This is the 52nd - and therefore the last - posting here at the Weekly Gazelle. Thank you for checking in occasionally for some servings of Gazelle, and hopefully you were able to enrich your English vocabulary with all types of Dutch words (especially the profane ones). Besides the (admittedly small) entertainment and educational value, I hope this weblog will continue to be a valuable reference, because as we all know, once something is on the internet, it must be true. It is only a matter of time before these 52 words are incorporated into the Oxford English dictionary.
However, until this time, we will gradually work to fill in the gaps on Urban dictionary, such as this entry on 'muts'. In this manner, The Weekly Gazelle will make a small, but valuable contribution to humanity. Some, like zwaffle, is already an entry, but there are many glaring holes in the Dutch-to-English language crossover.
For the last 52 weeks, we want to express our thanks in the most Gazellish way possible. "Bedankt" is the how they say "thanks" in Dutch, but when people say it, it sounds more like "ba-donk". So, here is a big song and dance number from an episode of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson where he lip-synched Trace Adkin's Honkey Tonk Badonka Donk using puppets (Wavey the Crocodile from the South and Brian the gay shark), three smoking-hot dancers and the intern who always wears bondage leather. It seems like the perfect ending to the year of the Gazelle.
Badonka donk is perfect for those situations where you want to say thanks without seeming too serious, or when talking to a Dutch person and don't want to embarrass yourself with trying the proper pronounciation of the Dutch language. Either way, it can inject a little gazelle into an otherwise mundane moment.
Example Sentences:
"Badonka donk for reading, and keep on having that Gazelle for 2011 and beyond."
People love their holidays. Hell, if most people had the choice, they wouldn't work at all. That's why they have to pay you to come to your job. Anyway, Christmas is one of those times of year that most of the people in the world puts aside their personal beliefs and pretends that the imaginary birth-date of an important religio-historical figure entitles them to a couple of days off work. (They also do this to celebrate his death-day also which is often an entire long weekend.)
It is only natural that we would want to stretch out the holiday as much as possible, and many countries do with a holiday on the 26th of December. In many commonweath countries, there is Boxing Day which is sometimes called "Saint Stephen's Day", in South Africa it is called the Day of Goodwill, and a bunch of other countries have their own names for what is essentially takaing advantage of the Christian Tradition. (He also died for our public holidays apparently.) However, why don't we cut the crap a little bit and stop pretending that the 26th of December is a day for "goodwill" or for cleaning up the empty boxes or whatever the lame explanation for that name is? It is just a holiday to stretch out Christmas, hence, the 2nd Christmas.
This is apparently a term used all across Europe, but it still expresses perfectly the Gazellish concept. For what is better than not having to go to work for another day?
The use of 2nd Christmas should not be confused with Two Turtle Doves, from the song 12 Days of Christmas. However, in many countries if the 2nd Christmas falls on a Sunday, then the Monday then becomes a rare "Third Christmas", such as this year. Yes, 2010 is the year of triple unproductivity, and increasied opportunity to spend money on stuff you don't want to give, and stuff you shouldn't eat. Anything other than work. The phenomenom of the 3rd Chrismas may also be replicated when Christmas day falls on a Friday, leaving the Sunday as a day of rest from two days of rest.
Either way, wherever you are and whatever you happen to be doing and however you choose to celebrate, may the Gazelle be with you. Even if you happen to be working, because extra pay can be gazelle-ish too.
Example Sentence:
If you feel a little wrong about celebrating a 2nd Christmas, just celebrate the birthday of Mao Tse-tung. It's all the same.
Adjective: Something of or pertaining to the Belgian (Belgsch) region of Flanders As a Dutch person, I look for any possible way to insult the neighbours to the West. it is my constitutional duty. So I have been waiting for more than half a year for Belguim to do something relevant so I could topically introduce this Gazelle-ish word of the week. However, quite unsurpisingly, they haven't done anything worth talking about. Sure, there has massive political unrest, but this is Belgium we are talking about - that's nothing new. So without any provocation, let's proceed.
