Dunglish at its best!
If Dutch and English had kids, what would they look like? Well, they would be very funny-looking Dunglish babies of course. Here are 27 great examples for your collection! Which is your favourite?
1.
Now that just shows how committed the Dutch are to sustainability!
2.
Google translate fail…
3.
To be transparent or not to be…
4.
WARNING: Don’t feed it or cuddle it either
[sdpl-ad4]
5.
We find the idea of “flat stairs” intriguing…What if stairs were actually flat? They would be so much less of a nuisance!
6.
A classic
7.
We know Dutch people are obsessed with clean toilets (we approve). But now they are making it w(h)ay too personal…
8.
Well, smoke coming through the split? I would have there problems with also!
[sdpl-ad5]
9.
I guess English-speakers can use the outhouse…
10.
Correct English text is still loading…
11.
A bit too cheesy for our taste…”This box contents:” is also a gem
12.
Although not really Dunglish, one should always check if that advertising slogan doesn’t give the wrong idea in English!
13.
Can get serious if you eat too much porridge!
14.
A treasure trove!
15.
Please stay part of the problem and not the solution…
[sdpl-ad3]
16.
Hmm, wonder what kind of appetizers they have….
17.
Dutch are so nice, they make sure to mark the trap so you won’t get trapped in it!
18.
Innocent mistake…
19.
Shoe’s out for summer
20.
Wonder if they are talking about “One Direction”?
21.
Very polite
22.
Lost in translation…
23.
Just in time for the new Bond movie
24.
No thank you. We are all withlaughing now!
25.
The visitor centre has been secreted…Sounds nasty
26.
Poor Hyves, how did it come so far indeed…
27.
We couldn’t have said it any better!
[sdpl-ad4]
here is one poem written by my late grandfather….
I was sitting with my reed in a roll of prikkledreed. oh it did so very pine, how could I be such a suffered sein!
Yeah my dad something like that as well : I was sitting with my reet in the prikkeldreed, ow what did my poepert pijn, how kon ik toch so stupid zijn.. lol
“Dunglish” is an obviously a clever play on the combo of two words “Dutch” and “English”, cf. “Franglais” aka Franglish, or (of course) “Germlish” aka Denglisch as well as its converse “Engleutsch” etc.
In the case of Dutch however, the expression seems particularly apt. After all, it becomes in essence DUNG, purtifying both languages with its linguistically offensive stench, wreaking with laziness of the present Dutch language which quite literally has “crapped” out on itself by allowing its mother tongue to become perverted:-)
Hahaha! Nice one!
“Please don’t have children at the bar!” has to top my all time favorites:-)
And when I asked the owner in Dutch what it meant, I’d rather not repeat her reply.
(Let y’all in a little somethin’; she didn’t care for my little joke either:-)))LOL
Een Nederlandse vriend hier in Zuid Afrika vertelde ons in het engels, My mother always made the best pudding, it’s that see through pudding. (Dat heet in het engels “Jellie”.
Ach.. het is goed omschreven. Het zou pas echt fout zijn als het “Drill pudding” zou heten.
‘From Russia witlof’ is actually a joke. Didn’t you notice the price?
love that one! James Bond will have inside larks…
Well, I noticed the weight…
Gelukkig kunnen mensen die fouten zoeken ook fouten maken.
Foutje nr. 2 vind je in engeland ook gewoon op deuren met alarm.
Vaudje!
16 is geen dunglish, ook in het engels heet het barf: bones and raw food.
one of my colleagues at the bar i work, once said to some English guests: “my kok has gone home” so the English guests started laughing and she didn’t know what she did wrong haha. What she meant to say was: “my chef has gone home” so i explained her what she’d said to them and she was really embarrassed. 😛
Dutchman (in Dunglish) to another Dutchman:
Dutchman 1: You know, I fokk horses.
Dutchman 2: Oh, paarden me!
🙂
Dutchman (in Dunglish) to another Dutchman:
Dutchman 1: You know, I fokk horses.
Dutchman 2: Oh, paarden me!
I wish Marek would stop swearing. I fokk horses. The horses is getting sexually abused. – Only weirdo’s are into having sex with horses.
Some of these; I just laughed my teeth out 🙂 xD
Half English half Dutch – Asked if she was the baker my mother told a customer that her man was the baker ( bugger ) and she was the vrouw of the bugger .
To be fair, ” the door is alarmed” is found in English speaking countries as well. I found it on many doors at my University in Ireland.
I do not know anyone who will eat at a barf-menu. Barf is when you spew or when you are sick and throw up everywhere.
Reminds me of a colleague who complained there was no prick in his Coke (it was flat)
Not sure about the rest of the world, but here in Australia it is perfectly acceptable to say ‘this door is alarmed’. We also make fun of it, but grammatically it is completely correct.
Hilarious! Hope you found those hidden toilets!
Hilarious!
On the flipside….the Dutch always make an honest attempt
Heb nooit zo hard moeten lachen, bedankt voor dit!
