But nothing could make her understand what I meant by Zie-benedens.
I couldn’t explain to her all about Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary and the parallel historical development of cognate languages; I hadn’t Dutch enough for it.
DON’T REASON.
Pulling a handkerchief out of my pocket, and showing it to her, I said, “Dit—dit is een zie beneden!”
But at that she only laughed the more.
Then she chuckled and tittered and coughed and said “Oh! Oh!” and held her sides and stumbled all the way down those steep stairs to the imminent danger of her life. Half way down she had stopped for breath; distinctly I could hear her panting and muttering: “Oh mens! mens! Ik kan nie meer. Ik stik!” For the rest of the day bursts of jovial laughter kept rising from the kitchen, and an air of hilarity hung about the lower storey for a whole week.
Sir, said O’ Neill, that is the deplorable result of bringing reason to bear on the material the dictionary gives. For here is another general principle I have discovered about languages: The more arguments you find in favour of any given word the more certain it is that that word is totally wrong.