@Pam I have my own copy of Harry Potter en de Steen de Wijzen but I’m making slown progress. However, I have found Dutch reality TV shows very helpful. My favourite is ‘Wie is de chef?’

@Julia – nice to see you in the Blogosphere rather than the Twitterverse. Thanks for stopping by! I had the odd experience of hearing Dutch spoken with a strong Louisiana accent the other day. And I thought my English accent was strong! I don’t know about Dutch but when I write professionally for European clients, most of them want me to use American spelling and idiom rather than British English so the general consensus in my experience is that ‘American English isn’t just slang.’

But I did have the funny experience recently of having to get my pilot’s licence endorsed to prove that I spoke fluent English. For foreigners, an exam or two can prove it but what do I use as a native speaker? I mean, my degree was in history!

Mind if I print out your post and wave it in front of every school administrator and curriculum developer here, in the hopes they finally grasp the importance of learning other languages early and in-depth?

P.S. The Dutch folks on our trip told us how their teachers made a clear distinction between them learning ‘English’ and ‘American.’ “English is proper,” their teachers said. “American is just slang.” What do other Bad Language readers think of this?

Also, my older Dutch relatives speak both Dutch and the local country dialect (they were mostly farmers before their farms were swallowed up by urban sprawl) which has words or phrases that can’t be understood even by Dutch people in the city that now covers their farms. Meanwhile, my younger relatives can speak English b/c in the words of one: “We are a small country with no natural resources and live by trade/business. English is the language of business which is why we all learn English now.”

We are really spoiled by the fact that we speak a universal language as our native tongue and by the fact that everyone else is trying to learn it!