Hurry up and wait
According to Remco who sent this in, the photo was taken around Christmas 2005 along the A2 motorway. He believes it’s a cynical location for such a sign, considering the amount of queues on that stretch of motorway. After some digging, I read that the Belgian campaign was “Belgium speed up”, not Belgique (FR) or België (NL), which BTW is also wrong, as it requires a comma.
It should read something like “Speed up, Netherlands”, as it’s an imperative. Of course, I’d change it completely. Maybe “Move it, Dutch boy!”
(Photo: Remco)
May 31st, 2006 at 2:44 pm
I have a horrible feeling that it’s not an imperative but a declarative statement meaning ‘The Netherlands is speeding up’. If Dunglish is going to have a separable verb upspeeden, it really ought to be ‘Nederland speedt up’ …
May 31st, 2006 at 3:00 pm
You can’t solve bad Dutch grammar with Dunglish 🙂
I went to Denmark for the first time and no matter where I looked it was all in Danish. Even countries ‘less important’ than the Netherlands don’t feel this terrible urge to bugger up everything with some hybrid jibberish.
May 31st, 2006 at 3:30 pm
I agree, but look at it on the bright side: it brought us this weblog (which I enjoy reading very much…)
May 31st, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Ah, thank you so much!
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Larry’s idea that the meaning could be ‘The Netherlands is speeding up’
indicates something is wrong with the eyes of the people in the Nashuatec building.
Or all their sales managers go to work by bike?
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:31 pm
The right answer is they just don’t care. No one should have to decode what they mean = bad marketing.
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:37 pm
It’s gobbledygook any way you look at it, so yeah, it fails to get the message across, whatever that was.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
I have no idea what the message is about, but I tend to interpret this sentence as “Nederland speeds up” which still sounds weird but might be more accurate.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Nobody should have to interpret a slogan 🙂
People are paid a lot to come up with original slogans. The idea of someone coming up with something this poor is scary.
June 15th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Volgens mij is ‘speed’ in dit geval gewoon de verleden tijd van ehm… ‘spijden’. 😛