Belgium is not only Holland's inferior little brother, but it is also a siamese twin. There is the French half, Wallonia and the Dutch half Flanders. They are always fighting and bickering, which is actually where the concept for the film Stuck on You came from.
(Instead of a liver, Belgium shares Brussels.)
So anyway, Flanders is spelled "Vlaanderen", and a person from Flanders is called a "Vlaming". This is just begging to be an English adjective for this half of Belgium. While all people from Belgium are "belgsch", we can break it down even further. Divide and conquer.
Generallly speaking, Vlaming Belgsch's are known to be ant fuckers with the Dutch language. They somehow consider themselves to be the true keepers of the language, as if they are like the Knights Templar or the Amish. If it sounds a bit childish, it's because they do sound childish. Adorable, but childish.
Of course, there is a small part of the Netherlands which is vlaming too, but we won't hold it against them. Oh wait, yes we will. At least until they all decide to just merge with Holland, at which point we will only make a little less fun of them.
(This is the vlaming symbol for Vlanderen. It's just a vlaming version of the Dutch lion.)
Noun (singular): A dumb person, especially in reference to a woman, a bimbo.
A 'muts' in Dutch is a soft hat of any shape. Usually this refers to a beanie of some sort, but can include santa hats, the coonskin Davy Crockett, Soviet Cossacks AKA "The Loser" and even soft hats with a peak, ala "the Gavin DeGraw". There are many types of mutses.
However, muts is also used as an insult after somebody does something dumb. This may be in reference to this type of hat often covering the eyes and ears, or I might just have a vivid imagination and pulled that similarity out of my ass. Muts is often preceeded by "dumb", as in "My word, you are a dumb muts." This is perfect, because it sounds so much like the english insult 'dumb mutt', so it should effortlessly be able to infiltrate the English language.
Who can forget the iconic car, Mutt Cutts, from the movie Dumb and Dumber?
A further nuance of muts is that it often refers to women (perhaps as a vague reference to their downstairs genitalia). In this way, a good translation might be 'bimbo'. However, as the 76th Episode of Seinfeld astutely remarked, men are capable of being bimbo's too - or as Jerry said: "A Mimbo". Bill Maher also said something similar about Sarah Palin and George Bush, which can be seen here.
Okay, are the feminists gone? Thank goodness. Now let's take a look at possibly the biggest dumb muts in recent history: Miss South Carolina.
The great thing about using the word muts in English is that not only does it already makes sense to us because of the similarity with 'mutt', but also it makes it possible for someone to be a stupid bitch and a dumb muts at the same time. And we can never have too many animal-related insults.
While I am unsure of the exactly history of this insult, it was definitely this advertisement which really gave the word muts a wide exposure in the Netherlands. In it we see a woman checking her boyfriend/husband's phone and reads out a text messages from a woman who wrote "till over my ears". His defense was that she has a really big muts, with those flaps, that go over the ears. Yeah, I don't really get it either, but I appreciate any effort for widespread innuendo.
Verb: to paint one's face - often painting it black In this week's special Saint Nicholas-themed edition, we learn about sminking. Now, some people may cringe at the similarities with black face minstrels, but you need to understand the cultural context in Holland. Holland is a tolerant country. Even our minorities and our racists are tolerant. Likewise we are tolerant of minories and racists. So that means there can't be any racism... I think.
Anyway, around this time of year you often see people in black-face and pantaloons running around the city. They have 'schmink' ed themselves, to look like Zwarte Piet, who are basically what the elves are to Santa. Here are a couple of photos to give you an idea. And here is a what google images shows us.
(Okay, these guys at Carnival aren't Zwarte Piets, but they have obviously reused their zwarte piet costumes. This only further shows the tolerance of sminking.)
To show you the difference between blackface and sminking for St. Nick, take a look at the following example. I have taken a completely innocent subject, made him racist, and then made it okay again.
