3 Comments

• Peter Martin 14th Dec '18 - 9:34am

  Thanks, that was very clever!

  Just to reassure you that we aren’t going anywhere. Most of us who do favour leaving the EU don’t have any problem with Europe, or the people who live there.

  This is a difference which can often be overlooked. In other words, we are leaving the EU, but we are not leaving Europe.

  Happy Christmas.

• Tom Harney 14th Dec '18 - 9:34am

  Thanks for this. I enjoyed it. I understood it.
  And why does so much of our food come from the Netherlands?
  And why does everyone in the Netherlands speak English?

• Bernard Aris 14th Dec '18 - 3:41pm

  @ Tom Harney

  Dear Tom,

  when you are a small trading country litterally sandwiched between three formerr world powers, it sure pays to know their languages.
  Second, our TV broadcasters decided right from the start (in the 1950’s) not to use voice-overs with foreign speakers in broadcasts, just like the cinema owners in the 1920’s decided against uising voice overs. So sitting in the cinema and in front of the TV, you keep hearing the voices of the people on the screen talking their own language, so from a toddler age onwards, the sound of (in this case) the English language is verry familiar to yiou, making learning to talk and write English so much easier.

  And the oldest people inhabiting the Northern Low Coutries (“Nether-lands”) are the Frisians (fromm before the age of Julius Caesar; they propbably were Celtic), with a distinct language that stil is uin dauly use.
  Coincidene or not, Frisian sounds a lot like Englisch; the words “green cheese” for example are exactly the same.