Bad English is our Lingua Franca 🎉, "tattoo" is Dutch, but not the kind on your skin 🥁, What's the problem, Koen? 😮

Welcome to the latest instalment of English and the Dutch, the newsletter with tips and tricks, fun facts, new translations and other good stuff about how Dutch speakers speak English. In your inbox every second Wednesday.

The newsletter is written by me, Heddwen Newton. I also own the website www.hoezegjeinhetEngels.nl. If you are wondering where you signed up for this newsletter, that’s probably where you signed up for this newsletter. And if you have not yet signed up for this newsletter, you can do so right here:

Quiz

Fun with prepositions! What does the Dutch speaker mean, and what does the English speaker understand?

I’ve been looking after my keys everywhere.

I brushed my teeth, got dressed up, and went to work. Like every day.

We should start without Karin, she is always too late.

I don’t have time to play with you right now, Jonah. Go play with yourself.

This idiom is the same in English and in Dutch. What is it in Dutch? And in English?

Answers below!

Fun fact

The English word “tattoo” does not come from the Dutch, but the word “tattoo” does.

I’ll just leave you to ponder that a bit before I explain.

Okay, now I’ll explain.

The type of tattoo someone inks on your skin owes its name to the Samoan word tatau, meaning “to strike”.

However, if you google “etymology of tattoo” or something similar, you’ll get a lot of hits saying that it comes from the Dutch. The reason for this is that English also has something called a “military tattoo” in which soldiers march to marching band music. This type of tattoo owes its name to the Dutch word taptoe. That’s the military procession, not the children’s magazine with surprisingly good comic strips.

The Dutch word taptoe has the kind of etymology you can tell people about at parties. It’s great. Adapted from Wikipedia:

The term dates from around 1600 during the Thirty Years' War. Drummers were sent out into the towns at 9.30 pm each evening to inform soldiers that it was time to return to barracks. The process was known as doe den tap toe (Dutch for “turn off the tap”), an instruction to innkeepers to stop serving beer and send the soldiers home for the night. The drummers continued to play until the curfew at 10 pm. Over the years, the process became more of a show.

Dutch/English in the news

What do people with typical Dutch names call themselves in English?

Someone asked this excellent question on Reddit. Jeroen, Floris and Kees are doable if you just explain the pronunciation. A Martijn calls himself Martin, an Arie calls himself Art, Sanne becomes Susanne, Jelle becomes Jay, Jan Douwe becomes JD. Freek complains that everyone says Freak. Siemen and Koen… well, they have a problem.

(semen = sperma, coon = een ouderwets scheldwoord voor iemand met een donkere huidskleur)

New look for DutchNews

DutchNews, the Netherlands’ leading news website for English-speakers, has had a revamp. Check out that lovely red menu banner, and improved font. Easy on the eyes (= letterlijk: gemakkelijk voor het oog, overgankelijk: aantrekkelijk) in both senses of the phrase!

Molly Quell has ingeburgerd a little too close to the sun

While you are on DutchNews, you can check out this column by Molly Quell, an American journalist in the Netherlands, who describes her adventures collecting Albert Heijn zegels. Warning: Even though she gets the outdoor plates she wants, the whole process has managed to tick her off (= boos maken, Amerikaans Engels).

English as an (academic) Lingua Franca

The discussion about English as the main language at Dutch universities has been well-summarised by Marjorie van Elven in this article for Utrecht University website DUB. (Available in Dutch and in English).

EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans held a speech at the University of Twente on the same subject. He said the following:

"Thanks to the internet, thanks to other developments, thanks to the predominance of Anglo-Saxon culture, English is an instrument for all. This is the first time that we have a true Lingua Franca for all: bad English."

Recent translations

I post a new article about a difficult-to-translate Dutch word or phrase on my website every day. Here is a selection from the past two weeks.

De klok horen luiden, maar niet weten waar de klepel hangt

I’m always surprised when useful Dutch sayings just do not exist in English. This is one of them. My best translation option is the dry “to have a vague idea of something, but not know all the ins and outs”.

