Today's Sunday Stamps' theme is words (woorden, in Dutch) starting with a 'w'.
On top you can see a few stamps, issued in 2003, in honour of the Waddenzee (Wadden Sea). This sea, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is located between the Waddeneilanden (Wadden Islands) and the mainland north of the Netherlands, and of Germany and west of Danmark.
These stamps are part of two stamp sheets; the complete sheets and some more Waddenzee stamps you can see here.
While the Waddenzee and all other seas are wet, the Dutch word 'wet' has a totally different meaning. I think you won't guess which meaning...
Right! 'Wet' means 'law'!.. Weird, this false friend is, isn't it?!
The theme of the stamp above is the Wetboek van Strafrecht, literally 'Law book of penalty law/justice', in English known as the Criminal Code or penal law / Penal Code (according to my woordenboek = words book = dictionary).
There are several words concerning the 'wet'. As a non-native English speaker, for me the question when to use the (English) nouns 'law', 'justice', 'act', 'legislation', 'regulation', 'right' (in Civil Right) and adjectives like 'legal', 'lawful', 'legitimate', 'rightful', might be similar as the question is for non-Dutch speaking concerning the (Dutch) nouns 'wet', 'recht', 'wetgeving', 'regelgeving' and adjectives like 'wettelijk', 'juridisch', 'legaal', 'legitiem', 'rechtelijk' and so :-)
Before you get too dizzy of all these words, I'll continue with a more concrete subject:
A 'wortel' is a carrot. 'Wortel' is one of the few Dutch words which has two types of plural. Usually Dutch words are made plural by adding -en to the word, and only a few words become plural by adding -s. However, the plural of 'wortel' can be both 'wortelen' and 'wortels'.
On this stamp you see a 'bos wortelen'. 'Bos' in general means 'forest', but concerning wortelen and flowers, it means a 'bunch'.
And did you note: how nice is the tiny picture of the land this stamp comes from?!
The word 'wortel' also is used for other plants' roots, and has a mathematic meaning, too: square root. And the verb 'worteltrekken' (literally: to push carrot/root) means 'to extract a square root'.
This sounds scientific, doesn't it?
The Dutch word for 'scientific' is 'wetenschappelijk', and 'science' is 'wetenschap'. The professional who is practising science we name a 'wetenschapper'. 'Weten' means 'to know', and is pronounced different from 'wet': 'the Dutch 'wet' sounds like the English 'wet', in contrary the first 'e' of the Dutch 'weten' is pronounced as a 'long e' and sounds a bit like the 'ai' in 'wait' or the 'ei' in 'weight'
Severo Ochoa is a scientist from Spain. Here you can see him next to an other Nobel Prize winner (Juan Ramón Jiménez was a poet), on a stamp sheet showing all kinds of results from wetenschap:
Evgeny Zababakhin and Boris Petrovsky are Russian wetenschappers:
From the Netherlands Willem Einthoven, who invented the first practical ECG:
Frits Zernike (of the phase-contrast microscope):
And Peter Debije / Debye:
Via 'populaire wetenschap' ('popular science') science can be made more widespread and popular. In cooperation with the Dutch science museum Nemo, Dutch Post has issued this stamp sheet named 'ontdek de wetenschap' ('discover science') on which you can see some wetenschappelijke proeven (scientific trials) which are easy to do by yourself:
For professional scientists there is the Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (Royal Dutch Academy of Science). The KNAW celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2008, for which Dutch Post issued this anniversary stamp, 'Magie van de Wetenschap', 'the Magic of Science':
See more stamps on the letter 'w' at today's Sunday Stamps!
