Help understanding some Lire conceptual issues

[Brad Knowles]

At 8:33 PM +0100 2004/03/04, Brad Knowles wrote:

>  	South Africa was settled by the Dutch (and was a Dutch colony for
>  a very long time), from which Afrikaans is derived.  Flemish and
>  Dutch are very closely related, but native Flemish speakers will
>  tell you that there are many different dialects of each, and most
>  can tell pretty much exactly where another native speaker comes
>  from, by their accent and the way they phrase certain things.

	Of course, I say this as if I'm some great and powerful expert on 
Dutch, whereas most of the people involved in lire and logreport.org 
are natives of the Netherlands, and speak/write better English than I 
will ever speak or write any other language but English.

	Hell, some of them probably speak/write better English than I do.


	If you want to go into the history of the Netherlands, South 
Africa, Belgium, how borders changed over the years, which countries 
were colonies of which other countries, how languages evolved, etc... 
I'm sure that most of them would be far better equipped to discuss 
those topics than I would.

	I mean, I can more or less trace the history back to around the 
year 1000, from Godefroid of Bouillon, through the Prince Bishops of 
Liege, the Duke of Burgundy, etc..., but I'm sure they'd be able to 
do a much better job, especially when it comes to the border and 
language changes in the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, 
the revolutions, etc....


	If you ever get a chance, places like Bouillon (especially Castle 
Bouillon), Ghent (especially Castle Gravensteen), and Liege would all 
be good to visit if you were to ever come to Belgium, and Amsterdam 
and Maastricht would be good places to visit if you ever come to the 
Netherlands.  They've got a lot of history you can learn in each of 
these places, although I'm sure you could also learn a lot by going 
to other historic places in the "Low Countries" such as Rotterdam, 
Den Hague (The Hague), Antwerp, etc....

	You wouldn't be likely to learn a whole lot by coming to Brussels 
-- although we have one of the oldest town halls in Europe (with the 
associated Grand Place and many of the surrounding buildings), there 
isn't much else here of historical interest.  At least, not unless 
you're a fan of Art Nouveau architecture, as popularized by Victor 
Horta and his students and contemporaries.  If you're into Art 
Nouveau glass, I recommend going to Nancy France, and looking for 
stuff by the Daum brothers.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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