They translate Dutch words directly into English or make Dutch words sound English. It becomes even funnier when Dutch phrases and expressions are translated literally when their meaning is meant figuratively. A perfect book for another English lecture!

Let me give you two examples from the book of the type of ‘Dutchified English’ that is called Denglish by Rijkens.

The Dutch say: “Hij heeft er geen kaas van gegeten”, if you translate this expression directly it will say: “He did not eat any cheese of it” … What the Dutch person is trying to say is: “He doesn’t know the first thing about it”

Another example:

The Dutch say: “Je bent op glad ijs”, if you translate this in Denglish it will say “You are on glad ice”… What the Dutch person is trying to say is “You’re skating on thin ice”.

For the English lecture at the School of Journalism tomorrow I’ll compile a list of the funniest Denglish and promote the book a bit, I think many students need it.

It’s a bit of a challenge, lecturing English to first year Dutch Journalism students. Most walk in thinking it will be 2 hours of listening to boring present-tense and past-tense rules, maybe like it used to be in High School. Well, I have set myself a challenge.

During the first class we had to discuss the contents and structure of the course, which is obviously not very exciting, unless you start with some fun news videos from the BBC website. In the next class I’ll be using video from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, why not laugh out loud during class?

Besides videos it’s also fun to challenge each other and speak English in front of your class mates. To try and formulate answers, hear your own mistakes, to try a true English-accent.

We also practice our reading skills with articles from different magazines. I personally like NewAfrican, but they made loads of factual mistakes in an article about immigration in Holland (‘Holland – Blaming everything bad on immigrants’, June ‘08), even confusing the murder of politician Pim Fortuyn with that of movie director Theo van Gogh. Great for Journalism students to read how correspondents make mistakes and to still be able to find and understand the mistakes while its written in English.

It’s the first time I taught English but the two hours passed very quickly. Monday is the second class and I’m preparing another fun two hours, hoping to also get some feedback from the students. Hope they think this challenge is successful.