
Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) - benbreen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlandish_Proverbs
======
tinco
Small Dutch connotation: Dutch proverbs is something children are taught in
primary school, and we get saddled with a pretty large amount of them, but
don't expect a Dutch person to ever say "ah well, the herring hangs by his own
gills". At least I've never heard anyone say that. Even though this painting
(and others) are used for teaching proverbs.

Many of these proverbs are rather archaic, and I suspect a good bunch of them
to have never been in popular use at all (some of them are really far
fetched/oddly specific).

Dutch speakers not proficient at English often try to translate Dutch proverbs
literally into English, often with hilarious results. It's a good reminder of
why it's so hard to have computers translate language. Even if you know your
grammar perfectly, and you know the meaning of every word, you can still
utterly fail to understand the meaning of a sentence.

"Man, my boss is really making me look for nails at low water"

Said the Dutch, meaning to say that his boss is making him do annoying work
with apparent low value. It stems from back when nails were relatively
precious, and used in shipbuilding. Bosses would make their shipbuilders wait
for ebb and then have them seek for the nails they dropped while working on
the ships.

~~~
teekert
Are you stabbing the dragon with our language? Quite a lot of proverbs are
still used where I work and sometimes during a presentation it leads to
strange remarks, only funny to the dutch people. Such a a person then falls
through the basket as a true dutchman, the ape comes out of the sleeve so to
say. The presenter then often laughs like a farmer with a tooth ache. But who
cares, who laughs the last, laughs the best.

Haven't you ever been sent from the closet to the wall? Life doesn't go over
roses.

~~~
Mz
Using control F, I did not find this idiom on the Wikipedia page we are
discussing. So I went looking.

I tried to google "stabbing the dragon" and initially only found an English
urban dictionary entry advising me that "slaying the dragon" is an idiom for
sleeping with a very unattractive women. More digging got me this reddit
discussion:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/znsep/reddit_what...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/znsep/reddit_what_are_your_favorite_infrequently_used/c6687u6)
which suggests that it means mocking someone.

I also found this: [http://speakwords.org/post/74048121/hes-stabbing-the-
dragon-...](http://speakwords.org/post/74048121/hes-stabbing-the-dragon-with-
me)

~~~
teekert
Indeed "stabbing/sticking the dragon with" means "to make fun of".

This all reminds me of an episode of TNG where Picard has to communicate with
a race that only speaks in proverbs, sentences that only make sense when you
know their historical context or metaphors ([http://en.memory-
alpha.org/wiki/Tamarian_language](http://en.memory-
alpha.org/wiki/Tamarian_language)).

BTW, an Austrian colleague just a couple of days ago told me (in Dutch) "Life
is not a little lark." Which has no meaning at all to me but we started using
it. Funny stuff :) In University we actually made a sport out of literally
translating dutch proverbs which is why I "shook my original comment out of
the sleeve" so quickly (Note that I didn't "suck it out of my thumb", that
would mean I made it up whereas "shaking it out of the sleeve" means I came up
with it without effort).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That TNG language was all metaphor if I recall. "Zinda, his face black, his
eyes red!"

------
KhalilK
There is an imitation[0] of this idea in which many Cantonese proverbs are
illustrated.

0.[https://writecantonese8.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/cantonese-p...](https://writecantonese8.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/cantonese-
proverbs-in-one-picture/)

~~~
thisjepisje
When that was on the frontpage I posted a link in the comments to the Bruegel
painting :P

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tomkinstinch
This painting is fantastic, and it's great to see it unpacked on Wikipedia.

I made an app to learn more about art[1], and from looking at old works it's
clear many of our modern concerns are timeless--hunger, greed, jealousy, human
beauty, ecstasy, joy, desire for wealth. It's both reassuring and humbling.

A vaguely similar work is The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus
Bosch[2]. It is, depending on interpretation, either a warning of human
temptations, or detailing a sort of sixteenth-century Burning Man (paradise
lost).

1\. [http://artfulmac.com](http://artfulmac.com)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights)

------
contingencies
We need a visual representation of this for programming lore / systems
concepts :) Any artists want to collaborate? Perhaps the title could be
'Visual Arts', and the subtitle 'a language that was invented first and then
people came around to try to get semantics' (referencing Leslie Lamport on
UML)

9 coders = Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Nine
women can't make a baby in one month.

figure dreaming of a hall of mirrors = Design up front for reuse is, in
essence, premature optimization.

poster of darwin image with man deevolving to a computer = Software
Architecture Paradox #3: Evolution impedes survival. We design a software
system that can evolve, but in doing so hasten its death.

gps unit with a stack overflow error = All problems in computer science can be
solved by another level of indirection, except of course for the problem of
too many indirections.

mirror being installed while a surveyor surveys = One person's constant is
another person's variable.

light-projected space invaders down the kryptos sculpture = One person's data
is another person's program.

