{ _Have you pens?_ { _Give me pens, please._ { _Thank you._
_Have you?_ Well; that is not so simple as it looks. I consulted the Grammar and was appalled to see the amazing variety of choice afforded to any one in Holland who contemplated asking this innocent question.
{ hebt gij { hebt U Hebt gij(lieden) { hebt ge { heeft U { heb je { heeft UEdele { heb jij { heeft Ue { heeft Uès
I looked carefully at this curious form. Yes, wherever it occurred, there were marks of parenthesis tied round the (lieden). How was I to pronounce those brackets? The vowels and the usual consonants I had learnt already were very trying. But what about those marks? Did they denote a cough, or a sneeze or gentlemanly tap of your foot on the ground? On the whole I thought I should best represent them by two graceful waves of the hand--one for each bracket.
{ hebt gij(lieden) with brackets carefully fenced { round the(lieden) { hebt jullie { heb jelui
I counted them over. There are twelve ways of saying _Have you_ in Dutch. That was distinctly suggestive, it seemed to me at the first brush, of the twelve months of the year. You could begin in January with Hebt gij, in February you would have Hebt ge, and so you could work on through the months, keeping your grammar and your chronology going, side by side, through the seasons till you would emerge safely near Christmas with Heb jelui. This theory was not without its attractions. But what would happen in passing, say, from June to July, if you forgot what day of the month it was? If it was July the first and you imagined it was June the thirtieth, you would be talking bad grammar! No: that would never do. My brilliant conjecture had soon to be abandoned as fanciful, and I was very sorry.
But the facts of the case were dead against the obvious chronological arrangement, though they were by no means easily grasped. There were asterisks and foot-notes to all these zodiacal forms; and a great deal of solid reading had to be gone through before you got at the relative force of any particular term. The erudition was distracting, and the warnings were positively alarming, but after much painstaking investigation I seemed to perceive three grand principles emerging."