Hello my friends! So, some of you may know about the Esperanto - it was a somewhat awkward language made for the Europeans to speak with each other, if you do not know! But there is no point to the Esperanto, for if you are working in a multi-lingual officebuilding, mainly also with Dutch people in it, you are learning a new kind of English which is like this, and also is like this!
When you are writing documents, always you are putting slightly too many words in it like this. And if you have lost your bicycle or indeed your pencil, you will ask where she is. And then also when you are writing electronic messages, suddenly you will include strange big words that have not been used in England since the early Victorian years, for example the word 'obfuscate' or indeed also 'handpuppet' and 'moreover'. Sometimes you will be using the metaphor in a confident but perhaps wrong way and will be finding that after some of the consideration, you are going to hell in a handbasket, throwing in the trowel and also caught between the devil and a hard place.
Sometimes you will go up to the English people and say "what is this word, pigeonhole? Is this a sexjoke?". They will make you try Marmite and you will say, "oh you English and your Marmite and your tea!", and the Englishperson will then make a tirade for over one and twenty hours about how the foreign people cannot make tea, and how it is disgusting how the Dutch people smoke the cigarettes and eat the cheese all the time all on their bicycles and how the French smell of the garlic and how the Spanish are lazy and also the Italians speak with their hands and the Germans have no sense of humour.
And then the next day the English person will be in the shop in your country, which is not theirs, and they will not know even how to say "hello" in Dutch (or French, or Italian, or any other country in which they are making the visit) and they will just speak a bit more loudly, saying SPEAK ENGLISH?, without even one look of shame, and then you will think, why do you think you have permissions to laugh at the way I say "ginormous", when you do not even know how to say "thank you" in my language?
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30 comments:
A -Ha ! That is the very funny, in the way it makes me laugh.
But do tell to me, how does one get one's self into Hell, if not within a handbasket ?
Always with the dangerous interestings in what can to be done with fresh hairclippings!
This also was making me to laugh so very much, I am thanking you for this weblog posting.
The Americans they are so much more annoying, because they use the phrases that you have not even heard from the English people, and they mispronounce some English words, and they have less interest than the English people in learning any other languages.
But at least the American people do not ask for tea or demand you try Marmite. But the ice -- they are always demanding ice in everything!
Camera-If we mispronounce a word let us please know. What annoys me is/are people who move to a country and then refuse to learn the language including correct pronunciation. However I will try not to get my knickers in a twist about it.
p.s. re: ice-very true, however I prefer scotch and water hold the ice.
Just when I think you cannot possibly get any funnier than you already are (especially since you no longer live near twat-faced 4wd drivers in their mini imitation stately homes) you go and write this. Brilliant, thank you!
Het spijt me, ik spreek geen Nederlands.
Dank u - you made me laugh a lot and squirm a bit.
Dag!
Best. Post. Ever.
I did a snort.
If you're going to become slightly too integrated, then being Dutch is about the best option.
In 1958 we had a 16-year-old Dutch au pair and on the first day, someone dropped a plate. "Whoops" she said, "that's gone for a Burton." She had never been out of the Netherlands before and spoke better English than her English teacher. We never did understand that.
That just made me snort my tea.
Personally I blame the IKEA furniture. The molecules wear off as you sit on them and you slowly become part of it you see (ref. The Third Policeman)
is funny, for sure.
hilarious! but i cant bare marmite! eewww it tastes like crap!!
Wow. You can get teabags in Amsterdam. No way.
I am having thinkings that you needs to be speaking to Dr Doolittle and am being persuading him to run courses in Monkeylanguage, if he is being talkings to the animal.
Jolly glad everyone has enjoyed this so very much. The point is, of course, that may British people are wankers for rarely bothering to learn other peoples' languages, and yet thinking it's OK to laugh at the way people with English as a second language sometimes get things a bit wrong.
Just sayin'.
ooh, that went a bit quiet then, but it is very true...
... I did titter, though!
Is my new technique. Say serious things whilst trying to be funny. Fail to communicate serious thing; manage to be quite funny. Feel quite glad. Eat own head.
I don't understand myself most of the time. But I am learning Italian, so that's all right.
NWM, unless you are someone like Dickens,you have to be funny for people to listen, let alone Hear anything.
You are (very, very) funny, And like Dickens.
Now, come along dear, spit that head out, or it will gag you. Tell us more.
ITV has a Saturday evening show dedicated to this very view, that pub landlord man.
Greeat piece NWM, we are indeed very cheeky when abroad. But at least we're not American demanding that we get our eggs just the way we like them.
I think my limited French probably sounds like that spoken during a French equivalent of Brief Encounter, which was probably the last time my teacher had actually ventured to France.
And female bikes sounds very sweet. What else is femimine?
Chocolate I hope, and tea, though coffee should be masculine, especially if Expresso, and calculator and photo copier.
I spent three years learning 'O' level French, only to discover that the French don't speak 'O' level French.
But a helpful Englishman taught me the chat-up line "Salut Salope", which apparently means "Give me a Hard Slap".
Anonymous, I am an American. I was having a go at my own. I never meant to get up anyone's nose.
The most fun I ever had being an Ugly American on purpose was at the TGI Friday in Kingston-on-Thames. They list iced tea on the menu (it is after all an American chain) but the servers were horrified that I would actually order it. Soooo I did so every time we went in there, which was every couple of weeks because I was enciente and craving their spinach salad w/ hot (American) bacon dressing.
Monkey you are a very genius. I have been temping this week and sitting next to a Dutch lady and I was astonished to discover I can speak Dutch!
I particularly liked: concern zu voicen. Brill.
You have a splendid ear, that's all I can say.
No, not the right one. The left one.
I sometimes use words like "obfuscate" and "moreover." Are they really that rare in England?
Don't hold it against me,
Signed,
An Atypical American
Funny, I think the same thing happens here in the States. Americans rarely bother to learn other languages and usually want people to speak English even if they're visiting another country, which is pretty damn funny. Especially if you consider that Americans are originally...people from other countries.
I'm missing you :(
nuala
Me too :'(
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