Dunglish

Oh my golden stars from proper grammar, this is for real. This is what kids are being taught at school to get their secondary school diploma. I peakedpeeked around quickly and not everything was translated by a Dutch truck. In the nitpicking department, starting sentences without a capital is a very bad example to set, which is what you can see if you follow the link to the rest of this captivating read.

Let me tell you what you can’t grasp intellectually!

(Link: citogroep.nl, Tip: Dutchnews.nl)

The graffiti reads “What happend (sic) to freedom, when there is no choice?” What, no choice of words or language? Not very deep, I’m afraid.

As Roel who sent this in put it, “I presume young people must have written this, but why were they using English anyway? Do they think it’s cool? And have you noticed how often Dutch people mix up the tenses?” Well, I also noticed the punctuation. But of course, it’s cool. Dutch is soooo 2008 apparently!

And so the question remains: why use English if you can’t write it? I’ve seen mistakes in English graffiti in the Bronx, but that was just called ‘poor neighbourhood’.

Although a lot of people in Amsterdam like Laser 3.14 who scribbles on many walls, he messes up too.

(Photo: Roel, Rotterdam)

I read this and I just keep shaking my head. How can you possibly require something that you can’t even make clear yourself? I mean, can these people actually judge if you’re qualified or not? Go ahead and tell me this huge corporation has no money, time or competent people left. And is it me or are they looking for someone highly competent with a high school diploma?

I used to have a Dutch boss that would ‘correct’ my English just because he had to put his stamp on my work. Sure, sometimes he caught a few things, that’s normal, but he shortened all my sentences, so that it looked like telegraph writing (acceptable in Dutch I am told), but in English looks like learner’s English. He added hyphens everywhere for no reason and stuck series of three words together, making them look like a car pile up.

As for this job advert, the disease of putting semicolons in a list, please stop. Only do this in a legal contract, but for the love of literacy, stop doing it in other texts. And the rest is scary.

(Tip: Dutchnews.nl)

Maybe the journalist who wrote this wrote it really, really quickly and late at night. Maybe. But it’s still full frontal Dunglish in a big newspaper. This is part of an article in today’s De Volkskrant about the social media network LinkedIn. This message was what the journalist sent to try and get Barack Obama to link to him, which failed. So much for making a good impression. And I have Dutch friends who are linked to Mr. Obama.

A thumbs up for using American English (honor vs. honour). A big thumbs down for using “when” instead of “if”. The “media-affairs” is because in Dutch the wrong way it would be “mediaaffairs” and read like a headache. And so the proper Dutch spelling makes for improper English. It’s tough, I know.

I could go on, but I’ll let you have some too.

However, the article also quotes Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s profile and incidentally the nice mistake about where he works. It’s all about making a good impression. Maybe the Netherlands should be run more like a company!

We’ve been learning the hard way that anything in English is ‘chic’, right? So why would 2009 be any different? According to De Telegraaf, a discussion has been going on for 15 years (!) about changing the name of Rotterdam Airport to… drum roll… Rotterdam-The Hague Airport. It’s not so much about having an English-language name (in Dutch, Den Haag) as associating the airport with a city that in turn is associated with “justice and peace” by foreigners because of the international court. Will Obama have the US finally recognise ‘our’ court? Oops, tangent.

It’s a marketing thing. And a lot of us are flying out of Germany because of the ecotax anyways – I know I am. The lesson here is apparently that The Hague is chic abroad, and Rotterdam is not. That I leave up to the people.

(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo: rotterdamairportcarrental.com)

Come on, tell me this fast food chain doesn’t have the means or brains to translate things for tourists into English in Amsterdam, I dare you!

My friend spotted three mistakes although I can squeeze out more. I’m not going to mention them all, it takes the fun out of it.

1) No trading what? No “give me some fries and I’ll give you a big sip of my milkshake?” Seriously, I don’t get it. We covered the drugs already, right? Or was that just doing drugs?

2) …with or without reason? Unconscious? Brain dead?

3) If trouble… It’s that “You Tarzan, me Jane” Dunglish again. Someone call the Dunglish police!

(Photo: Laurent)