel mijn hart staat open voor jou When I see you, there sounds a symphony And you know how much I love you My whole heart is open for you

If you want to hear the whole song you can follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ou5VAaEhKQ

Another famous Dutch singer is Marco Borsato, he makes and sings in a very different genre compared with Jan Smit, I like his music more than that of Jan Smit, but that´s my view on it. I will also translate a song of him for you, called ´Stop de tijd´, what means ´Stop the time’. I will translate the first couplet and the chorus:

Stop the timeI don’t want that tonight becomes tomorrow

That this moment becomes a past far awayI never want to lose this

Stop the timeStop de tijd Ik wil niet dat vanavond, straks weer morgen word Dat dit moment ooit tot een ver verleden wordt Ik wil het nooit meer kwijt. Stop de tijd. Life brought us together, to this point tonight

I’ve dreamed of it, but I’ve never thoughtThat every step and every decision ,

that I took till now,



Would lead to this Het leven bracht ons samen, op dit punt vannacht. Ik heb ervan gedroomd maar ik had nooit verwacht. Dat elke stap en elk besluit, dat ik tot nu toe nam, mij leiden zou naar hier. With you

TonightAll stars seams to stand on the right place

So close to youTill the sun is rising

Oh, I never want to lose itStop the time tonight

Met jou. Vanavond. Lijken alle sterren op de juiste plaats te staan. Zo dicht bij jou, tot de zon komt. Oh, ik wil dit nooit meer kwijt. Stop de tijd vannacht.

If you would like to listen to this song, you can go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cs4RbseWrQ

If you look to the text of both songs, they seems not very different of each others, but if you listen to the music, you will hear that the first song is a very happily song, while the singer of the second song wants to bring it very sensitive (and that’s why I don’t like the first one). So these songs are ‘ typical Dutch’. Of course you’ve got other singers who have another genre, but the most of them sing their songs in English. A couple of examples are: Anouk (she’s a rock chick’, as most of the people call it, her genre is therefore rock), or Esmee Denters (maybe that you know her songs, she’s also popular in America, her genre is pop). So this is typical Dutch music we listen, and of course, a lot of people in the Netherlands like to play a music instrument by themselves! For example playing the piano, guitar, trumpet, flugelhorn (it looks like a trumpet, but it isn’t the same, what a lot of people think), flute, clarinet, thin whistle, recorder, ukulele, piccolo, violin, cello, bass guitar, or even accordion.



This is an example of a thin whistle

And yes, maybe you can guess it: there are such a lot of different genres! You can think of classic, but also rock, or even metal, jazz, musical, pop, Folks music and a lot of more. I think there are much more genres for an instrument you play by yourself than the genres of singers, if you can follow me (I find it a little difficult to explain, but in brief: there are a lot of different genres!) And now I am really curious about which kind of music you listen in Albania, and which kind of instruments you play, so I’m looking forwards to your reaction.

The religions in the Netherlands

Hi there! I will tell you something about the religion in the Netherlands. First, I will tell you a little history about it. Religion is nowadays not as important as it used to be. Until 1960 almost everybody was either Protestant or Roman Catholic. The Netherlands are split up in 12 provinces. On this plan you can see them:

Provinces like Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe, Noord-Holland and the other who lay in the northern part of our country, were mostly Protestant. And maybe you can guess my next point now: the provinces in the southern of the Netherlands (like Noord-Brabant and Limburg)



