This all started with a campaign from environmental group milieudefensie. They aimed to reduce the environmental burden associated with junk mail and introduced the NEE NEE sticker. It came in two variants:

NEE / JA

This means you don’t want to receive junk mail, but you do want to receive the local free paper.

NEE / NEE

This means you want neither junk mail nor local papers. In fact you don’t want any bulk mailings in your letterbox.

Over the years this sticker became so widely used that government endorsed it. It is pretty well honored too, but it’s not the law. They can stick junk mail into your letterbox even if you have a NEE/NEE. And when the mailing people know you address, all bets are off. Addressed mail will always be delivered, even if it is addressed to ‘the occupants of this house’.

This level of education is called basisonderwijs (i.e. basic education). The term makes sense don’tcha think? Actually, in my days (early to mid eighties) it was still often called lagere school (i.e. lower school). We had classes 1 through 6, but kindergarten was separate. At some point a reform was done to combine lower school and kindergarten into basisonderwijs. I still remember we received a yellow suitcase to celebrate this (later turned out to be toxic, har har). In basisonderwijs the classes are named groups and range from 1 through 8.

So basic education it is; mandatory for everyone aged 5 and up. Lessons in language (Dutch and English), calculus, history, caretaking, art and what have you not. More or less the standard package in any modern country. In upper groups kids have homework too.

Cito toets

In group 8 most schools partake in the national Cito Toets which is the de facto national test for secondary education. It is not compulsory however and some schools have their own test. It measures intelligence mostly and skills for various fields. You guessed it: children and parents fear this test as it’s deemed to determine ‘omfg will someone think of the children!’ someone’s future. In reality though the school board has the most influence on the final advice.

Types of schools

You might think of .nl as a secular country, but in reality there is a huge number of religious schools. Protestant in the north and west, catholic in the south. Naturally, there are many Islamic schools in the west as well. Religion is not a huge facet of these schools though. Few lessons deal with it directly; it’s more that a school’s ethics align with its religions.

A school sans religion is called an openbare basisschool or public basic school. Every village, town and city will have at least one of these. Openbare schools take no stance against religion; they are agnostic and will try to merely show the kiddies about what’s going on with this allah/jaweh/god thing.

Very popular as well are Montessori schools, named after the Italian inventor. These are religion-agnostic (by default?) and can be found in bigger cities. We have our share of other educational systems as well such as Dalton. Lastly there is the Vrije School where it is believed kids follow their own path and should be left entirely to their own development. This latter type is often subject of discussion, as their pupils rarely fit in to any type of secondary education.

Freedom of choice

Parents are free to choose a school for their children. Well, almost. Some schools are simply at capacity; these will have a waiting list. Some schools will restrict the children based on proximity (although this is only allowed give enough capacity in the surrounding areas). Public schools must take any child unless they are full; in which case the school must direct a child to a different public school. Schools based on a religion or educational system (so-called ‘special schools’) may place restrictions on the faith or lifestyle of their customers also; but only when there are enough alternatives close by.

Special schools make up two thirds of all primary schools in .nl. The generic openbare basisscholen make up the rest. However, the indigenous religions–Catholicism and Protestantism–often have very relaxed special schools, making them suitable for agnostic kids as well.

Primary school is free for parents, i.e. payed for via taxes. For a school to be free, it has to conform to national guidelines which are audited and publicised.

You, being a well-informed reader of this blog, probably already know the basics of the Dutch language aka Nederlandse Taal. It is very much like German, and the Suid-Afrikaanse language evolved from it. It is the official language in our country and it will get you anywhere inside our boundaries, and even outside a little since it is also the official language of Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). Only on the tropical islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacau will Dutch get you anywhere else, since these were colonies of Holland in olden times.

To non-native ears, Nederlands has many spit and gargle sounds. We sure love that phlegm-scraping hard G. According to folklore, if you were able to pronounce “Scheveningen” during WWII you were OK; if you couldn’t you were with the enemy. In real life, the hard G is only spoken in the West of Nederland, aka Holland. People in the East and North often swallow it; people in the South say it softer and longer.

