THE WORD FOR LIGHTNING.
Still these are trifles compared with the real puzzles. I witnessed a street dispute one evening. It was about herring, I think, but I really couldn’t follow the one thousandth part of the vigorous debate. Picturesque idioms were bandied to and fro; happily no harm was done. One could not help noticing that the Grammar-book was right. Jij and jou were freely employed, and the disputants did not once address each other as U or UEdele. On that occasion there was another epithet or pronoun or interjection, which none of my previous studies had at all prepared me for. Turning it up in the dictionary as well as I could, I learnt that it might be translated by ‘lightning’, and that it was an ordinary noun. Next day I enquired of Enderby if the word for lightning could ever be employed as an interrogative particle or a pronoun. He was horrified and said “Please don’t be vulgar”.
“All right,” I replied, “I don’t intend to be, but what about that personal pronoun?”
“Hush!” he said. “Stop; it’s not a pronoun.”
“Well whatever it is,” I told him, “noun or pronoun, if you had heard it used as I did, you would admit that it was very personal.”
IS TO BE ESCHEWED.
“Don’t be frivolous,” he retorted solemnly, “and let me give you a piece of advice. As long as you are in Holland never let anyone hear you utter that word. Say onweer or weerlicht. The other word is not decent, it is almost wicked.”
“There now; don’t be surly”, I reasoned, “the thing is in the dictionary.”
“Never mind. That’s for science or for poetry. Then it’s all right. But you had better have nothing to do with it. Try and forget it.”
I did try. But I didn’t succeed.