were mostly Roman Catholic. They had both their own habits and traditions. For example: the people who were (and it still happens) Roman Catholic celebrate ‘Carnaval’. Maybe you’ve already heard about it? Or do you celebrate it too? If you don’t know what it is, you can read it under the heading ‘National Holidays’. So Protestant and Roman Catholic were the two most important religions, there were actually no others. Maybe a couple of ten people were Islamic or something. Nowadays you’ve got a lot of different religions, I will call them, but I don’t know if you know them or if you’ve ever heard about them at all: you’ve got of course Roman Catholic. 4.406.000 people in the Netherlands have that religion (that’s around the 27,5 %). Some important days for people who have that religion are: Christmas, Carnival, Easter, Whitsun. The holy day for them is on Sunday. I’ve heard there aren’t people who have the religion ‘ Protestant’ in Albania (is that true? Please let me know, I am really curious!) So I will explain it to you. Protestant is like Roman Catholic, but a Christian movement, and is lead away of ́ Protestari´, that means ́ Witness´ in Latin. In the Protestant religion they follow very preciously the things that are described in the Bible. Deeply religious people don´t celebrate Sinterklaas (if you want to know what ‘ Sinterklaas’ is, it is a traditional Day, for more information about it you can read ‘ National Holidays’ ). There are also many people who are Protestant, over the 1.944.000 people (and that’s around the 12,2% to give you a picture of it). A few important days for that people are: also Christmas, Easter and Whitsun. I hope you understand a little what Protestant is, if you still don’t understand you can of course always ask it through the e-mail, and one of us will answer so soon as possible. Now you’ve got another religion in the Netherlands: Judaism. That’s the religion of the Jewish people, who are one of the eldest monotheistic religions. As the Protestant and Roman Catholic people the Jewish people also believe in God, and a few of the important Days are also Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, but the habits and traditions are really different of that of the Protestant and Roman Catholic religion. Also you can’t ‘ just become’ Jewish, for that your mother has to be Jewish, than you are automatically Jewish too. Some people think they’re Jewish, but then actually only their father is Jewish, so officially they aren’t. I hope you can understand me a little bit, because it is very complicated, so I won’t talk very long about it, but I can tell you something about the Jewish Holidays. In March they celebrate ‘ Poeriem’ , which you can compare with Carnival. In April they celebrate ‘ Pesach’ , what takes 7/8 days. On those days they celebrate the liberation of the Israelites from slavery and exodus from Egypt. If you compare this information about the Judaism with the Protestant and Roman Catholic religion, you can see it is very different. The holy day for this people is on Friday. There are around the 43.000 Jewish people in the Netherlands, which is a very low amount (0,2% of all the Dutch people in the Netherlands). You have also the Islamic religion: there are totally 724.000 (4.5% of all Dutch people in the



Netherlands) people in the Netherlands who have that religion, 428.000 (2,7% of the Dutch people) of which are Turkish and 296.000 (1,9% of all the people who live in the Netherlands) Moroccan. For these people Saturday is the holy day. And then there are the Hinduism with 100.000 till 215.000 (0,63% till 1,34%) supporters, and the Buddhism with 170.000 supporters (1,06%), and the other people are Atheist (that means they don’t have a religion). So I hope you know now a little more about the religion in the Netherlands, and I am very curious if there are in Albania also such a lot of different religions, and which religions are there in your country? And are you a supporter of a religion? I’m looking forwards to your reaction!

Language

In the Netherlands we speak our own language; in English they call it “Dutch”. For the most people from another country Dutch is a difficult language, because we have a lot of rules for our grammar. And for some English words we don’t have a Dutch word. People speak Dutch in a few countries around the world, for example in the Netherlands and in Belgium. The people in Suriname, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles and in south Africa can also speak Dutch. This is because these countries were colonies from the Netherlands for a long time. The Dutch language is contacted to the German language. In the Netherlands we call the German language “Duits” this sounds very much like the way you say Dutch. Both of these words come from the Germanic word ”Diets” what national language means. The Dutch language sounds a lot like the German language. The eldest written Dutch words go back to 1100 and they sound much like old English. But a lot of things changed. In ‘De 80-jarige Oorlog’ (read the topic “Explanation Vaderlandse History”) people from all over the Netherlands moved to Holland. There were so many different kinds of Dutch which makes talking a bit difficult. The leaders of Holland wanted one official Dutch language because they wanted to make talking to the nation a lot easier. This was also a big step for the Netherlands to work together against Spain. Nowadays we have a language with many rules.

This was a bit about our language. Does your language have so many rules to? And has it also a special history which is interesting to tell us about?

Conclusion

Dorien wrote the topics: entertainment and music. She also wrote the introduction with Martijn. Martijn wrote the topics history and social life, he made the lime line too. Jonathan wrote the topics about religion and royal family, he corrected the spelling with Dirkje. Dirkje wrote the topics national holidays and rules. She



also wrote the conclusion with Joey. Joey wrote the topics about transport and language.

Did we like this project:

Of course we did! However Dirkje and Joey liked it. Jonathan liked it too but he had too little time for it. Martijn thinks it was great. Dorien liked it too, but first she didn’t know Albania existed (but she says she’s bad at topography). Our work wasn’t bad, but Jonathan and Dirkje forgot to send the corrected topics to Martijn, who had to print them. We are all interest in culture, so that wasn’t a problem. We also learned something about our one topic while we wrote it.

We hope you enjoyed our stories about our culture!

We hope you write back soon.

Greetings from Holland!

The total number of words is 5873

© LCPJ Publishing 2010 by Hans Kal & his students

Hans Kal is an English teacher at Scholengroep Cambium, Zaltbommel, The Netherlands (Holland). He is in charge of the Comenius Project entitled “European Citizens, from Diversity to Cooperation” . [email protected] www.cambium.org

Documents

Dutch Culture from Teenagers’ Viewpoints