Corrections

I'm going to start the week by coming clean on two gravely misstated facts from the annals of Peanut Cheese.

One is from the not-so-distant annals and comes from my very favorite source of corrections: my mother.

She points out that Fulton, New York has not two but three Dunkin' Donuts to serve its population of (in a very best case scenario) 11,000 people.

As a side note, I tried to search the Internets for some illustrative photos of my hometown, but the disproportionate number of mug shots that appeared when I searched Google Images dampened my enthusiasm.

The other is more distant and perhaps less immediately relevant, although more personally meaningful to me: in my long and elaborate soliloquy about my new favorite Dutch abbreviation, I missed the fact that it's "in verband met", not "in verbinding met."

The letters are still the same (i.v.m.) for the gloriously all-purpose expression that means in relation to, or in connection with, or in a pinch, because of. But if you spell it out — or get ambitious and try to say it out loud — the key word is verband.

This is the story of my life when it comes to the Dutch language.

I think I've got something all figured out, to the point where I go on and on about it in public, and then it turns out that I've been saying something crazy.

Come to think of it, maybe this is just the story of my life in general.

What drives me crazy is that there's no actual difference between verband and verbinding.

If you look in the Dutch dictionary (which I did, the first time my language buddy corrected me), the definitions are exactly the same: they mean ""link" or "connection."

But there's something about "verbinding" (at least according to Paul) that connotes a more supernatural connection.

I don't actually understand this, but I think I get the basic idea: when I say "In verbinding met the broken photocopier", it suggests that a higher being has decimated the toner cartridge.