There was a vocable that occasioned me some perplexity--indeed a haze envelopes it still. It sounded like _Eris_, but had nothing to do with the Goddess of Strife. It doesn't seem to have any particular signification, and you can introduce it anywhere to give a finish to your style. Some people were fond of _evetjes_, a word of the same class, on which none of my books shed the least light. Though my authorities were likewise silent about _Toe! toe dan_, I perceived that this was the proper expression for courteous appeal, and as such I have always used it, with confidence and success.
Two curious imperative moods, which were popular at the street corners, I did find in my grammar. They belong to that provoking category of words that, as you touch them carelessly, break up into smaller verbs and prepositions. I used to compare them mentally to those lizards that drop their tails when you handle them roughly. Only instead of tails these _werkwoorden_ drop their _voorzetsels_, which turn up again unexpectedly in distant parts of the sentence. One of these "lizards" was _schei uit_, which means indifferently, 'stop talking now', 'analyse it' and 'go away'. It was pleasant to hear so scientific a term as schei er uit or schiet nouw op (shoot up now, aim high) used so often. I soon became quite dexterous in employing them myself. On the whole I got little help from my dictionary in tracing out the idioms of everyday live. Two interrogative particles, for example, without which the lower classes, when excited, could hardly ask a question, were quite ignored both by Boyton and the Woordenboek. The were _Zaliku_ and _Woujeme_. I was left to conjecture the force of these particles--that they were forcible I could see--might remotely resemble that of the familiar num or nonne of Latin.
Occasionally animated interlocutors became suddenly oracular: their flow of language stopped and they uttered some one solitary syllable such as _Gunst!_ or _heus!_ or _mis!_ or _raak!_ These single shots were often most effective, but I never could imitate them successfully. _Ach!_ was safe mostly for "I'm sorry"; _Och!_ for "I don't care"; and I discovered a treasure in _Hé!_ That is a contraction for "Do you really mean it?" On the other hand _Hè!_ I found was "Shocking!" "How very dreadful!" When I used these little words I seemed never quite to hit the bull's eye, however. Invariably I said either more or less than I intended. But I made very good play with pretty triplets like _'t zal wel_, and _schei er uit_, and with expressions of approval: _da's leuk_, _aardig hoor_, _och kom_. It gives a vivid local colour to your conversation if you drop in now and again a homely fresh idiom caught from the lips of the people. That prevents one's vocabulary becoming too bookish. You can give quite a realistic flavour to your remarks by interjecting occasionally _waarempeltjes_ or _Wel van mijn leven!_ Among the encouraging ejaculations of every day I soon concluded that none was more likely to prove useful than "_Zanik nou niet_", a popular favourite which one may render roughly by "Pray, don't mention it", "Don't trouble about it". This idiom has been simply invaluable.