>Dragan,
>
>>I've heard exactly the same story about "one vote less", but about German. I think it's either propaganda or urban legend.
>
>I don't think so. Germany doesn't have (or didn't have) as much colonies as holland (=netherlands). This is because germany had only a small seamanship as compared to the dutch. In those times the dutch were feared and ruled all over the world, like the portuguese, the spanish, the british and the french.

I mean, the story about German language was probably propaganda. I was less precise than I should have been.

>In a fact the German, English and Dutch language are closely related (In holland we call these "German languages". In this time the dutch held much of the West- American coast (like I said New York was called New Amsterdam and peter stuyvesant was dutch).

When I tried to learn some Dutch (and the word "Dutch" is actually mispronounced "deutsch" - which shows that the Brits didn't catch the difference between it and German in those times), and I remember it sounded like an incredible mix between English and German, with an impossible system of vowels and diphtongs, but sounded really nice.

BTW, do you still have all those crazy tourists on the Dam square and hippies staring at them? Didn't get to visit Nederlands for more than 20 years now. Have a nice dark Amstel on my behalf

cheers,