Sunday Stamps: 'W' is for Waddenzee, wet, wortelen and wetenschap

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!

Sunday Stamps: words, numbers

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'words and/or numbers (no pictures)'.
I had a few Dutch stamps in mind when I read about this theme, but while searching my stamps I found a lot more. Many from the 'gulden' era but also newer ones, issued after the introduction of the euro.

If I only were allowed to choose two stamps, then the following two would be my choice:

The one which fascinates me most:



Why it fascinates me? Well, this one inspires me to add / draw a lot of pictures! Korfbal, in English known as Korfball, to my opinion is the most emancipated sport, as men and women are treated equally: they play together. My late grandmother (born 1910) used to play it as a teen, and we used to play it at school. Alas it isn't a well-known sport and to my frustration it still hasn't become an Olympic sport so far. I hope one day it will be.
So if I would have been the designer of this stamp, I sure would have added the typical basket, a mixed-gender team, Olympic rings as an advertorial, or whatever. But the designer made a strong design by using words only. And by leaving most of the stamp empty!

And this one is one of my favourites, for it shows true words from a female writer, Belle van Zuylen:



'Lezen en schrijven verandert werkelijk het bestaan van de mens...' means: 'Reading and writing really changes the being of mankind'.
A little more of this written letter you can see on the 'postzegelblog'.

Well, still no-one has stopped me after posting these two, so I'll post more stamps on words-without-pictures :-)

One issued in 1986 for the 350the anniversary of the Utrecht University (where Belle van Zuylen happened to have been to):



Two about law, the new, that is, in 1992 reformed, 'Burgerlijk Wetboek' (Dutch Civil Code), stamp issued in 1992:



and the Wetboek van Strafrecht (Penal (criminal) Code), issued in 1986:



This one I love for it shows an important part of book making: print letters:



The stamp has been issued in 1977 for the 500th anniversary of the first printed book in Dutch language (which happened to be the Delft Bible).

Stamps on the edge of words-no-pictures and pictures are these ones:

Five different stamps issued on a ten stamp sheet, for five anniversaries:



In which some elements of pictures slightly have been added to the pictures, like staves in the last one, issued for 'Hundred years Dutch Composers Association' (I've sent out one of these with the accompanying text).

The twelve provinces (of which I've sent out four):

(Click to enlarge the following six stamps)


The stamps show words only - the pictures are besides the stamps themselves - but the words also form the province flags!..

From letters to numbers, via the stamp issued for the Court of Auditors, which in Dutch means 'Rekenkamer', literally 'counting (or calculating) chamber':



Some number stamps. Until the introduction of the 'forever stamp' it was clear what a stamp would cost, for instance in 2002 for mail up to 20 grams:



And mail between 20 and 50 grams:



In 2007 for mail up to 20 grams:



And then there was this '1' stamp. This year it's value is € 0,69, in the new year one '1' stamp for national mail will be € 0,73.



Finally an other nice stamp, issued in 2003, on a subject you might like: 'verzamelen' means 'to collect':



The tiny words in the background have to do with (stamp and banknote) collecting.

See more interesting and beautiful stamps on this theme on Sunday Stamps, and the links under that post!