The history of Zwarte Piets is probably to do with slavery or the devil, but over time as values changed, Dutch people have changed the story (rather than the tradition), and now they are seen more as elves and helpers who like to play with kids and hand out candy. So, who can complain with that.
I was once working a random job with a female who happened to be black. We were sitting down outside a supermarket taking a small break when a woman and her young daughter stopped at our bench to pack their groceries. The little girl looked up at my colleague and asked "Are you Zwarte Piet?" You would think this is awkward, but this must be a very common occurence for black people in Holland. I guess they are tolerant?
In the true spirit of Saint Nicholas, I have written a poem about Zwarte Piets and sminking.
Saint Nicholas is kind of like a modern-day Robin Hood He gives presents only to the children who have been good So to find the nice children he has to leave the country of Spain And takes the boat over to the land of snow, sleet and rain
But it he can't do this all by himself He has always had 'Zwarte Piet' to lend him some help In the olden days he used some North African Moors But that would be racist, so he doesn't do that anymore
Instead, white people all over holland avoid such a disgrace And they take out black shoe polish and put on black-face Then we tell the children that Piet is covered with soot from the chimney That means that their skin is not black - it's just dirty
So the for the weeks around december racism is completely solved, I think All thanks the the power of smink
And really, this is the most magical time of the year. While Christmas is a big holiday like everywhere else, Saint Nicholas Day is truly our own. It's much more than about presents, it's about gazellishness and of course the sweets and baked goods that are so very Dutch. It is the most gazellish time of the year, smink or no smink.
Noun: a person who is an idiot, asshole, a douche, dumbass, or someone who has been kloiying.
Klojo is a Dutch word which is used as a humourous insult to people who mess things up. It might be a contraction from the more common "klootzak" which literally means "nut-sack." As much fun as it can be to call someone a nutsack, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. "Kloyo" gives a nice alternative to the above words, because we can never have enough insulting words, and we can always trust Dutch to provide hard-hitting, descriptive and effective insults for when we need them most.
Let's put the word to use immediately with a gallery of kloyos.
Dane Cook: The least funny comedian of all time, talentless hack who steals jokes from the greatest comedians including Bill Cosby, Dimitri Martin and Louis CK and manages to make them not funny. What a kloyo.
You'll be surprised if you see him how freaking weird kloyo this guy is, and secretly think 'actually, he's kind of funny.' Kloyo's can also be loveable.
Or not. I like to think that the words behind him say "The Whore House."
Place Name: The great city of Rotterdam When people think of Holland, they automatically think of Amsterdam. Screw those people. I should explain. Rotterdam and Amsterdam are rivals. It used to be personified by the football rivalry of Ajax (Amsterdam) and Feyenoord (Rotterdam) until recently Feyenoord became a pathetic excuse for a team, personified by a recent 10-0 drubbing. Nevertheless, being from the nearby small city of Schiedam which is 20 minutes by tram to the centre of Rotterdam, I much more associate with Rotterdam.
Rotterdam, I think, really has the potential to be the next great city in Europe. Thanks to war and the near total-destruction of the city, Rotterdam has been able to build itself up, and now boasts things that other Dutch cities can't. For example:
City planning
Iconic modern architecture
Room for growth
Last year I ran the 10km race of the Rotterdam marathon (the biggest and most important marathon in Holland), and I wrote a summary of it here. There I explained and took pictures of some of the landmarks of the city.
Of course, the major exposure that Rotterdam has gotten was from the Jack Chan Film Who Am I?, of which this scene really uses the landscape to its full effect.
James Bond has been to Amsterdam several times, but Rotterdam should almost be ready to take over. The thing that Rotterdam might be lacking is a nickname. Ro-town is actually already in common usage among some groups, and is simple and memorable enough to catch on. Some people in Rotorua, NZ might be up in arms at the thought of having their nickname stolen, but come on, their city is tiny and it smells like crap. Really. Ro-Town is also the name of an iconic music hall in downtown Rotterdam, so fair enough. It's ours.
