The term itself, the Grachtengordel, is absented from the article above. It's better common usage in the English language to apply that term for smoother reference for the traveller, or researcher, and disambiguation in general.
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Moreover, the meaning itself is altered with the usage of 'ring'. Grachtengordel is a compound for grachten (plural of channel, to dig a...) and gordel (belt), giving rise to the (somewhat bastardised) term: 'Canal Belt'. Not only in transliteration, but the Canal Belt is simply not a ring, as the A-10 is. It does not transgress the river, although whether it includes Prinseneiland beyond the railway line I've yet to discover. Either way, it is no ring. Nor a moat neither, as that is termed by the natives as a ‘single’... as in English ‘cincture’, from Latin ‘cingere‘, to encircle (as with cīnctum, ‘sanctum’), and which, by necessity of design, is indeed a ring. It’s non Hanseatic roots suggest that such Singles are indeed older than the later grachten and may indeed allude to the Lowlands’ Latin, Hapsburg origins of fortified settlements, many of which were surely designed for the precise purposes of keeping the wild indigen folk out of those colonised centres of trade and tax collection!
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More interesting in etymological terms is, of course, the marked differences in pronunciation of the English-reference word for 'gracht'. Many natives pronounce the word as 'channel' [lit.: 'gracht' in Dutch]; whereas visiting, or resident, native English-speakers apply the word 'canal' [lit.: 'kanaal' in Dutch].
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Who ought to correct who? Many foreigners, highland natives, will be perhaps familiar with construction of canals for transport, as they learned in their geography lessons, or equally to divert river courses to obtain energy by means of hydro-electrical turbines up the mountains. And the Dutch language refers to those as 'kanaalen' (canals proper), such as the great Van Starkenborghkanaal. Yet the grachten, as primarily being 'channels' dug for watermanagement purposes in a built-up area as part and parcel of functional, spatial planning, are precisely that ’channels’. Just as in Delft way back when, the ‘Delf’ was created to drain the surrounding marshland, which itself gave rise to our English word ’(to) delve’, and much later an urban area grew up around that creating the town proper. Today, those original watermanagement channels (out in the middle of nowhere) are the centre of the city as we know it today, and the two original channels are referred to and have the characteristics of ‘grachten’ proper.
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So, may a ‘gracht’ just as correctly be named, and indeed pronounced, as a ‘channel’, as indeed the natives tend to do by default of their inborn, low-Germanic phonetics? Or, to put it another way, ought highlanders to be telling lowlanders what geographical feature they are talking about, when indeed both are standing here 3 feet below sea level? ‘Channel’ as the natives tend to say: there is truth to the pronunciation as that is in many ways more precisely what they actually are. 'To dig a channel', so to speak, and digging lies at the core of the word itself in its native, nondescript original usage throughout all of the Hanseatic League cities along the seafronts of northern-eastern Europe.
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Ought there to be any translation in the first place? Ought one to even contemplate that? To what extend does that practise border on diction dementia? At the very least, no more than one would contemplate visiting Peru to see the Old Mountain? Or to Denmark; to behold the spectacle of the Sea of Mud? To Jordan to see a Rock, or to Iceland to a Meadow? Have you ever been to visit those other sites scattered from here to the globe’s end? They are, all of them, very well-known sites throughout the entire seven seas so that one would be somewhat surprised to learn that you’ve never heard of any of those wonders.
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It would certainly be an encouragement for a more unified linguistic approach (ULA) to our very own neighbourhood, were there to be offered something by way of ’moed’ to the indigens, locals and residents of this place, that there could be established once-and-for-all but one term with which we -- as the community living here within its confines -- shall refer to it henceforth.
And to do precisely so in the sole interest of its continued preservation both here and abroad across the seas and oceans.
~):(~ mcula

By Noel McCullagh | August 2, 2010 5:28 PM

Not bad,
i think belgium only have about 25 listed and the uk have only 50 or 60 on the list.

By war | August 2, 2010 5:31 PM