Nitpicking
First, ‘leafs’ sounds like ‘liefs’ in Dutch, which means ‘lots of love’ like at the end of a letter. It is true that the plural of leaf is either leafs or leaves. Problem is, it should be leaves here, as it is about tea. Leafs is only used when emphasizing individual leaves, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team or the leaf of a book.
So the wordplay isn’t really that clever. Me no like. Have a look yourself.
(Link: Ghazaleh)
December 12th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
I was really annoyed when I first saw these baggies advertised, knowing that people will probably copy this into their vocabulary :p
December 13th, 2005 at 9:45 am
You no like? Well then, feel free to ‘leaf’ the country any time 😛
December 13th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Is that Dutch humour going German? You need help 🙂
December 13th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
Pickwick (read: Douwe Egberts) has long had a problem with (wanting to be) English.
December 19th, 2005 at 11:53 am
Well, I DO like the shape of these tea bags.
Off topic: your “Me no like” reminds me of the sentence “Long time no see!” Is this some sort of joke? These days I hear this greeting over and over in commercials, movies and what not, but it sounds like a joke although people seem to be serious about it.
December 19th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
“Me no like” is meant as an understatement. You’ll hear cartoon characters or even children say this kind of learner’s English on purpose. “You Tarzan me Jane” is a good example of learner’s English.
“Long time no see” is more poetic and by no means learner’s English.
January 4th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Pickwick probably doesn’t want to advertise with “Pickwick leaves…”. I think the marketing department thought this would be an easy way out, it probably is, how many Dutchmen are going to notice anyway?
January 4th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Not too many, but to purposely treat your target audience like idiots is insulting. Bastardizing a foreign language to suit your purpose is not cool, especially deforming its grammar.
January 10th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I think that Pickwick must have reckoned that most Dutch people would not know the plural for a leaf (leaves) and thought that leaves would be mistaken for the verb to leave (as in Pickwick leaves the country).
January 10th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Then they can simply market their products in Dutch! They are a household name.
January 13th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
@Natashka: I think they didn’t like ‘bladeren’ as a name… Can’t say I blame them 🙂
February 14th, 2006 at 1:52 am
It’s really spelled that way? That explains why I couldn’t find it on google!