I'll leave you with a skyline I put together of some of the most iconic buildings in the city, including:
De Witte Huis (In the early part of the century, the tallest office building in Europe)
The Swan/ Erasmusbrug
The Willemsbrug
The Cube houses
The Pencil
The Euromast
The City without a heart, a sculpture by Zadkine
And the buildinng Jackie Chan slid down
Enjoy. Example Sentences:
"Why go to Amsterdam? They just have coffee shops and ho's. So does Ro-town, but so much more."
adjective: a messed up person, a handicapped person or any other person with a disabilty or disease.
The word "verrekte" usually comes in a set phrase "verrekte mongol". It is a deliberately offensive word uttered by Aso's. The Urban dictionary gives a good description of this word, its history and its usage in a Dutch context:
Verrekt Mongol, derived from popular Dutch TV show "New Kids on the Block" where a bunch of antisocial 20somthing-year-olds cause chaos and insult handicaps, the mentally ill and patients with disease (i.e. cancer) with harsh vulgar language. the meaning goes along the lines of "fucking retard" but can be used for almost any occasion.
dutch handicapped woman crosses the street in a wheelchair.
Bunch of 20somthing antisocials point at her and shout
"JEZUS, WAT EEN VERREKTE MONGOL"
"Mongol" has long been banished from the English language as an insult, probably because it turns out Mongolians are freaking huge and could destroy you with one finger, and they probably don't appreciate being used as an insult. Mongolia is basically a giant dojo for world champion Sumo wrestlers, so it's probably not a good idea.
However, Dutch Aso's don't seem to care. Then again, people with mullets tend not to care. It shows that Dutch people are at the cutting edge of reinventing offensive words, which is refreshing in this era of P.C. language.
While I don't recommend you to go around insulting actual disabled people, it is nice to have an alternative to "retarded", which somehow has become one of the most offensive words in the English language. We here at the Gazelle move to incorportate ver-wrecked into common usage. It's basically the same word, and it's always nice to improve your (offensive) word power.
If you need to practice the proper usage, use the video below. You really have to spit it out. It feels good. Trust me.
Example Sentences:
"I'm so tired. I'm totally ver-wrecked."
"People who say the R-word is more offensive than the N-word are ver-wrecked mogols."
Noun: an Anti-social person, a douchebag, an asshole.
In Dutch, "Aso" is a contraction of "asociaal", which means antisocial. This is not quite an accurate translation, however, as an antisocial person in English usually refers to nerds, geeks, loners and recluses. They are people who lack social skills. This is not quite accurate, as an anti social person would actually have negative social skills. That's where "aso" comes in.
My auntie once lovingly described Holland as a 'small rot land', referring to how close everybody lives to each other. Holland is technically ranked 28th in the world in terms of population density, at just over 400 people per square kilometer. However, a closer look at the rankings shows that Holland is actually the 2nd real country on the list. The only real country above Holland is South Korea, ranked 22, and all the rest are either tiny island nations, or simply rich cities that have their own governments, like Malta, Singapore and the Vatican. (I would have included Taiwan, but I don't want to piss off the Chinese government and recognise Taiwan as a separate nation and risk having hundreds of probably paid protestors outside my window.)
The point is, Holland is a country with many people sharing limited space. This makes social skills especially important.
This also makes it much easier to spot aso behaviour. This may include talking loudly, littering, careless driving, not giving up a seat to an elderly pregnant child with a broken leg, vandalism e.t.c. However, Aso also refers to a certain demographic which are often synonymous to bogans, punks, goths, emo's, hicks, white-trash and people from Den Haag.
In fact, Den Haag has a football club called Den Haag Ado, and they are famous for having the worst hooligan fans in Holland - even more so than Feyenoord and Ajax. Their club is usually at the bottom-middle of the table, but at least their hooligans are right at the top of their game.
