The rest, as they say, is history, and today, Kok's English adopted stress pattern is heard everywhere, as in the pronunciation of Àmsterdam instead of Amsterd àm. Then, along came Dutch prime minister Kok who, at his closing press conference, undid our efforts by saying M áastricht, with main stress on the initial syllable. I explained that it is Maastr ícht, with main stress on the second syllable, and this was duly incorporated into the BBC's Pronunciation Guidelines. They wanted to know how to instruct their newsreaders on the proper way of saying 'Maastricht' in Dutch.
In 1992, in the run-up to the Maastricht Treaty, I was contacted at UCL by the BBC's Pronunciation Unit. In his contribution, Professor Reinier Salverda of University College London (UCL) zooms in on the big and often funny impact that interaction has on each other's language. Last year, the Anglo-Netherlands Society of London, to mark its centenary, published North Sea Neighbours, a collection of wide-ranging essays on important aspects of Dutch-British interaction across the sea.
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