A plateful
I snapped this at a friendly lunch place on the Dutch island of Ameland. Although Schnitzel Stroganoff sounds odd enough in its own right, the use of ‘plate’s’, which is ‘plate’ in English with Dutch plural (‘s), makes it Dunglish.
You’d think it’s for the English-speaking tourists, right? Nope! Ameland is a Frisian island, so after Dutch – or even before – the locals speak Frisian. Then there’s all the Germans tourists to think about. That could easily explain the schnitzel.
July 5th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Most ‘Taalpuristen’ would be even more worried about the omission of three periods in the first line.
But it is not fair to blame Frisians; Dutch is difficult for them anyway! (I have Frisian blood by the way)
July 5th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Heeey, no one is blaming anyone!
🙂 The food was fine.
July 5th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Even if ‘plate’ had been absorbed into Dutch, it would not be correct to pluralize with an apostrophe, obviously, as it ends with a consonant (sound).
I guess somebody found ‘schotels’ too difficult to spell.
Schnitzel stroganoff sounds okay, but really, you could get that on the mainland if you wanted …
July 5th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
And it gets worse: ‘schotel’ is not always the translation for ‘plate’, but ‘dish’ or ‘platter’.
The schnitzel is fine, but it’s not very Russian 🙂
July 6th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
That’s true. Except when it’s the blue plate special.
August 9th, 2006 at 10:03 am
At least they *did* get the ‘schnitzel’ right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other dutch word being mistreated and malformed as much as ‘schnitzel’ (snitsel, sniesel, snietsel, schnietsel etc etc)