[Seaside] More transaction rambling (getting OT)

[Cees de Groot]

Jimmie Houchin wrote:
> I myself like most Americans am mono-lingual. I do hope to take up 
> Spanish soon.
>
A nice language, need to get back to it (at the moment, I'm only fluent 
in Dutch, English and German; I used to be good at Spanish, but not 
speaking the language doesn't really help ;-)). I think you're right, it 
is just like learning computer languages: the second one is really hard, 
but from that point on it gets progressively easier (e.g. with Spanish, 
you'll get around in Italy and Portugal as well, and quite probably you 
will even quickly pick up some Romanian during a summer holiday's stay).

OBTW, don't blame your education system completely: when I worked in 
Switzerland, I wanted to learn Swiss. Well, it turns out you don't stand 
a chance of learning Swiss as a foreigner, because these guys instantly 
switch to German when talking to you (this is made worse by the fact 
that to a German ear, Swiss is 'funny German' to a large extent so you 
are very hesitant to even try to imitate them, fearing that you might 
offend somebody ;-)). I am quite sure that most of the native English 
speakers have a similar handicap - no matter where you go, people start 
to speak English to you.

> Cees = 'case'. Makes things interesting.
> 
The pronuncation of my name is an abomination even in Dutch - the 'C'
should be pronounced as an 'S' of course. It is a result of people 
trying to make a very plain Dutch name (Kees) a bit more fancy...

Gee, are we by any chance getting a tiny bit off topic here?