Dunglish

Oh no, it’s Dunglish strawberry flavoured, frozen something or other. A whole campaign based on major clichés from American television shows like CSI and Cold Case, and then some British English thrown in, which I don’t get. It sounds terrible to me. Marketing low fat products to a young crowd and not to fat, lazy women is kind of innovative. And I’m told it tastes good, but it had to end up here.

(Photo: Branko)

While a brouhaha is brewing over the arrival of the asbestos-riddled ship Otapan in the harbour of Rotterdam this very day, there’s nothing sweeter than being current and on topic.

Does a provincial asbestos removal business really need a Dunglish pay-off? How exciting can asbestos removal possibly be? What happens when they don’t do their best? In English, it is ‘asbestos’ and not ‘asbest’, so to novice Dunglish enthusiasts, this could look even dumber that it was meant to be.

(Photo: Erik)

Ronald Plasterk, the soon to be Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences, recently opened an interesting can of worms (or a Pandora’s box – pick one) by saying that it was “childish” for countries to want to speak their own language in the European Parliament and that “everybody should speak the same broken English”, or in the Dutch case, since the article is in Dutch, they should speak “steenkolen-Engels” (’Dunglish’). See the FAQ for more on both these terms.

He also said the Dutch should defend their identity although he was less passionate about that.

In Dutch ‘Babylon in Brussel’ (’Babylon in Brussels’)

This advert is related to cheap Dutch shampoo. I’m very much into quality shampoo and this one I don’t buy. I do admit I like their TV adverts because they make fun of the oh so many women here who go to work in a suit, but put their hair in a crappy plastic hair clip as if they were at home vacuum cleaning. I really needed to get that off my fashion police chest. Oh, and men think it looks like crap as well, girls.

For the fans who don’t read Dutch (you know who you are), I’m sure you’ll spot all the Dunglish. ‘Tools’ is carried over from the IT world, as the word is used ad nauseam to describe anything that isn’t software or hardware. And a ‘bad hairday’ in Dutch (’bad hair day’ in English) is trying to be cool, American style. Icky poo. Is that even written properly in Dutch according to those new nasty spelling rules? Just kidding, I don’t care.

(Link tip: TaalvervuilingsAward)

Here’s a news item that manages to put a negative twist on some sort of good news: “De Rotterdamse Marokkaan is happy”, or “Moroccans in Rotterdam are happy”.

Besides the fact that the article is not newsworthy, using the word ‘happy’ for no good reason bugs me. Why, why, why does using English here actually make this any better? The article was shot down by more than 60 people.

But then, if you’re going to insult someone in the Netherlands, you might as well do it in English:“Roepen_’fuck_you’_naar_politie_geen_belediging”, or “Yelling ‘fuck you’ at the police is not an insult”. The story goes that a judge found these words “not very nice”, but not insulting! This is being appealed, so there’s some hope.

Conclusion: if swearing in English is not as good as in Dutch, how can a useless English word enhance a Dutch newspaper heading? Nice paradox.