person in 'chief architect' office atop the ivory tower with completed survey
papers, telephones, frazzled with pages of a destroyed calendar thrown across
the room and playing oldschool pitfall type game (possibly with a waterfall
feature in the room or out the window, and a UML book on the shelf) = Any
attempt to formulate all possible requirements at the start of a project will
fail and would cause considerable delays.

house being brick-layed without a clear plan by rugby players = To the extent
that [Agile software development] is [an excuse for not thinking], it's a bad
thing.

burning google balloon floating in the clouds = reference to failed google
project

wheel as the logo atop the ivory tower = A general-purpose product is harder
to design well than a special-purpose one.

someone looking at an empty parking space and buying a car = Generalized form
of Parkinson's Law: The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the
supply of the resource. The reverse is not true.

... etc. quotes taken from my fortune clone @
[https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

~~~
VLM
Somebody removing a moth from between the contacts of a relay.

Two confused looking dudes trying to label the pickets on a picket fence, one
starting from 0 and the other older dude starting from 1, and getting into a
fistfight over who is correct, of course.

ACID compliance, the "other" WIMP (weakly interacting massive program). A fine
arts painting representation of Codd Normal Forms, is that genius or insanity?

systemd, well, that'll be interesting one way or the other. Hopefully not as
boring as providing a standard internet shock pix/video and slapping systemd
as the title.

Another fun one would be humanoid figures as parodies of languages or OS or
software development patterns and the equally important software development
ANTI patterns. Human forms representing paradigms like static / dynamic types
or software paradigms in greco roman diety form "Aphrodite the magnificent
goddess of functional programming" vs "Zeus the imperative".

The intersection of fine-ish art and tech is remarkably empty and fertile
ground.

I would pay some money for a painting / poster / print in the Hieronymus Bosch
style on programming. Probably inspired by "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four
Last Things" or "The Garden of Earthly Delights". I suppose the right side of
"Garden" is a pretty good representation of Java programming.

~~~
contingencies
ACID is an interesting meme ... maybe a zany ACID dealer that looks like the
Oracle from the matrix? :)

Human static form = those people who pose still as statues

Human dynamic form = contortionist

A row of warehouses of differing sizes/styles could represent language or OS-
specific packaging systems.

A garage maker-space of course...

------
toolslive
Fantastic painting.

There are however some mistakes in the explanation of the proverbs. "To bell
the cat" does not mean "To carry out a dangerous or impractical plan". It
means: "To do something dangerous that benefits many people". If you know
Dutch, you can look it up here: [https://onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/advies/de-kat-
de-bel-aanbinde...](https://onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/advies/de-kat-de-bel-
aanbinden)

~~~
abollaert
I also noticed this. An example of an application of this saying would be a
whistleblower.

------
rvern
Bruegel’s paintings are magnificent. See also _The Fight Between Carnival and
Lent_ ¹ and _Children 's Games_².

1\.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Pieter_B...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Pieter_Bruegel_d._%C3%84._041b.jpg)

2\.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Pieter_B...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Pieter_Bruegel_d._%C3%84._066.jpg)

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glhaynes
BBC Radio 4's fantastic "In Our Time" podcast had an episode on Bruegel just a
few weeks ago. IIRC, it was more about a different but somewhat similar
painting of his, but I believe there was at least a little discussion of this
work as well.
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot](http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot)
(search for "Bruegel")

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davidw
"To be armed to the teeth"

I wonder about the diffusion of things like this. Obviously, it exists in
English. Italian too: "armato fino ai denti".

Are they very old and have found there way into many languages, or something
more recent that spreads quickly? Do people study this stuff? I would think
they must, somewhere.

~~~
Tomte
German as well: "bis an die Zähne bewaffnet"

~~~
teekert
In dutch as well: Tot de tanden gewapend.

~~~
davidw
I think we all took Dutch as a given, seeing as how it's the subject of the
article.

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jboynyc
Very cool. There's a video on the painting in the excellent Smarthistory
collection:

[https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-
reformati...](https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-
reformation/northern-renaissance1/antwerp-bruges/v/pieter-bruegel-the-elder-
the-dutch-proverbs-1559)

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D_Alex
Another reason to love Wikipedia (and maybe consider donating a little).

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tjradcliffe
Michael Frayn's novel "Headlong" is about the discovery of what might be a
lost Bruegels, and stands as an interesting account of how art historians
think: [http://www.amazon.com/Headlong-Michael-Frayn-
ebook/dp/B002RI...](http://www.amazon.com/Headlong-Michael-Frayn-
ebook/dp/B002RI90EK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424669767&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+frayn)

As a layperson in art history I found it a fascinating look into a quite
different approach to analysis.

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sytringy05
"Negligence will be rewarded with disaster"

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m0dE
To be able to tie even the devil to a pillow - Obstinacy overcomes everything

To bang one's head against a brick wall - To try to achieve the impossible

The dip is real

