Dunglish

Merry Christmas, Kerstmis or whatever it is you celebrate out there in cyberspace!

I am off for a week or so and I’ll be back with more energy. Have a good one!

Language fans chose the Dunglish ‘Bokitoproof’, which indicates that a zoo is gorilla-proof, as the Word of the Year 2007. For those who missed the commotion, Bokito was the gorilla that ran amok in a Dutch zoo in Rotterdam earlier this year. It beat out perfectly good Dutch neologisms such as ‘comadrinken’ (drinking yourself into a coma), ‘klimaatneutraal’ (neutral for the environment), ’slurptaks’ (tax on gas/petrol guzzling cars) en ‘lokhomo’ (gay bait).

The voting for ‘Woord van het jaar 2007′ was organised by newspaper De Pers, het Genootschap Onze Taal (linguistic association) and the Van Dale dictionary. Some 10,000 people voted and ‘Bokitoproof’ got 19% of the votes.

Another known Dunglish expression with the word ‘proof’ in it was ‘Rabo proof’, with a space, which is apparently wrong in Dutch.

(Link: Telegraaf)

Bas, who sent this all in, is absolutely right: you could manage to come up with acceptable excuses for the first two photos, but not the last one.

‘Kits’ could be a play on bad Dutch pronunciation of ‘kids’ or refer to the Dutch word ‘kits’, found in the expression “Alles kits” (”Everything’s alright”).

The second one is a Duchtification of the name ‘Pebbles’, presumably of The Flintstones cartoons, which is just fine.

Number three (’Het Toddler’s Huis’) doesn’t work because the English word is sandwiched between two Dutch words in turn bastardizing the Dutch spelling rules. Kids and bastards are not a good combo.

And then if you’re still not convinced, Bas also found a daycare centre in his hometown called ‘Heppie’, which is the Dutch pronunciation and Dunglish spelling of the word ‘happy’. To the English ear, it could sound more like ‘hippie’, but in any case, it’s Dunglish.

As I was explaining to people over drinks and after a few myself the other day, the Dutch language is threatened by its own people and an interpretation of their Anglo-Saxon media consumption.

(Photos: Bas)