Onder voorbehoud

Translating “onder voorbehoud” is tricky when the situation is informal. The best English translations “subject to availability” or “subject to conditions” just sound so darn official. I’m not too happy with my informal options, the best perhaps being “a tentative yes”.

Hospiteren

This reader question threw me (= bracht me van mijn stuk). It turns out there is no English translation for “hospiteren”. The people looking for a new flatmate might say something like “we’re meeting a few potential new flatmates this evening”, but for the potential flatmate it really is quite tricky. The only thing I could find was the overly formal “I’m going for a roommate interview this evening”. If you have any good translation ideas, please let me know!

Opvallend

One of those Dutch words that has many possible English translations, but none of them feel exactly right. I quite like “striking” and “conspicuous”, but it really depends on the context.

Maak dat de kat wijs

To end with, let’s have one that does have a few satisfactory translations to choose from. As a Brit, I’d probably say “pull the other one” or “you’re having me on”. Americans will probably prefer “I’m not buying it.” A nice neutral translation could be “I don’t believe a word of it”.

Quiz answers

I’ve been looking after my keys everywhere.

What the Dutch speaker wanted to say was “I’ve been looking for my keys everywhere”. (Ik heb overal naar mijn sleutels lopen zoeken.)

“I’ve been looking after my keys everywhere” means “Ik heb overal voor mijn sleutels lopen zorgen”.

I think the reason Dutch speakers do this is that they know they need some kind of preposition after “look”, and zoeken naar sounds much more likely than zoeken voor, so they choose “after” instead of “for”. That’s my guess, anyway.

“To look” is a terribly tricky verb when it comes to prepositions like this, here’s a short list:

to look for = zoeken

to look after = zorgen voor

to look up = opzoeken of omhoog kijken

to look down on = neerkijken op

to look around = rondkijken

to look forward to = ernaar uitkijken

to look into = nagaan/ onderzoeken

to look out = oppassen

I brushed my teeth, got dressed up, and went to work. Like every day.

What the Dutch speaker meant to say was “I brushed my teeth, got dressed, and went to work. Like every day.”

“I brushed my teeth, got dressed up, and went to work. Like every day.” means “ik poetste mijn tanden, trok mijn smoking/ baljurk/ kostuum aan, en ging naar mijn werk. Zoals iedere dag.”

“To get dressed up” means either putting on really nice clothes for a party, or it means putting a costume on, like a Halloween costume.

Because the Dutch word for getting dressed is aankleden, Dutch speakers feel they need to add a preposition to translate the “aan”.

We should start without Karin, she is always too late.

What the speaker should have said is “We should start without Karin, she is always late.”

If you are “too late”, to an English speaker this means you miss the event. You arrive when it is already over. Karin will be missing the meeting completely.

To be fair, I think an English speaker would understand the sentence correctly in this context, especially when Karin comes in, hot and sweaty, ten minutes later. But it is a good thing to keep in mind!

I don’t have time to play with you right now, Jonah. Go play with yourself.

What the speaker should have said is “I don’t have time to play with you right now, Jonah. Go play by yourself.” (Ik heb nu geen tijd om met je te spelen, Jonah. Ga maar in je eentje spelen.)

Dear reader, if you are going to learn only one thing from this quiz, learn this: “Go play with yourself,” means “Ga maar masturberen.”

Oi, Heddwen, some of those aren’t prepositions

“Too” is an adverb. But it feels kind of prepositionny, right? I just really wanted to have that sentence in the mix. Mea culpa.

Verbs like “look for”, “look into”, “look after”, that change their meaning depending on the preposition, are called phrasal verbs (or prepositional verbs, more here). Some grammar experts feel that the preposition is not a preposition in this case, but an adverb or a particle. Just so you know.

Pictured idiom

The idiom is of course “een wolf in schaapskleren” which is unbelievably similar in English: “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

And finally…

This joyous celebration of Dutch culture in America turned up in my Facebook feed. My first thought was that this was a group of Americans-with-Dutch-heritage going slightly overboard, but no! It’s Dutch bicycle showband Crescendo from Opende in Groningen. This was their first time in America, but they get invited all around the world. Kudos to them!

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