Say what?

I am enjoying a day or two off after the end of "Nederlands voor Anderstaligen" the level one intensive class I've been taking at the University of Gent. In a just a month of classes, my vocabulary and understanding of Dutch has expanded greatly! Now I can say in Dutch with great precision, "I'm sorry, I don't understand you, do you speak a bit of English?" I can say it so well, that some people continue on in Dutch as if they are certain I must understand what they are saying. I can also interject, "I come from America," and "so please speak slowly".

Okay, I can say some other things to. I can talk about what I like and don't like, and give simple directions. You know those striped lines where you cross the road? They call that a "zebrapad" here. Cute word, eh? I know just enough to badger Travis, "say that in Dutch, please!" Since he doesn't have three hours every day to go to class, I must teach him Dutch. Whether he likes it or not.

But sometimes knowing all of the words in a sentence does not guarantee comprehension. The other day I was working on some homework that involved putting sentences in the book in the negative form. It can be confusing to a non-native speaker. In Dutch they have two different words that make a sentence negative, "niet" and "geen". For example, "ik heb geen geld" is "I have no money". Or, if some one asked, "Zijn jullie moe?" (are all of you tired?) the negative answer would be, "Nee, wij zijn niet moe" (no, we are not tired). Then you get into the question of where to put the word "niet" in the sentence. In the case of a direct object, you would stick niet at the end of the sentence, for example, "nee, ik ken jouw broer niet" (No, I do not know your brother).

Anyway, on my homework I was confronted with "Eet jullie baby vlees?" The direct translation of those words seemed to be, "eat all of you baby meat?" I thought, huh, the writers of this textbook sure have a sense of humour. I hope people would answer that in the negative! So I wrote, "wij eet geen baby vlees" (We eat no baby meat). Later on, when I checked my answers in the back of the book I realized that the word "jullie" in this case was NOT the 'jullie' that is the plural of you, but instead the _possessive_ form (confusing because it is the exact same word, and you must just know it by context) transforming the question to 'Does your (plural) baby eat meat?' and the answer to, 'Nee, onze baby eet geen vlees', or 'no, our baby does not eat meat'. I was laughing so hard that little tears were popping out of my eyes.

I should find out today or tomorrow whether I got into the second level class!