University level Dunglish
As sharply pointed out to me by Reinier (thanks!), this just hurts: a Dutch University offering Dutch language courses to foreign students who couldn’t even be bothered to use proper English on their website.
Some painful examples:
– What time are the colleges? (colleges = lectures)
If you do not know Dutch already – the whole point to these courses! – there’s a huge chance you have no clue what they mean. The sentence is not brilliant either.
– You learn to communicate well, as well as in the cafe as in the classroom.
Direct translation from Dutch grammatically and culturally. Pain.
– Staffmember, targetgroup, etc.
No so bad really sticking words together, at least you know what they’re on about.
Not convinced? Pretend you’re Chinese, have never been to Europe, speak some English and are trying to find out what they’re on about.
The argument I sometimes hear with Dutch universities is that you’re suppose to know some Dutch if you come to study here. That’s not true: the requirement is that you can function in English and are encouraged to learn Dutch, which I would encourage everyone to do. However, the Dutch gets in the way of the English, and in this case, the English gets in the way of the Dutch. Now I’m confused.
Tags: Dutch, language courses, Utrecht University
