Dunglish

I was searching for info about a bus line when I stumbled upon this bit of Dunglish. This transport company very seriously offers a service called “Business Tax”. Wot? Well, it’s some sort of Dunglish shortform for taxi and has nothing to do with taxes. It’s one thing to mix and match Dutch and English, but it’s another to yank perfectly good words out of their context and force them to take on a useless role. Moreover, both words are totally unrelated: tax and taxi. You’ve gone too far!

I am always amazed at how Belgian websites juggle French, Dutch and even German information. However, when it comes to English, things get hairy. Theoretically, it is the only non-Belgian language of the lot, but this does not mean that the other languages are all neat and tidy. Hats off to the Belgian federal government for managing very well under these trying multilingual circumstances.

This Flemish website caught my eye, as their Flemish mishaps in English are different than those made by the Dutch in the Netherlands.

Here is a Halloween invitation that employees of a large company were privileged enough to get in their mailbox. The price/prize thing has creeped up again, showing its true scary nature. It does make you wonder about the way in which Dutch culture has been soaking up Halloween these past years. Photo caption: AVIFS is the business unit of the company, and Ome Kees is the name of the cafe where the scare will take place.

The pumpkin is too cute, and the ‘most scary person’ (the scariest person)(the boss? the sys admin?) will get, not win, a ‘price’. I wouldn’t want a price on my head! Will they be shot? Fired? Tortured by Dunglish? What about the Halloween costumes? That’s the best part!

(Photo: Martha)

This advert for one of Amsterdam’s nicest coffeeshops (yes, those cafes that sell marijuana and hashish, and yes, I have been there) was spotted in a local Dutch magazine. They were the only ones who dared advertise in ‘English’. Funny how they gave up at the end. A bit of Amsterdam trivia: this coffeeshop is one of the very few that serve alcohol. In fact, I do not know of any other, but then I really wouldn’t know. Besides selling drugs Dutch coffeeshops usually serve non-alcoholic beverages like – you guessed it – coffee.

(Photo: Branko)

Say what indeed! Bad spelling got my attention (’anneversery’ vs. ‘anniversary’), but the rest of this poster got me pulling out my piece, er, camera. The Dutch dictionary lists ‘hufter’ as ’shithead’ or ‘asshole’ (love that Dutch candor), but yeah, it is meant here as ‘bastard’, ‘bad guy’, ‘mofo’ (do I need to explain this abbreviation?), that sort of thing. The beautiful part is that we now have the Dunglish ‘girlyhufters’ as the female version of the above-mentioned, which is way out there. These posters are usually entirely in English and I have never seen any mistakes or anomalies on them even when I used to live in Rotterdam.

Using English on party and club posters is pretty much standard fare in the Randstad, the area which includes the major cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. Posters in Dutch automatically have a lesser effect and less appeal than in English. That’s an entirely different dicussion. I realise and accept that the younger crowd would want to be associated with something more international, and to do so requires English. But when it’s sloppy like this, the image projected goes from being tuned into the lastest in international trends to ‘boerenpummel’, which the Dutch dictionary lists as ‘country bumpkin’, but which I mean as ’small town hick’. Coming from one of the top clubs in Rotterdam – and I’ve been there! – it just doesn’t live up to its reputation.

There’s a veritable explosion of new and revamped women’s magazines in the Netherlands this year. Maybe it has always been like this and I just never noticed. I do stay off the stuff myself.

The Dutch word ‘vriendinnetjes’ (’friends that are girls’ – friends can be of both sexes in English) was made over into ‘vriendinnen’ (friends) with a ‘yes’ replacing the ‘tjes’ part, which in Dutch makes words all cosy and familiar. They did add an extra ‘n’ to pluralise the ‘new’ word, which makes it hard to read.

It’s not very clever word play at all. When you do get the joke, it’s not particularly funny or even interesting. I’m still dying to meet the people who come up with these lame slogans.

This isn’t major Dunglish and it wasn’t something for Spatiegebruik (Use of spaces), so I decided to give it a go. In any case, they both have mistakes that could be construed as Dunglish. First, ’service-desk’ is wrong. The other two hyphens are fine. As for the other, ‘air rail’ should be hyphenated (it is a temporary compound word) and what’s with the ‘to’? Yes, it is nitpicking and it is Friday!

(Photo: René of Spatiegebruik)

This Dunglish company name has been pointed out to me numerous times, and I even walked by their offices a few times. Then I noticed that they sponsored programmes on the Dutch Discovery channel. I think ‘Dosign’ is an odd Dunglish construction of ‘dozijn’ (dozen) with design. For us mere mortals, it’s an engineering firm. So far, many Dutch people think it’s a silly name. It also reminds me of an earlier posting about ’diezijn’. The Netherlands is still a free country and people can call their company what they like, but someone has to pay for the botched up Dutch subtitles on the Discovery channel!

(Photo: Toon)

My message to Jort Kelder, the well-known, outspoken editor of the Dutch Quote magazine: this cover title is uncool. It’s a small bit of Dunglish, most probably done on purpose because ‘boys & girls’ is cooler than ‘jongens en meisjes’. ‘Bernards’, which means ‘Bernhard’s’ in Dutch, could have been left in English. I’m surprised Mr Kelder would sign off on a half measure.

Also, it is confusing to read because you do not know in which language you should read it. The magazine name is already in English, but imagine if an entire article was written this way! I say stick to what you know. That is what they teach in journalism.