Basically, when you say aso, you pretty much mean "asshole", butsaying aso allows you to pull back on the swears without pulling your punches. And nothing could possibly be more gazelle-ish than punching an aso.
Example Sentences:
1. A: "Not all Den Haag supporters are asos. B: "They are so."
verb: to mess about, waste time with, to fuck about, to do something aimlessly or inefficiently
"Klooien" is one of many Dutch words to describe undesireable actions with a word that doesn't sound nice. A nice hard 'K' sound is a powerful tool when put into action at the right time. Transferred into English, it also gives off the sense of "clumsiness", which klooien definitely is.
Kloiying can be very similar to knutselling, with a few important contextual tweaks. Knutselling is always an activity that, although usually aimless, it usually results in something. Knutselling is also cute, whereas nobody really intends to kloiy, and as soon as somebody realises that they are in fact kloiying, they'll probably stop.
Kloiying can also be malicious, in a practical joke sense if the practical joke is pedantic one. In this sense kloiyen can be analagous to procrastination. A perfect example of this is pranks at the workplace or student-flat. This usually takes the form of filling someone's car with popcorn, wrapping their cubicle up with cellophane wrap or a particularly good toilet papering. Examples below, and endless examples at M thru F:
Example sentences:
"Uh oh. This was supposed to be an IKEA baby crib, but it looks more like a torture rack. I think I kloiyed up.
"Stop kloiying about. They're nipples, not radio dials!"
"Hey, if you guys don't stop kloiying, you're fired."
Dutch people are famously tolerant. We are so tolerant that other countries can kiss our collective tolerant asses. We are so tolerant that not even blackface is offensive. This is because Dutch people do not judge people by the colour of their skin, because they do not see colour.
They do however, see "tint". This is a much more convenient way to discerning the implications of someone's race. It is as if you could place a greyscale next to anybody's skin, and it would give you a scientifically verifiable level of tint. Because sometimes if you see things in colour, things can get very confusing. For example, some Asians are more tinted than North Africans and some West Europeans have more tint than half-bloods. And how do you even start to comprehend half-bloods?
It is said that race is not something you choose, but history has shown that oftentimes, it clearly is. For example, in common convention, a half-black person is still black. Hell, in New Zealand, a 1/16 Maori is still a Maori, if they choose to be. While this has many great advantages, such as an awesome rugby team, it does lead to all types of complications, the first of which is, you often cannot describe someone by their skin colour because that would be racial. This problem could be solved by using the Dutch language as a guide, and we could forever stop judging people by the colour of their skin. We can judge them by the tint of their skin. Prob-lem solved.
Try the tint-test yourself. How high up on the scale are you?
Take current-day Holland, for example. Holland is so not-racist that the third-largest political party is a one-man party for a guy who goes by the name of G. Wilders. By other counts he might now be the most popular political party.
It is not this Wilder, but they are both a one-man party and probably equally fun to party with.
This politician G. Wilder is currently under the process of going through a court trial filed against him for hate-speech against Muslims, by which he obviously means Turkish and Moroccans. If so much can get behind this man and his words, it is a symbol of how far Holland has come in terms of tolerance. In fact, Holland has gone beyond tolerance. We have learned to see the world not just in black-and-white, but in all the tints in between.
Example Sentence:
"I fall for tinted boys/girls" (This is a very common expression to say that if you had the choice, you would prefer to have sex with someone who has some skin tint.)
This may come as a surprise to many, but in Holland there are no white people. Although I wrote last week that Dutch people can see in black or white, and all tints in between, people themselves are not black or white. No, that would be racial. Holland doesn’t have white people. They have “blank” people.
Yes, in Holland, Caucasians are not white, but colourless, kind of like the Hollow Man, except without (necessarily) being perverts, stalkers and maniacal killers. This is probably why Caucasians are less likely to be arrested of committing crimes, because the crimes they do commit usually go unnoticed.