The West aka Holland

Being the dominant economical region, the language spoken in the West is the “official” standard language for Nederland. Also known as Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (common civilized dutch), it is the amalgamation of the dialects from Haarlem, Amsterdam, Hilversum, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Den Haag and everything in between. It is the language taught in schools.

It is also a language that does not exist in real life. Although the people in Haarlem are said to speak ABN, this is not exactly true. For many people it will sound too posh and for southerners it’s all too “Hollands”. People in Amsterdam have their very distinct dialect, as do all the other cities that make up this region. For such as tiny country, it is remarkable, though a common pattern in Europe. A Londoner sounds very different from a Manchester bloke, after all. Still, there has to be a standard, and this is it. Your Dutch language course will teach you this language and everyone in .nl will be able to understand you.

Fryslân

Flag of Fryslân

The Northernmost province of .nl is called Friesland in Dutch and Fryslân in Frysk; the only official minority language. The street signs here are bilingual and Frysk (as well as Dutch) is taught in schools. Still, no bloody wars are fought over this language. Inhabitants simply speak Frysk inside Fryslân and Dutch outside it; although with a very thick accent. The other northern provice, Groningen, does not have its own language, and even for inexperienced listeners the two sound distinctly different. But either Groningers are not (as) proud of their dialect or they’re more down-to-earth about it; fact is that only Dutch is taught in Groningse schools.

The South

Travelling by train from Amsterdam to Maastricht illustrates perfectly how the language gets softer the further south you go. Starting from Eindhoven the dialect is very clearly different from ABN or other “Hollandse” slang: the brutal G is replaced by a softer CH sound, staccato is replaced by melody and more vowels are thrown into words.

People living here see themselves as clearly different from the people “above”; inhabitants of Limburg (the most southern province) will even declare the rest of .nl as foreign soil, and they are only half-joking. Still fighting for linguistic recognition, Limburgs is still just a dialect–children are taught ABN in school. Many parents will raise their offspring in pure Limburgs dialect at home though, yielding a group of people that will never entirely fit in with the rest of the country. Limburgers see Hollanders as inferior and vice versa, and I should know having lived in Limburg for ten (formative) years.

Flanders

For those outside the know: the country bordering Nederland to the south is called Belgium. Known for beer and bonbons, this really is a completely separate nation. The Northern half of it–Flanders–speaks Nederlands though (more or less); the Southern part–Wallonië–speaks French (more or less).

Linguistically, southern .nl dialects resemble their Flemish counterparts and people from these parts of the country have no trouble hopping over the border just to purchase a loaf of bread. Flanders too has a province named Limburg and it is adjacent to the one in .nl. When you speak Limburgs, you will feel right at home in either provice, in fact the dialects are so similar that it is often suggested to just merge the two. Closer to Brussels, the dialect changes again, more or less resembling our provice of Brabant. And you know what? This province has its identically named brother in Belgium as well. Further to the east and past Antwerp, the dialect changes again where the G sounds more like an H; this is the dialect spoken in Gent. In .nl, this same dialect is spoken in the aptly named Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, a part of the province of Zeeland.

Here is how they work. You have four numbers plus two letters: 1234AB. The numbers specify the city, and the letters specify the street. They are hierarchical: positions on the right-hand side specify a location with more precision.

A typical Nederlandse address

An example. Take Typically.nl’s postcode 1007EB. 1xxx stands for Amsterdam, so that one is easy. Postcodes in Amsterdam below 1010 typically are routed to PO Boxes. The 7 specifies the (postal) district the box is in. The letters finally determine which branch.

Amsterdam has 1000, and you would perhaps expect the next-biggest city Rotterdam to have 2000 but nope; that’s Haarlem, a smaller city near Amsterdam. Rotterdam has 3000 and actually you can’t really determine size of a city by postcode. The complete list is on Wikipedia so knock yourself out.

How to address someone in Nederland then?

1. Name (either initials + last name or first name + last name)
2. Company name (optional)
3. Address
4. Postcode + City

The postcode is usually written 1234 AB, i.e. with a space between the numbers and the letters. But 1234AB is fine also. They are quite essential to the postcode though, so don’t leave them out. And no, the letters don’t stand for the province.

Our privatized mail company has a page where you can look up postcodes to addresses or vice versa.