Dunglish

Do they really wash your car at your place? I’m not sure. ‘Carwash’ is Dutch for ‘car wash’. When English words become accepted in Dutch, they often get crammed together. However, ‘mobil’ is neither Dutch nor English, so I have to assume it could be the name of the company, although there’s no capital letter. Wax as a noun is OK in Dutch, but not as an verb. It’s all too much for me.

(Photo: Yuri)

There’s a new Dutch campaign to draw attention to following traffic rules. For reasons unknown, the ministry in question thought it useful to go Dunglish. ‘I love driving on the right’ (in the Netherlands you cannot ‘keep your lane’, you have to stay in the right lane as much as possible) is even longer than the Dutch ‘Ik hou van rechts rijden’. The printed advert uses a heart, which is fine, but the signs on the highway use the word ‘love’. ‘I love to keep right’, needs a preposition, too, and other variants are less handy than the Dutch one. Dunglish is making headway in a bad way.

I was staring at this in the car waiting for a red light in the passenger’s seat when I realised I had to grab my camera. Besides being Dunglish, something I would not expect from a bank, it almost looks like it is trying to say the opposite of what it means. Rabo Proof (Rabo is a bank, the Rabobank, which sounds like ‘rob a bank’ to some English speakers), means that your mortgage is protected AGAINST the Rabobank. The campaign is to test your current mortgage to see if it is Rabo Proof, which is very aggressive by Dutch standards. I find it Rabobank repellent.

Philips is also going Dunglish. “Ameezing”, the Dunglish pronunciation of “amazing”, has a whole new meaning. The ‘meezing’ part means to sing along, and the advert is for a sing along event. The ‘a’ becomes ‘ee’ in Dutch, but sounds more like ‘eemeezing’, as the first ‘a’ gets it too. This is why words like ‘access’ and ‘excess’ can sound exactly the same when spoken by some Dutch people. Here’s my quick Canadian rendition of access.mp3 and excess.mp3. My question to you is can Dutch people who are less familiar with English hear this difference? What you cannot hear, you cannot say yourself.

(Photo: Toon)

Besides shaking my head and going ‘tssss’ when I first read this, I made an association with “My feet are killing me”. Well, it is about stilettos! The word ‘fashionality’ is used in the US as a one-word replacement for fashion sense. It’s a word that is not used in the Netherlands and sticks out like a sore thumb – or toe. And I really don’t like it!

“Please keep the toilet clean”, there, I said it. Points for the smartypants who took out the ‘h’, as if that helped any. Dutch writing often makes an affirmation and then adds another sentence to give you a clue, leaving the reader to make the link between the two sentences without ‘coming out and saying it’ like I did here above. Pssst: my version is shorter!

(Photo: Maarten)

Why bother postering a large part of Amsterdam West with Dunglish? Most of the staff at Kinko’s, the photocopy and printing shop, speak English and are foreigners. They could have helped. Or maybe they didn’t want to, which wouldn’t surprised me.

So, you’re getting 30:

30 lashes with a wet noodle
30 kicks in the ass
30 euro
30 beers
30 bicycles
30 sandwiches
30 I love you’s

Got 30?

The name of this sneaker shop will require some aural squinting for some members of the Dutch audience. “Everybody fits sneakers” is trying to say that everybody can wear sneakers because there are sneakers for everybody. If you squint (or wince, like I first did), you’ll see that it’s inventive Dunglish. Els, the Dutch person who found it, wrote “who comes up with such a thing?”. My answer would be way too many people.

Yet another tip from the guys at taalpuristen.nl, this Belgian casino website is one big losing streak, and serves a complimentary French only pop-up.

Some hilarious highlights:

In an explanation about my favourite game, Black Jack:
“The figures count for 10, the aces for 11 or 1 (with the choice of the player), the other charts have their facial value.”

Now picture the Queen of Spades as the bearded lady running off with the treasure map.

Read this with a fake French accent:
“…our tables of black-jack, roulettes and poker await you into the georgeous upstair room. Come and fun there with secrecy, between friends or with your family.”

This gives ‘family affair’ a whole new meaning.

This advert is in Dutch, but “workpreparator” is Dunglish. More than 50% of all Dutch job titles are borrowed from English, a rumour I tend to believe. “Workpreparator” is the literal translation of “werkvoorbereider”, which in English should be “work planner” or “planner”. Click on the British flag for some more. And the advert is better than the website.

(Photo: Bram)