Bad ass poster
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.
October 17th, 2005 at 3:28 am
Not bad spelling but wordplay. Now and never. Got it?
October 17th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
You bad ass you 🙂
October 17th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
These posters are usually entirely in English and I have never seen any mistakes or anomalies on them when I use to live in Rotterdam.
I guess you mean: when I USED to live…..
October 17th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Wow, a wee mistake! I just corrected it, thanks a lot!
October 18th, 2005 at 9:51 am
“when I used to live in Rotterdam”… I’m wondering if that’s a correct sentence. Although one can say “I used to live in Rotterdam – but not anymore”, if refering to a past activity as in today’s entry it should be “when I lived in Rotterdam”.
October 18th, 2005 at 10:06 am
There’s nothing wrong with when I used to live. When I was living in Rotterdam is also good.
Wonder all you want 🙂
October 19th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
Whether you write ‘when I was living’, ‘when I lived’ or ‘when I used to live’, it should be ‘I never saw any mistakes’ (although it would be better to use ‘I used to live in Rotterdam’ by itself: ‘I used to live in Rotterdam and I never sawy any mistakes on the posters’).
October 21st, 2005 at 8:23 am
Actually, I’ll go half way with you on this. I should have written (which I will correct today)
“I have never seen any mistakes or anomalies on them EVEN when I used to live in Rotterdam.”
I did not want to use ‘and’, but I should have used even.
Thanks for caring 🙂
October 21st, 2005 at 7:08 pm
No, still the wrong tense. ‘I have never seen …’ would work if you were still living in Rotterdam, but that period of time is finished, so it’s ‘I never saw … when I lived/was living’
October 24th, 2005 at 9:06 am
What is not clear to you (and maybe to others) is that I go to Rotterdam regurlary, although I don’t live there any more. That’s why I wrote I have never seen instead of putting in it all the past. I did that very much on purpose.
October 25th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Ah. Well, then it would be correct for you to say you ‘have never seen any mistakes on them’ (that goes with ‘these posters are usually in English’), but once you bring ‘even when I lived there’ into it, you need a change of tense: ‘nor did I see any, even when I lived (was living) there’.
May 17th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
ya..i totally agree with you..the spelling SUCKS!!