Just sometimes...

As most of you know, I love languages, in all it's form, from the baroque insults of Rowan Atkinson's character of Blackadder ("Your brain is so minute, Baldrick, that if a pygmy would crack open your skull, he wouldn't even have enough to fill a small water biscuit") to the lovely prose and poetry of Pablo Neruda ("El viento es un caballo, oye come corre, por el mar, por el cielo...")

But sometimes... many times... people seem to find a perverse pleasure in raping their own language, their native tongue.

Today, another example. As you know, I am doing some extra work, by helping out in a Danish internet company, by doing Dutch support by email.

I actually really enjoy the work, as I have the possibility to practice my Dutch writing skills, which are still, after almost 7 years away, on level with any good writer. It might sound slightly arrogant, but I pride myself in mastering a language. (I hate not to be able to communicate on high level written Danish for example. Spoken, no problem, but I never had the practice with writing as I had with Dutch or English)

So, today... Some moron emailed his rant to us about the fact that he was continuously being kicked by the administrator of some sad webcam dating site. Seeing there was a link to us at the bottom, he thought we were hosting them (it was just a commercial link, but ok...), ergo: he turned his rant to us, whining about losing money, being kicked, etc etc... I'll spare you the further details.

Now, I could reproduce the text here, but I won't do it for the sake of keeping at least a decent standard of language here.
The man just wrote one big blob of text. No punctuation, hardly any care for grammar or spelling, just simply the worst written piece of text ever.

After having replied nicely and correctly the first time (yes, you know how sarcastic I can get... it was hard to refrain myself), he just didn't understand a normal written reply, saying we had nothing to do with this company and that he had to contact them themselves.

He came back... Again... He replied within 5 minutes, so then I snapped :)

I just couldn't resist.

My reply, after saying once again we had nothing to do with this: "Apart from that I would recommend you check out the rules of the Dutch language once again, especially the parts on grammar, spelling and punctuation, since your previous email was and will remain absolute unintelligible. I won't be surprised that that is why you are repeatedly kicked of the dating site."

Just had to do it... And we haven't heard from the idiot again!

Am just thinking now actually... You know what? "We", in Holland, in Europe, are all so full of shit when we are talking about immigrants having to 'integrate' and 'learn the language'...

How about the natives? Many can't even construct a normal simple sentence without making several big errors that are worthy of capital punishment...
I see more correctly written emails by people with a VERY non-Dutch origin, then the "Jansen"s and "Van Whatever"s.

Go back to school and learn your own language first, before you whine about others, ok?

And now to finish with a happy thought: I have an old recording playing of Van Morrison now... Lovely... The flow... The words... Speaking of language, he knows what he's doing. Beautiful!