Lou, just because I love the history of South Africa does not mean I agree or defend what went on in the past. I love history in general, and one of my favourite places and periods is in South Africa when the Dutch started to go there in the early 1600s.
Believe me, I know about a lot the stuff that went on (not all of it of course, but I would say I know more than the average American), and I am thankful that I did not have to live through that. Even though I am of European descent, I am still thankful that I was raised in an environment that is essentially racially and ethnically mixed.
However, I am not afraid to say that my interest in history primarily is with European anything. I am not very interested in non-European cultures with the exceptions of the Mongolians and the intereactions of Europeans and Africans in the New World (ex. United States and the Carribean Islands).
It is all just a preference. Everyone has them.
OK, accepted. Although my Dad wanted to trace his ancestors and found that the first of his family in South Africa arrived from Holland as far back as 1682, and I know that my Mom's ancestors came from somewhere in Mecklenburg, I do not identify with Europe at all. Although living in Europe at the moment, my heart yearns for the day when I will finally pack my things and go back to the country of my birth, because that is where I feel most comfortable. There's also a lot to do, just waiting for people to do it.I guess my interest lies more in the present. For me, it is futile to look back, as I'm interested in what can be done now, to secure a more harmonious future.
Yep, Guilhem it is remarkable. There are several reasons why I have an interest on the Dutch. One of them is the incredible courage shown by Corrie ten Boom which is the best holocaust war story I've read. I also get the impression that it is the least racist and anti-semitic country in Europe as well as having one of the most liberal governments in the world. The other reason that draws me to the Dutch is the sublime football (soccer) talent that they have produced over the last few decades. I consider the Netherlands as the "Brazil" of Europe. It's amazing how such a tiny nation geographically and population wise has been able to generate the number of gifted players that they have. I'ts unfortunate they have never won the World Cup. They deserve at least one if not two Cups from the brilliant players that have worned the Orange guernsey.
Juan, are a fan of Dutch football? I am a fan of Dutch football. --ups sorry, I am not discussing about language websites---.
I hope that they will win the next Europe Championsip in Portugal even though they are grouped with very though nations like Czech Republic and Germany. It is a very difficult group. Czech is the most favourite in this group and the Dutch was beaten by Czech Republic in the qualification round. And, as you know, it is always difficult for the Dutch national team to beat Germany. There are three strong nations in this group!
May be we can open a new thread to discuss this thing. I hope that by opening a new thread does not violate the rule of this forum. Because the main purpose of this forum is to discuss English and other languages. But, I think it is good for us to discuss a specific subject like football (or soccer in the USA) in this forum. We discuss a specific topic while improving our skill in English. We can discuss about football, or the Dutch football, using the most commonly used terms in football, perhaps? So that will be more used to using English.
What do you think?
Sorry, what I meant was: "...are you a fan of Dutch football?..." not "...are a fan of Dutch football?..."
Thank you.
Yep, Grout D the Group of Death no doubt. But one should still be reasonably confident that Holland would come through the group stage.
Lou, well, we have different out-looks about life; you like to look to the futire and I like to look back at the past. Genealogy and history are two of my favorite things, and I love how I can research my family history and then link that somehow to actual historical events or people (Davy Crockett [American Folk Hero of sorts] is an ancestor of mine. He would be something like my 7th generation great uncle).
And you said that you love the country you were born in. Well, I have been thinking about this for some time now (well, about the subject matter; not you personally). And I have come to believe that I would probably be happiest on the North American continent as all of my ancestors left Europe and settled there at one point. And it was only in the last 60 years that my g-parents and great-g-parents moved out West to California.
Well, I am rambling now, but for me, I find it interesting that I am drawn to this continent, even though I am of European descent.
I think everybody feels something for the country in which they were born - except maybe in extreme cases, I'm not sure holocaust survivors are too keen on central Europe...
Right. But for me, it is more on a continent thing. I think that I were to live in Canada, I would be on the same continent as my birth; and therefore I would not yearn to be "home" because I would be home on the continent that I was born on.
Hehe, well I don't think I'd be as comfortable in Nigeria or Zimbabwe as I am in SA...
No, you probably wouldn't :-P In all seriousness though, I think I feel this way about the continent because America and Canada share a history up until the American Revolution; and even now, Americans and Canadians are pretty close culturally (not the same, but closer than most neighbouring countries).
As you can see, this thread has been hijacked. How about going back to discussing your favorite language websites?
One of my favorites is the COBUILD Concordance and Collocations Sampler at
http://www.cobuild.collins.co.uk/form.html. It lets you search part of the COBUILD corpus for example sentences containing a given word or phrase. You can also find words that appear together in the corpus. For example, entering "job" gives you the following table (please excuse the layout):
Collocate Corpus Freq Joint Freq Significance
a 1228514 6655 48.988567
do 112756 1148 26.680335
his 242189 1485 24.934901
doing 19442 556 21.795316
get 70834 733 21.412063
my 95658 801 20.987552
done 19390 506 20.629028
good 52409 618 20.297296
for 482791 1878 19.226600
got 56785 565 18.599823
your 101863 592 15.271038
i 602698 1900 13.666610
did 49504 365 13.497502
job 15532 236 13.174305
My two favorite online dictionaries are the Cambridge online dictionary and dictionary.reference.com. I just discovered that the latter also has a forum similar to this one....but hey, I'm loyal to Antimoon.
