Dunglish

This picture is in perfect Dutch, but did you just it read here in Dutch or in English first?

It’s not Dunglish, it’s not wrong, but it could help you measure how your Dutch is doing.

Translation: (Mama, this one, this one, this one, please)

(Thanks to the person who sent in it, I cannot find your e-mail, shame on me!)

Check out this current advert on telly that seems to annoy the Dutch and non-Dutch alike.

This man’s accent is exaggerated (no kidding), but the ‘I move to you, you move to me’, an explanation of haggling grates on our collective nerves. And then the ‘smart woman’ solves the entire issue by shopping online for her ‘vacashun’. Nice and bourgeois.

It’s a funny, well made advert, but yeah, it’s too bad for the English idiom.

English Rocker: Is it alright like this?
Dutch temp guy: For this time, I’ll see it through the fingers, eh.

I’m not sure if they used Dunglish on purpose, but my gut says they did, probably because although it’s mostly in English, it is aimed at a Dutch audience. And English is the language of the elite, not the help. But the roles are reversed, yada yada yada.

Watch the Tempo Team video

This campaign gave me yet another reason not to trust a union or ever join one. Not only is the entire advert unclear to the targeted Dutch audience, but a slogan like “Power to the mensen met gezond verstand” (Power to the people with common sense), has a Dunglish mix that dumbs it right down.

Just what the Dutch need, another vague Dunglish slogan. Let us move pass this, comerades.

(Link and photo: reclamewereld.blog.nl)

I’m back from having been away, as the Dutch say. While waiting for my luggage yesterday, I had this Dunglish bit staring at me in the face repeatedly. Call it my last vacation picture or my “Welcome back at Holland” picture. (Yes, that mistake was deliberate.)

I don’t have a picture, but a story of some reverse Dunglish. In Montréal where I was on vacation, I visited a T-shirt shop that sold country logos. The one for the Netherlands was an odd version of the Dutch football team lion (a cross between the KNVB and the Postbank lion) and instead of “Nederland” (the country) it read “Nederlands” (the language). It was the only country with a mistake, and I left without pointing it out.

What’s really wrong with this picture? The bad use of the present tense. The use of “right now” commands the present continuous (or progressive) and not the simple present. A very basic mistake. “His” should be in capitals as well and I would have written this bit differently, but then that would be work.

I was slow to jump on the bandwagon with this one as I’ve been busy, but I couldn’t let this one go. This promising deodorant was slammed by Taalpuristen for their incorrect use of Dutch and I felt the need to point out that the English is incorrect as well. OK, it’s not Dunglish per se, but talk about a mess: you’ve got the brand names ‘biorythm’ and ‘biorhythm’ both being used and even countries like Denmark can actually spell it right, although the product bears the wrong spelling. Pretty sloppy for a multinational.

Here’s a flashback to folks who couldn’t spell rhythm either:

(Photo: Taalpuristen)