Dunglish

Another wonderful sign at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, the home of Dunglish.

This reminds me of Gadsby, a book with no letter ‘e’ in it by American novelist Ernest Vincent Wright. Nope, I never read it, but we talked about the idea of a lipogram back in secondary school.

(Photo: Tom, thanks Marijcke!)

As Katje put it (thanks!), “at Schiphol Airport you’re truly welcomed into the land of Dunglish.”

This has a terrible Ebonics ring to it, due to the syntax. And then ‘Welcome at’ instead of ‘Welcome to’ is a classic.

It’s been quiet here for a while, but I have some more Dunglish piling up.

Thanks to everyone sending stuff in!

The Taalverdediging group, defending the Dutch language, plans to protest on Saturday 13 November at 1 pm the local Albert Heijn supermarket in Assen, Drenthe against the use of what they call “Euroshopper English’, which is the English used on generic brand products, often sold throughout the European Union.

“Prawn crackers, puff pastry biscuits, salt soft liquorice, milk chocolate sprinkles, almond flavoured rounds, rusk, Dutch spiced coockies and big battenbergs. Are we still in the Netherlands? No, we’re at Albert Heijn where the Dutch language no longer counts!”

(Link: Photo of an endive potato mash with meatless sausage by Jasja Dekker, some rights reserved)

First, I am sorry for not posting so much. Thanks for all the corrections, don’t get mad, just tell me, I can take it and I will correct it.

(And to the ‘person’ who voted for the Dutch extreme right party in the last election and thinks they are justified in threatening me here or anybody else, you’re just sad.)

Public transport posters are fun, especially after a night on the town. I won’t analyse it, it just needs some therapy.

I know this video was made with enthusiasm, Alex, it was a good video. Finally having the world’s biggest passenger plane, an Airbus A380, land at Schiphol airport is a big deal in aviation. However, you really need to brush up on your English and ideally your pronunciation. The first bit of music was very cool by the way.

All Alex needed to do was to record his enthusiasm in Dutch and put subtitles on it. I would have enjoyed this video more in Dutch, especially that smooth r in Polderbaan.

I like the plural of feet = feets (foot, feet)
‘testing their photographic gears’ = another interesting plural
‘wild parking’ = parking all over the place, willy nilly, illegally
This plane is apparently male! (here he is!)
Oh dear, he can’t abbreviationabbreviate kilograms either – it’s kg internationally
He says dockED and not DOCKED, a rookie mistake
‘Later on the evening’ = later IN the evening, another rookie mistake

(Thanks Roel!)

Darn those pesky hour notations!

1. We don’t use ‘th’ for dates in this context, and repeating April is useless.
2. We don’t put 0 in front of hours (8:30)
3. Nobody uses ‘hrs’ in English.
4.’16.00′ is not the evening, it’s still afternoon, beer or no beer in hand.
5. Yes, British English do sometimes use one ‘full stop’ for time notation, I use a colon (‘:’) like the rest of the world and my mobile phone.

There’s lots more wrong, but I don’t have the time (snap).

And the rest makes me dizzy. It reads like cut and paste grammar gone bezerk. But, yes, we do know what they’re on and on and on about.

(Thanks Jannelies!)

This parody is full of Dutchisms, Dunglish and clichés.
The scary part is I know some people who talk like this and are not doing stand-up comedy.

Enjoy!

(Thanks: Marie!)

Yes, we know what they are trying to say, but the Dunglish doesn’t even come close to the Dutch original. First, I want to address the language problem, then the big honking cultural problem.

The Dutch roughly says, ‘Do you do it like this at home, too?’ and then the message is lost in translation, never mind ‘your’ that got botched up (‘youre’).

The big honking issue here is the unfortunate ‘Dutch rudeness’. Pointing out bad behaviour in puppy-peed-on-the-carpet style gets you nowhere with the rest of us mortals. ‘Please pick up after yourself’. Thank you’ is the way to go, no matter how irritated you are. And then the Dunglish won’t matter as much.

(Thanks Arjen!)

The song is a nicely performed rock and roll number by Marc Verhaegen and his orchestra (band), but with a totally Dunglish title: ‘I Feel Me a King’, a direct translation of ‘Ik voel mij een koning’, which should be ‘I Feel Like a King’.

Let the record show (pun) that his accent is pretty darn good otherwise.

You can hear this beauty too right here.

(Link and photo: Showcase (Frits Jonker of the Fool’s Gold column in Dutch comic strip magazine Zone5300), via @waa on Twitter, thanks!)