Dunglish

Although I live in Amsterdam, I still find myself shopping for certain things in Rotterdam, namely music and clothes. However, I wouldn’t buy anything I cannot try on in the way of clothes online and this website puts me off. It’s not aimed at my age group – fine. I’m sure it’s better to go there. Does it look smart? It comes off dumbed down. I hear the barrage of ‘non compliments’ about Rotterdam pouring over me as I write this. A sloppy look is one thing, but a sloppy business ain’t too funky.

(Tip: Aad)

The Dutch activity of ‘funshoppen’ (fun shopping), which is all the rage, comes up often as an example of Dunglish that really irritates people. A ‘funshopgids’ is a fun shopping guide, which is just a colourful leaflet. As usual, it is a perfectly useless term, but as usual, English makes everything cooler when it comes to hyping up something bland. Fun shopping is shopping that doesn’t involve fetching groceries and running errands. Although Dunglish is being used to hype up something, it still ends up dumbing it down. While the Netherlands is still heavily debating the latest round of spelling changes, Dunglish marches on, as if it was immune to bad spelling. I find that disturbing.

I do believe in mixing things up in life. ‘Christmix’ sound OK for some heavily rotated Christmas remix on the radio, even in the Netherlands, where you’d think Christmas was an Anglo-Saxon invention. A little digging tells me that this group performs ‘crazy and comical’ acts for passers-by at outdoor Christmas markets. The eternally unanswered question of why it has to be in Dunglish will remain a mystery in 2006.

(Photo: René)

The critics say it has good food, but the name of this Amsterdam noodle joint, most probably aimed at tourists, puts me off a little. Names such as ‘Born to wok’ and ‘Wok and roll’ are all old school, but at least they’re witty. Sure, ‘to go’ or ‘to take out/away’ would have been boring, but dumbing down using Dunglish is oh so boring. To add more peanut oil to the hot wok, noodle joints are tasty, but so out of style. I remember some British lifestyle magazine making fun of Amsterdam, saying that the food trends were three years behind other major European cities. As a foody, I have to agree. Mail me for excellent Amsterdam restaurant tips.

(Photo: Els)

I was thinking of unsubscribing from this mailing list of young merrymakers, but I just couldn’t, with things like this landing in my inbox:

“i Pod party… do u Disco? Share your tunes and play the DJ!”

It’s a party for people in the Netherlands. Playing the DJ has a very adult, ‘gansta’ mob-like thing going for it. This is the second ‘offense’ for these folks on my blog.

I know, I know, it’s just a typo, but a funny one. The word ’schop’ in Dutch means ‘kick’; the goal was to write ’shop’. This sign could be seen right across from Amsterdam Central station by literally hundreds of thousands of people. That’s not impressive considering the usual weirdness that can be found in that part of town.

What’s odd is that it’s a very uncommon mistake for a Dutch shop to make. The word ’shop’ is used pretty much everywhere, while ’schop’ is more of a football thing.

First, ‘leafs’ sounds like ‘liefs’ in Dutch, which means ‘lots of love’ like at the end of a letter. It is true that the plural of leaf is either leafs or leaves. Problem is, it should be leaves here, as it is about tea. Leafs is only used when emphasizing individual leaves, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team or the leaf of a book.

So the wordplay isn’t really that clever. Me no like. Have a look yourself.

(Link: Ghazaleh)

Where would the future of the English language be without more neologisms from Dutch politicians! I proudly present “bootdaten” and ”bootdate”, which sounds like something military, but actually means “boat dating” and “boat date”, implying that boats date each other. Considering the Netherlands’ open-mindedness, this isn’t too far a stretch. It’s about using boats as public transport in Amsterdam.

Moving along, there is a lovely alternative to the Dutch “kiss and ride” – the Dutch use the English straight up – “kiss and flow”. I find it funny and very stupid. I am assuming that ‘varen’ (navigate) got turned into ‘flow’, which a boat does not do. Water flows, boats float. Traffic flows, although on water not that fast (no more than 30 km/h by law). Rotterdam has speedy water taxis, but they do not have to navigate through cute canals.

(Link: Els)

Tanks a lot

“professional welders who are in possession of all thinkable certificates”.

I remember being able to buy “all thinkable certificates” in the Moscow metro back in the 1990s.

The rest of the site is convincing enough, but quite wonky.

Decode this

“In the same way you can drop your questions.”

Drop, as in forget it altogether. The rest of this site is a real riot.

On the radio, I said that all those unnecessary English words were irritating, but Dutch linguists yet again from the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) were less modest. The proper term for improper use of one language in another is contamination, but this time it’s referred to as language pollution. (Taalvervuilingsaward). “Hard core and critical, but all in good fun”. But not free (hint, hint).