“Dunglishing” is in
“Surprijs” is a word play on “surprise”. “Prijs” means price and sounds like it as well. It’s auditive squinting: take Dutch words and mispronounce them until they sound like English ones. Surprise in Dutch is also “surprise”, although it is pronounced “sur-preeze” like in French. This implies that -prise, pronounced -prize in English, should sound like -price, as many Dutch people mispronounce price and prize.
May 5th, 2005 at 9:09 am
Sur = [boven op de] prijs?
May 5th, 2005 at 9:37 am
Anything with “sur” (I thought of surcharge) doesn’t really work for me.
May 6th, 2005 at 10:33 am
The Dutch word for surprise is not “surprise” but “verrassing”.
The Dutch word “surprise” does exist, but it is used exclusively (AFAIK) for self-made gifts handed out to family members during the Sinterklaas festivities.
It’s not uncommon for a language to adopt foreign words and make them mean something slightly different.
For example, the English word “pork” comes straight from French “porc”. But whereas “porc” means “pig”, “pork” specifically means “meat from the pig”.
The Dutch “surprise” does the same.
May 6th, 2005 at 10:48 am
You’re right about “verrassing”. That borrowed words mean something different in another language is why “false friends” pop up everywhere. I still don’t like this advert, but then I do not shop at the store in question 🙂
May 13th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
Cronopio: I think ‘surprise’ (vaguely French pronunciation) is sometimes used to make something sound a bit more special than a regular verrassing, but that’s just my impression.
The pork/porc situation you describe is slightly different. English borrowed the names for types of meat from French because the Norman aristocracy ate boeuf, porc, mouton and venaison while the Anglo-Saxon peasants they ruled did not, although we still use the Germanic names for the animals themselves (cow, pig, sheep, deer). Note that most of the time in French, the name of the meat and the name of the animal are the same (boeuf, porc, etc.).
May 24th, 2005 at 1:27 am
Cronopio: Surprise consists of sur (upon) and prise (take/taken). Taken upon thus, or “surprised”…
A pig is normally reffered to as ‘cochon’, but a side of pork is ‘cote de porc’ etc. And as Larry implies, for three hundred years the english aristocracy spoke french, now commonly known as ‘franglais’. …”Je suis un rockstar, j’habite le south of France…” LOL(again)