Dunglish

American musician John Mayer was a guest on De Wereld Draait Door this week, an upbeat, trendy Dutch talk show. I know from very reliable sources that the show tends to avoid inviting non-Dutch speaking guests unless they are tennis star André Agassi (a few weeks ago) and in this case, the handsome John Meyer.

The cute joke made by the woman asking John Meyer if he was ‘lonely’ is a nice piece of Dunglish although totally on purpose. The woman asked if John was ‘poodle naked’, which was an excuse to say ‘butt naked’ in Dutch on telly and obvisouly make an assumption that he’d be very good looking naked.

Click on this link to get to 4:30 where the fun starts.

Happy New Year to you all!
It’s been a while, but I’m back.

The site of the city of Wageningen is written in whatever English. They surely have the money and time to do it right, but obviously don’t care. Does it matter? Well, it’s a crappy way to promote your city if you care this little about communicating properly.

One particularly sloppy section:

“First registrion:
If you are planning to stay in Wageningen for more than four month, you have to register at te population register of de manicipality in Wageningen.”

(Thanks, Robin!)

In the category ‘why use proper Dutch when bastard English will do’, I dare you to try and guess from the logo what these people sell if you didn’t see this advert on telly like I did.

The name of the company requires what I like to refer to as ‘aural squinting’. If you read this slowly and pretend to speak Dutch, you may even pronouce it as… insured! That’s right, this is an insurance company, turning what my best friend calls ‘brown karma’ into something pink and happy. No, wait, that’s ‘heppie’ (Dutch pronunciation of ‘happy’, which sounds like ‘hippy’), as in Hotel Heppie, a holiday house for, I assume, underprivileged children who deserve a holiday. The company surely has good reason to plug this, but the name is ‘reedeeculooos’.

Does this work for anybody? I mean, I like pink, but not this time.

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.

Yes, it was all done on purpose, but there are quite a few grains of truth in this Dunglish festival.

Note the sibilance, when the letter ‘s’ sounds like a snake in an animation film trying to talk. The cure is to pronounce the ‘s’ at the end of a word like a ‘z’. Why they can’t seem to teach that in English classes is beyond me.

The assumption that people can only speak Dunglish is a bit annoying, but hey, then it wouldn’t be funny.

And the advert is full of cheese, windmill and herring clichés as well as the painful reminder that we really can’t live off wind energy. At the risk of sounding very 1970s, I still think nuclear energy is going to make a comeback.

(Thankssss Jarno for the tip!)

SOS Piet is coming to fix this woman’s dish!

Not only does he do his best food-wise, he speaks Flemish (Dutch subtitles are provided for those who have problems with his accent), there are bits of Spanish, and he throws in some English and Flemglish as well, making a right funny dish of it himself.

Bon appetit!

(Tip: Scrubs Scrubman)

Famous Dutch artist and writer Wim de Bie who originally wrote about Dunglish.nl when it first launched and also that English is sexier than Dutch will now sing some classic rock and roll for you, written with his partner in humour, Kees van Kooten.

Technically, this is NSFW, but only if you’re a prude who has no concept of context or dry humour (or fake ears).

The joke here is that there was a time when the Dutch were not as good with English as they are today, and many people had no clue what was being said. While the English lyrics are pretty straightforward and ‘Dunglishly’ on purpose, the Dutch subtitling tones the entire thing down to a puppy-clad greeting card. ‘I wanna fuck you’ roughly becomes (no pun intended and translated to match the music):

Oh, aren’t you pretty
Lying in the hay
Oh, aren’t you beautiful
I’ve no words to say

How much I like you, How much I like you…

Celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Dutch dropping by New York City produced this ‘Dutch tinted’, amusingly formulated warning sign.

I tread carefully because the English is written properly and understandable, but could have been formulated more ’cause and effect’ and much less passive.

Bench will tip if rolled. Bench tips when rolled. You get my drift.

“Governor’s island, the celebration seemed to include some really wonderful Dutch design, including these fantastic benches with wheels, apparently designed by Dutch designer Rogier Martens.”

(Photo: Kate)

The more I read this, the more I realise it’s not standard Dunglish. ‘P/T’ is a crafty abbreviation for ‘part-time’ (took me a minute), while ‘m/v’ (‘man/vrouw’) is Dutch for ‘man/woman’. Yes, emancipation is not upon us yet, as it still needs to be pointed out in 2009 that jobs are for both men and women. Before someone dares brings this up, it’s simple: if you don’t specify anything, it’s always for both sexes. That’s what they do in emancipated countries.

The typical Dutch ‘asking a question’ tone is totally lost in this Dunglish jungle, and the ‘very well salary’ and ‘have you been interested?’ is funny.

The ‘we in search for you’ and ‘let you register’ has an ebonics ring to it, which is not a good thing.

I’m impressed they got ‘collective labour agreement right’ British spelling and all (priorities, eh), but otherwise this is terrible. Clean up on aisle 5!

(Photo: Linda)

This Belgian advert in Flemglish (Flemish + English) has been around for a while, but hey, I didn’t know about it and so it’s time to share.

I think this is a great use of Flemglish (Dunglish) — it can be done!

It even has Dutch subtitles. Yes, Flemish television is often subtitled in Dutch and vice versa whether we like it or not.

Who took my badjas = who took my bathrobe?