Off for a few days
While I’m away for a few days working as a volunteer writer and photographer for the 4th Karate-Do Goju-Kai World Championships in Rotterdam, I do have some interesting Dunglish news. Someone in the Netherlands is doing a Ph.D. project about Dunglish, and I am hoping to hear more about it when I get back.
‘Steenkoolengels’ or ‘broken English’ is a major topic at Dutch universities, irritating Dutch people and foreigners alike. Students get annoyed at having to be lectured in Dunglish, while teachers get annoyed at having to hear it from their students. Picture a Chinese student having to communicate to a Dutch teacher in English, both not very fluent, or two Dutch students forced to speak English to each other. Imagine an Italian student who took Dutch lessons only to find out that Dunglish was more popular. Picture a British student going mad trying to understand what these people are trying to say.
At the Delft University of Technology, there is even a ‘Worst Teacher Award’ (‘worst’ here meaning ‘sausage’, as in ‘bad’) for the teacher who produces the worst English (Dunglish) sentence. The winner of 2005 was “Don’t let the cheese eat off your bread” and the runners up were “I have an equation picked from the sky” and “I tried to lead you around the garden”. Let the non Dutch people here have fun figuring out what was meant.
This has nothing at all to do with karate. Dewa mata (Japanese for see you later)!
November 11th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
… or as my sister and I like to refer to it, “stone coal English” 🙂
November 16th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
Hallo Natasha, erg leuk dat je me afgelopen weekeinde WK Karate tijdens één van onze superkorte pauzes even deze site liet zien, ik kom hier zeker nog vaak terug!
November 17th, 2005 at 10:46 am
“stone coal english”? Shouldn’t that have been “stone cabbage english”? 😀
November 24th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
Sorry, I don’t understand what you want to express here: (’worst’ here meaning ’sausage’, as in bad)
Worst is Dutch for sausage, allright. But what do you mean with “in bad”? When I am tired I fill my bath tub, and when I am lying there I am “in bad”, but I assume you don’t mean to write that!
November 24th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Hans: ‘”worst” betekent hier “worst”, (zo)als in “slecht”‘
(The ‘as’ belongs to the ‘in’ more than to the ‘bad’) Hm, that doesn’t make it any better, does it? 😉
November 24th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
As in ‘bad’. OK, with single quotes, it is better, I’ll correct it!
November 25th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
Could we call this Engerlands?