Nijmegen, the Netherlands

DISCLAIMER: The following post and — unless I indicate otherwise — all posts for the rest of the summer will be written for and published on the Penn State Center for Language Science site. Because NSF money is paying for this research trip and the medium is a scholastic one, my writing will exclude some of the less than academic activities I’m undoubtedly going to get into; I have to keep it G-Rated. Nevertheless, I’ll try to keep it from getting too dry. Happy reading! 

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First off, right out of the gate, as a budding linguist it seems appropriate to share that the city is pronounced NIGH-may-hen (and depending on what part of the country you’re from there’s some variation with the final “-gen”), but never a hard “j” in “Nij-.” And that’s about the entirety of my knowledge of Dutch. As many Dutch people have told me, the Dutch enjoy speaking English and can occasionally be impatient with foreigners attempting to practice Nederlands (or how the Dutch say “Dutch” in Dutch).  These interactions have happened of course, in English. Besides those minor and predictable linguistic differences, I have only good things to say about the people I’ve met so far — in English or any other language. I’ve been in the country for about a week and half now, living (until tomorrow, actually) in a rented room of a wonderful host named Wibe (try pronouncing that one) near Nijmegen’s city center. Beginning my stay off of Radboud University’s campus has given me license to conduct a self-guided biking tour of the surroundings. What I’ve found are markets and parks and churches and trees and gardens and bridges with cityscapes and beaches and all of this appears almost impossibly beautiful. After we Americans accidentally bombed Nijmegen in World War II, mistaking it for a German stronghold (it IS very close to the border — whoops), the Netherlands’ oldest city had some cleaning up to do. And clean up they have. Old architecture and new, impressive infrastructure make Nijmegen a very nice place to live. 

view from the bridge into town

The bike ride to campus isn’t too bad on the eyes either. So far at Radboud the majority of my work has been independently transcribing and coding the data I collected in Colombia. I have, however — alongside my fellow field-researchers Mary Beth and Melinda — attended some meetings with presentations by members from labs with names spelled in colorful acronyms: LinC, CLS, MPI, and BRC. Just yesterday, the three of us were invited to a PhD dissertation defense, here called by the more friendly title, a “promotion.” The event was held in a cosy auditorium on Friday afternoon. The candidate walked to the front with her two advisors. Suddenly, a bell sounded and room silenced. We were instructed to stand as a procession of important-looking people paraded from the doors adorned in the garb of the tradition of Middle Ages academia. In other words, they were wearing wizard robes. (Here is an article with a more thorough description, plus pictures!)  The “examiners” asked the candidate questions about her work, mostly as a formality; she’d already made the grade. Although I didn’t quite catch the portions presented in Dutch and Latin, after sitting through the ceremony and watching the new doctor of linguistics attach those three magic letters to her name, it was impossible not to get chills. 

There's more a'coming. So, keep your eyes peeled for the next post from the Netherlands.