Conversely, they don’t have black people. They have “darker” people [“donkere”]. This is usually used to describe when somebody’s skin-tone exceeds that of which can usually be described in terms of tint. This way, the entire spectrum of race can be described without being controversial.
Confused? Let's clear this up by using the magic of google images. This first screencap is what you get when you search for "tinted men". The 2nd photo of Vin Deisel is an excellent example. The fifth picture of Ice Cube is probably better under the "darker" category. The 2nd photo on the 2nd row is Johnny Depp, and although he often portrays "darker characters" this is not usually what is meant. The three photos of police vehicles (or 30%) is brushed off as coincidence.
This next screencap is when you search for "darker people". These all seem to be fine examples, especially the Masai Bushwoman. Well done Google.
Hopefully now you are armed with the Gazelle-ish words of "tinted", "blank" and "darker", you can now describe different races by their skin colour with confidence.
Example Sentence:
"Life is a blank sheet of paper, unless you are tinted."
"Geert Wilders is so blank that I can see right through him."
Last week the Gazelle tackled the subject of piping, and in the spirit of democracy and gender equality, this week's gazelle word is to please the female readers. (Just to shut up the feminists for a few minutes). Because nothing could be more gazelle-ish.
Like last week's word which concerned "fellatio", this topic is difficult to describe without being overly medical, or overly crude, or overly vague. Sexual health brochures will probably talk about "cunnilingus", and in more casual conversation people might use the phrase "giving head". However, since that is gender non-specific, people who are homophobes often prefer to avoid that term. And if you want to delve into the world of euphamism, take your pick: (as usual, this list is but a small portion from George Carlin's incomplete list of impolite words (longer audio version here))
barking at the ape
bird-washing
blow-job
box lunch
bush dinner
cuntino fillet with white sauce
cunt lapping
dive a muff
eating at the "Y"
eating pussy
eating out
egg mcmuff
face job
french job
french tricks
furburger
give face
give head
go down on
go south
go under the house
hair pie
head job
larking
lickety split
moustache ride
muff barking
muff dive
mumbling in the moss
pearl diving
playing in the sandbox
sea food dinner
shrimping
sit on one's face
smokin' in the fur
sneeze in the basket
sneeze in the cabbage
talking to the boat people
talking to the canoe driver
telephone the stomach
tongue-fuck
tuna taco
whistle in the dark
whistling in the weeds
yodeling in the gully
The Dutch word "beffen" strikes a nice middle-ground between being just polite enough to say around females, crude enough to still be sexy, funny enough to say around your friends, and it's not just another euphamism which someone might not quite understand. "Beffen" has been entered into the Urban Dictionary as is, but why not simply incorporate this into the English language and make it into a proper verb? It would solve a lot of confusion, and with this topic, confusion is the last thing you want to incite.
Example Sentence:
"I wan't to use the word "beffing" in its non-continuous verb-form: "he befs", "she befs", but I am afraid I won't be able to do it tastefully... I guess I just didn't."
"Tom Selleck didn't always have a moustache. It happened in a tragic beffing accident."
*by the way, how hilarious is "yodeling in the gully?". Answer: very.
verb: to give oral sex/fellatio on the male set of genetalia, blow-job, to suck a dick
The English language has long struggled with the description of this act. "Blow-job" is at best an an inaccurate description, and at worst, extremely misleading for first-time practitioners. "Suck a dick" is much more accurate, although it is very in-your-face (although I guess that is also the point of the excercise). "Fellatio" is a good scrabble word, but otherwise useless. And "oral sex" is only ever used by health professionals after the words "Always use a condom even when performing...".
So we clearly need a new word.* The Dutch word "Pijpen" strikes a nice balance, being direct and descriptive, without being overly crude. It also is also vague enough to allow personal creativity among practioners to add their own flair. The word presumably originates from the word "pipe", although I was unable to discover whether it originates from this type of pipe: Or this pipe:
Maybe this Piper:
Or it could also quite possibly be this piper: Actually, the last piper is so funny, here is another one for shits and giggles.Either way, it is probably best to use your imagination. Or not.
