be.sketches #2: t@ng13d $p3!!ing

Manic posts about the latest Dutch-language madness.

It seems odd for such a small and flat country, but the linguistic variations from one place to the next are huge. In recent decades, the differences have been declining, of course, but IVN tells me that her step-father's parents spoke a dialect she and her mother could not understand a word of, and that was roughly 20 years ago and concerned cities less than 100 kilometres apart. I wonder what allowed this rich linguistic ecosystem to spring up.

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An unrelated piece of zaniness: I saw a TV report about Justo Gallego Martinez's breath-taking self-built cathedral a few days ago. He's been working at it for over 40 years! There's a similar story in Charles Mingus's "Beneath The Underdog." I didn't believe it when I read it, but maybe Mingus wasn't making it up...

[sheepish addition]
So it turns out Mingus's Simon Rodia/Watts Towers story is entirely true. I'll never doubt anything in the book again.