Dunglish

Interestingly enough, this Denglish habit is also a Dunglish one: splitting words in two to save space (time, being lazy, all kinds of reasons). The problem of course is that the author followed the rules of German instead of English. Both ‘Sunday’ and ‘holiday’ should be plural (there’s more than one in a year) and holiday is capitalised, again following German rules. That’s a lot of mistakes in five words. You could also debate that it should read ‘national holidays’, ‘public holidays’, ‘bank holidays’, someone stop me.

When in doubt, write it out or ask, just like for directions, it won’t hurt.

For anyone who wants to know why I was in Germany (shameless self-promotion), click here.

Here is some Dunglish advertising for shops in downtown Amsterdam on the Kalverstraat, that big long busy street with shops that repeat themselves like the animated background in The Flintstones. The ‘haert’ part is funny, because there’s this inside joke in Amsterdam that Dutch street names such as ‘Ruysdaelskade’, of which the ‘ae’ is an indication of old spelling, are expensive because of the ‘ae’ in the name. OK, it’s ‘ha ha’ funny.

‘Have your shoppingbreak’ (’shopping break’) and relax and enjoy’ are too many things to do at once! But sloppiness is next to ‘I still get paid anyways’-ness.

(Tip: Branko)

According to the soon to be Ph.D. graduate Ton Koet of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, Dutch speakers are more critical than English speakers about the quality of English spoken by Dutch speakers. Interestingly enough, having a good English accent is more important than actually speaking English properly.

Some highlights from this Dutch article:

1. At the lowest levels of education, being understood in English is the only requirement, while in higher education, a good accent is very important. “Can a Dutch teacher judge the level of English of their students or should their be judged by a real native speaker?”

I’d ideally want to be judged by nothing less than a native speaker. (At elementary school we had English in a remote part of Canada from a French speaker and they sent her packing after one class. The director of the school boldly took over himself when he heard the utterances of this poor woman.)

2. Children who speak non-standard Dutch are judged more harshly on their Dutch and their English by the Dutch. So much for tolerating integration and regional differences.

His conclusion is to have more native speakers teach English. Foreign languages should ideally be taught by native speakers. What a shocker. I still cannot wrap my brain around the fact that this is not the case, shortage of teachers and lack of interest in teaching aside. Don’t tell parents it doesn’t matter at elementary school and that it will all come together later because this entire blog says otherwise.

(Link (in Dutch): kennislink, via Taalpost)

Oooh thanks to Robin over at Dutchnews for a perfect what I call VBDK (Voor bij de koffie – to go with your coffee) Dunglishy musical interlude by no one other than George Baker (aka Hans Bouwens) of the famous George Baker Selection who sang “Little Green Bag” back in 1969.

The story: Consortium seeks support through website

Too many people gonna lose their jobs
Too many dreams will go down the drain
So we will stand up, and scream out to the world
The message that we have today

No people no profit

I’ll let you all rant about this one over coffee.

(Tip: Robin)