Dunglish

According to Remco who sent this in, the photo was taken around Christmas 2005 along the A2 motorway. He believes it’s a cynical location for such a sign, considering the amount of queues on that stretch of motorway. After some digging, I read that the Belgian campaign was “Belgium speed up”, not Belgique (FR) or België (NL), which BTW is also wrong, as it requires a comma.

It should read something like “Speed up, Netherlands”, as it’s an imperative. Of course, I’d change it completely. Maybe “Move it, Dutch boy!”

(Photo: Remco)

Stichting Nederlands has awarded the ‘Sofprijs der Nederlandse taal 2005′, a protest award for shaming the Dutch language to Dutch minister for Public Works and Water Management, Carla Peijs. She was nominated for her Dunglish “I love verkeersregels” (I love traffic regulations) campaign.

Previous winners of this award were Philips for no longer publishing its annual report in Dutch and Dutch politician Neelie Kroes for botching up the English language during her introduction as EU commissioner when she could have spoken Dutch.

Here is my original post back in September 2005:
I do not love this

Enjoy this photo gallery that mocks the campaign:
iloveverkeersregels

An article I translated for Igor Freeke:
I love richtingaangeven

(Source: Taalpost)

While one fast food chain in the Netherlands says they know what to do with chicken (still sounds weird to me), this Dutch owned chicken restaurant in Spain doesn’t. Although machine translation can be easily recognised, I can’t seem to understand how someone could have produced this.

Fried highlights:
And we say you!
And I say “yeah yeah”.

At our: no sea visibility, none slag, no fish, do not save, but chicken, Spanish chicken.
Fries with that?

Enjoy the rest!

(Tip: Angela)

I haven’t seen something this literal in a long time. Due to the lack of decent rooms and houses for rent in Amsterdam, all kinds of people try to attract potential clients, and that includes providing information in something that looks like English. Even the “click on the image to enter” on the homepage in Dutch is funny because there is no image!

Highlight:
stay licence (better known as residence permit)
Sound like something a dog could use.

(Tip: Floortje)

Ah yes, restaurant menus. As long as people can figure it out, maybe decipher it, everything should be OK. What bothers me is that even the Greek transliteration (Greek with a Latin alphabet) and the Dutch is stuffed with pine nuts. Sure, its all about the food, but I wonder if the Metaxa didn’t get the best of the cook who whipped up this menu.

Some highlights:

Suflaki van Beef
The Dutch Greek English specialty

Koksplate/Plate a La Chef/Vishplate
Pick a mixed grill, they’re all on the menu

Red and white whine’s
No complaining!

(Link tip: Indra)