When you think of The Netherlands, what´s the *FIRST* thing that comes to mind?

Never-Never Land

I don't really think of anything when I think of the Netherlands/

Beer.

Dikes.

Bergkhamp

nothing.


Oh the Shame!

*wrings her hands*

The time when my family took the ferry to Amsterdam from someplace in England. While we were on the boat, my sister shut one of my fingers in a door. The fingernail ended up falling off later. I was five.

tulips
then windmills
then clogs
then vos
(sorry, but the tulips really were first)

Legal dope.

Dikes.

Never Never Land from Peter Pan

herring

Wooden shoes.

I'm with ILJ. Actually, when I first think of the Netherlands, it takes a second to translate into Amsterdam, and then legal dope.
And how'd "Dutch" end up being the adjective for someone/thing from the Netherlands, and what's the word "Holland" got to do with it, anyway?

Enheduanna: Holland is a part of The Netherlands, tha´s all.

Windmills

gravlax... and I hate salmon.

Hmmm...wooden shoes, herring, and gravlax. Sounds more like Sweden.

those little wooden shoes

vos: I know--I just think it's interesting how none of those names seems to be related phonetically.

Windmills.

daver: gravlax *is* Swedish!

the only country that begins with "the"

tall blond people

Hans Christian Anderson.

drdt: He´s from Denmark!

Tulips and the story about the boy with his finger in the duck, I mean, the dyke, I mean, the dam...

I guess in the future I'll think about confusion.

I also think of cloudberries.

Dikes.

holland, maastrik, sneaking out to got to maastrik to get some stuff in the middle of the night with my friends in a red bug, driving the wrong way on the autobon (sp??)

Oddly enough an obscure song from the Monty Python Contractual Obligations album that goes "Finland, Finland, Finland, the place where I most want to be...". I don't even know that Finland is in the Netherlands, but you asked.

vos: Actually I thought he was Swedish, but I still think of him when I think of the Netherlands.

drdt: No, he lived in Copenhagen, which last night was still the capital of Denmark.

mary: Autobahn is German, we have 'snelwegen'

Vos.

My grandma has an antique pair of those old wooden shoes.. we used to wear them around when we were kids.

Finland isn't in the Netherlands, is it?
It's in Scandinavia.

Oscar: No, The Netherlands and Finland are two different countries.
Our neighbors are Germany and Belgium. Finland´s neighbors are Sweden and Russia.
Officially Finland is not part of Scandinavia.

vos: oh, but there was no speed limit though, I didn't know there was a different name for it.

tulips

mary: Germany doesn't have a speed limit, in The Netherlands we have. Since Maastricht is only a few miles from Germany I guess you drove there.

Canals

Maarten Vos, of course!!!!!

LOL

My friend Richard drove us there, I couldn't drive. Hell, I don't drive now either.

vos: Jody's the one that said that Finland is part of the Netherlands, not me.
If Finland isn't Scandinavian, what is it?
It's neighbors are Sweden and Norway.

Oscar: sorry about that!
The Scandinavian countries are: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greenland, Færör and Iceland. Their languages are much alike. Finnish has links with Hungarian and is therefore completely different.

Are you 100% sure about that. We have a Scandinavian festival here every year and Finland is always included.

Oscar and vos - I actually said I didn't know whether or not Finland was part of the Netherlands, but that song was the first thing I thought of, and that's what the question was about...

Oscar: yep, I'm 100% sure. Finland has always been wrongfully accounted to the Scandinavian countries.

Prove it...

Linguistically Finnish is certainly very, very different from other languages of the region (except Estonian and, as vos says, Hungarian). It is less like Swedish than Arabic is like Swedish. Contrast to Norwegian and Danish, which are more similar to each other than US English is to UK English.

However dictionaries are full of references to Finland as being optionally included in Scandinavia; there are probably more such references than there are to Greenland's inclusion.

Just to stir up the pot, Merriam-Webster says...

Main Entry: Scan·di·na·via
Pronunciation: "skan-d&-'nA-vE-&, -vy&
Usage: geographical name
1 peninsula N Europe occupied by Norway & Sweden
2 Denmark, Norway, Sweden, & sometimes also Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, & Finland

...and Encyclopedia Brittanica says...

Scandinavia: historically Scandia, part of northern Europe, generally held to consist of the two countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Norway and Sweden, with the addition of Denmark. Some authorities argue for the inclusion of Finland on geologic and economic grounds and of Iceland and the Faroe Islands on the grounds that their inhabitants speak North Germanic (or Scandinavian) languages related to those of Norway and Sweden.

Additionally, an article search of virtual.finland.fi shows that this site appears to consider Finland a part of Scandinavia, with such comments as "We [Finland] are and have most of the time been the most non-socialist country in Scandinavia" and a headline reading Helsinki Dwellers Richest In Scandinavia, just to cite two of many examples I found. I know nothing about this site to indicate that they are any kind of authority, but the site does appear to be Finnish-based (see the .fi domain).

You may do with that info what you wish.

vos

that's funny, romkey, I love salmon and don't really like gravlox... hmmmm....

Just in case anyone is wondering about the wonderful lyrics of Michael Palin's terrific song about Finland from Monty Python's Contractual Obligations album, here it is:

Finland, Finland, Finland, the country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping, or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland, it's the country for me.
You're so near to Russia, so far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo, lots of miles from Vietnam.
Finland, Finland, Finland, the country where I want to be,
Eating breakfast or dinner, or snack lunch in the hall.
Finland, Finland, Finland, Finland has it all.
You're so sadly neglected, and often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium, when going abroad.
Finland, Finland, Finland, the country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty, your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland, Finland has it all.

*wiping away a tear* Makes me proud to be Finnish...

Finnish? I haven't even started yet! Hey, it's funny!

Just in case we haven't beaten this Finland/Scandinavia topic to death yet, I just asked a friend of mine who lives in Helsinki and he said that most Finns consider Finland to be part of Scandinavia. He said, "We'd rather be seen as Scandinavians than as Eastern Europeans." So there's one more voice in the mix...

phi: careful comparing Arabic and Swedish! Sumerian has defied attempts to relate it to other languages or classify it (so it's not actually Semitic, but it's from that region), but it bears the most similarity to Hungarian, which as vos pointed out has links to Finnish!

But it is still true that Finno-Ugric languages are less closely related to Indo-European languages than Semitic languages are...

vos

I think of tulips, wooden shoes, windmills, lovely people.

My grandmother was from there.

Boredom. Hey, you asked.

windmills and tulips

Pengy: Not from Antarctica?

joachim: LOL
But why?

tall ugly women

Tulips and coffee shops.

Windmills

Clogs

Abominable Snowman

Maarten