New link

In my list of blogs over to the right, I just added a site that applies the Engrish concept (when the Japanese try to translate into English) to Dutch. I must admit a smug happiness when the Dutch fuck up English, mostly because they think they're so damn good at it, but also they are often using English in the first place to sound hip or something, so when they then can't even get it right, it sort of blows that idea to bits. One of my favourite stories in this vein comes from when I volunteered at an organization that helps people moving to the Netherlands. Someone was updating a database of shops and such, so she was flipping through the yellow pages and came across a hair salon that was called "Careless". We think they were going for "carefree", but instead they gave themselves a name that ensured that no English speaker would visit their shop.

A perhaps-handy link off of the Dunglish site: Signalering Onjuist Spatiegebruik, a site describing when you are supposed to mush all of the words together in Dutch and when not to and when to use a dash, etc etc. It's in Dutch, but the examples they give can help teach something about how the words are supposed to go together.