Bekend waren vroeger de doubledutch boekjes van John O’Mill, met b.v. het rijmpje:
A terrible infant, called Peter
sprinkled his bed with a gheter.
His father got woost,
took hold of a cnoost
and gave him a pack on his meter
leuk!!, die hadden wij thuis ook
To be honest: What is wrong with no. 6?
The drawing looks like a gun?
As a gunsmith I work with guns every day but i’ve never seen a gun that looks like that!
restroom is nice way to say toilet not room for resting, so that is place for chanching dipers no resting
wat is er fout aan 5?
I think it has to be: Does your baby need some rest?
It should read “Does your baby need some rest?”
Leuk!! Maar nummer 16 is misschien wel goed if it refers to “Breed Appropriate Raw Food” (BARF).
Barf means “vomit”. It’s a bad acronym, but not necessarily a Dutch to English translation issue.
Yeah, pretty much what raw meat would make me do, but my dogs love it 🙂
At least the Dutch try to speak multiple languages 🙂
One of my biggest gaffes was “undertaker”, when I meant entrepreneur. My American friends were delighted.
Very funny post, this one.
May we expect the next post to be about Dunglish the other way around? The gaffes expressed in Dutch by English-speaking natives?
I’ve looked all over the internet for those but I guess the English don’t feel the need to try to translate anything into Dutch because I can’t find anything.
From Russia, witlof! Love this one! I’ll try to look for other examples, but how difficult is it to find those?
#27 De laatste is de beste!
Ja, ik denk ook:-)
Natuurlijk bedoelde de eerste: “I…… BREED horses.”
🙂
At the Erasmus university they offered a sandwich hawai citizen, or in Dutch a broodje hawai burger. 🙂
I remember when my then 16 year old niece came to visit me. She announced in front of everyone she was going to douche. Still tease her about that one.
Just brilliant – I’ve got tears rolling down my face!
My mum ones meant to ask my wife about me, something like: “Is hij attent, is hij een goede als geliefde” – is he considerate / good to you as a partner. She translated that to “is he a good lover?”. My wife almost wet herself laughing!
*once 🙂
We call it “Dinglish” at home, but it’s the best language ever!
I was laughing so hard by #21 that I had to take a break to catch my breathe before I could finish.
Made my dag 🙂
Barf
The “BARF” diet, an acronym for Biologically Appropriate Raw Food or Bones And Raw Food was created by Billinghurst. The acronym was coined by Debra Tripp. A typical BARF diet is made up of 60-80% of raw meaty bones (RMB), that is bones with about 50% meat,[16] (e.g. chicken neck, back and wings) and 20-40% of fruit and vegetables, offal, meat, eggs, or dairy foods.
I’ve seen “Door is alarmed” in the UK. Can’t blame the Dutch for that one.
Who did the translation the four picture. A beter sign would be “Keep off the grass.” if translated would be (Af te houden van het gras.)
I can’t shake the feeling #23 was intentional.
Looking at both the price and the weight I’m quite sure it is.
A couple of years ago I went to an all inclusieve hotel and found in that hotel the week entertainment program… Every day something different but on thursday they wrote they had an off day instead of a day off…
Mijn grootvader bij de pomp in amerika:
“Waarom hebben ze het hier over een kut reet? Onbeschofte amerikanen!”
I lie in a dent!
My dear, you look a little pips. Too much fish perhaps, and chips?
Newly arrived Dutch mother living in Australia wanting to buy a cot for a baby asked the storekeeper if he stocked ladikants . After the initial shock and mother repeating the word baby and making rocking motions he assured her they did stock beds for babies. She never lived that one down.
New Dutch migrant in Australia repeatedly asked supplier of bakery goods for ‘basterdsuiker’. Migrant made matters worse by pronouncing it in a variety of different ways and came up with ‘bastard suk’. Supplier had a good laugh when he was taken to the bakery and shown brown sugar.
Rest room is not meant to be for a rest, but for mothers to change baby’s nappy and breastfeed.
All hilarious!
What about an alien tries to speak Dutch?
Prachtig allemaal, maar 12 is nogal dom. De Nederlandse taal hoeft geen rekening te houden met hoe deze door Engelstaligen (die meestal alleen hun eigen, vaak onverstaanbare, versie van het Engels spreken en daarnaast geen enkele andere taal) wordt begrepen.
Helaas het grote problem daarmee, is dat ofschoon ALLE Nederlanders toch Engels op school moeten leren, kunnen alleen een klein getal van deze mensen Engels juist spreken, schrijven of verstaan:-)
Mijne ervaringen in Nederland tijdens de zeventiger jaren, zoals ook later, was, dat jongere mensen met buitenlanders Engels graag wilden spreken, om te oefen, maar ze hadden zich van Engelstalige met engelse moedertaal NIET graag laten korrigeren!!
Ze werden kwaad, toen ik hun heb verklaard, “Oefening baart kunst.”