Woulda coulda shoulda
I really like the street wisdom of Loesje that adorns Dutch cities with posters of witty wisdom in Dutch and every now and again in English. However, their English is very often Dunglish, maybe even on purpose, but I have a feeling that they don’t realize their English is wrong. I can imagine this adds to the humour for the Dutch, but I think it’s kind of sloppy and takes away from the joke. Again, love you guys, but you really should get some native help or cut the English out altogether.
“If only a microcredit generated (caused?) a microcrisis”. Even corrected it doesn’t have any punch.
“If only microcredits generated (caused?) microcrises”. That’s just plain ugly.
That’s a lot of mistakes for one wee poster.
November 25th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Misschien is het als vraag bedoeld (en dan nog steeds krom, daar niet van). Als ik het met mijn Hollandse brein terugvertaal: Zouden microkredieten alleen een microcrisis veroorzaken? Zoiets. En ik ben over het geheel ook pro-Loesje, maar deze spreuk is inderdaad niet geslaagd.
November 26th, 2009 at 7:35 am
“Krijgen we van microkredieten niet gewoon een microcrisis?”
Klinkt toch goed. Waarom moest dit in het Engels?
November 26th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I have no idea why they do things in English, none.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I don’t think it’s meant as a wish but as a question – Loesje doesn’t seem to do question marks.
Would microcredit generate only microcrises?
November 30th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
If it’s a question, it needs a question mark! So it’s probably a wish. It’s still bad.
December 1st, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Loesje’s posters in Dutch don’t use questions marks either. Expressing a wish in English in the form of ‘Would that microcredit generated only microcrises’ is beyond most Dutch people. I still say it’s supposed to be a question.
January 11th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Maybe it’s in English because of the word microcredit, and my suggestion would be:
“Microcredit would have generated only a micro crisis”
February 5th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
It’s a retorical question seemingly joining two subjects that dont have an actual connection: “micro credits” and “credit crisis”