"Mario and Luigi are experts in piping, and they also make house-calls"
*Note
There are, of course, many other words and phrases for piping. I just hope someday piping gets added to George Carlin's list of impolite words. The "fellatio" section includes:
B.J. blow, blow job, blow the whistle, bone-lipper chew it, cop a doodle, cop a stem, drop on it, eat dick, fluting, french job, french way, get a facial, give face, give head, give pearls, gobble, gobble the goop, go down, go down for a whomp, go down on, gum a root, gunch, head job, hum a tune, hum job, hummer, inhale the oyster, knob job, lay some lip, mouth fuck, munch, open wide for chunky, pipe job, piston job, play a tune, polish the chrome, polish the knob, serve head, slob the knob, smoke a dick, smoke the white owl, suck a bondini, suck dick, suck off, suck the sugar-stick, sucky-fucky, swallow a sword, swing on it, tongue job, worship at the altar, wring it dry
Noun: A homeless person, a drifter, a hobo, a dakless
Keeping with a recent theme (and with writing about what you know best), is another posting about describing homelessness. Swerver is a slightly more nuanced word, proving that the Dutch can also be subtle and victims to politically correct left-wing censorship. However, the word "zwerver" sounds like a great way to describe people who have gone off life's proverbial rails, someone who has lost their way, someone who has gone off track.
In a very relavant but non-humorous segue, here is a brilliant song by a truly underrated reggae singer, Nasio Fontaine.
Having been off-track myself for quite some time, I have great affinity for swervers. This is not the same as having sympathy for them, let alone having loose change for them. I'm too consumed with my own self pity. It is kind of the same difference as a homeless person and a hobo. A hobo/swerver is simply a lost soul who have a great life-story and might still get back on their feet, while Homeless/dakless people are serious and sad (even when holding up funny signs) and don't have a soul.
So, I would much prefer to be called a swerver than dakless - at least while I still have internet access. (Hint to people who are exploring their options of becoming homeless - McDonalds cafe's have wifi, so try to stake out territory within range. I hear blogging is a great way to dig your way out of being homeless. Either that, or get the E-book of the New Testament).
Example Sentence:
"If you see a swerver on the road, he's worth five points. (10 if you reverse over them)"
Adjective: to be fed up, to have had enough, to be tired of something
The Dutch word "zat" is a muti-faceted word that generally denotes a large amount of something, with the connotation that it is 'too much'. In common conversation, it often means that somebody is drunk, or, in this particular case, you are "fed up". Other ways of saying this could include:
I really don't care now
What's the point now?
I'm too old for this
I'm not going to put up with this crap anymore
I'm sick of this shit
I don't give a fuck anymore
It's too late for that shit
Or, my personal favourite:
Fuck this shit
But there are those times in life you just really, really don't give a shit anymore. And when you have fallen in this deep, syllables are of a premium. A concise word is most welcome. You don't want to expend energy that you could otherwise be using to contemplate your own misery. Just ask anybody who is depressed how they are, and they will probably give you a one-word answer. ("fine")
The problem with the above phrases is that the most effective ones seem to have swearwords in them. While I don't think this is a coincidence, "zatt" has a very clear meaning and can eliminate the need for this.*
The English phrase "I'm fed up" is quite short, but with a bit of gazelle, we can do even better. How about just saying "I'm zatt"? Zatt is such a good word because it carries with it an air of despair, while still preserving some innocence. Someone who is 'fed up' might still want to stab somebody, but someone who is zatt is more likely to turn the knife on themselves. And while both of those scenarios are not great scenarios, I'd rather people stab themselves. Besides, most of those people just want attention. I'm zatt with those people. They are ruining the good repuation of the truly suicidal.
Of course, zatt doesn't have to be that heavy. You can be zatt with your work, zatt with your flatmates, and zatt with the sudden unannouced 16 cent rise (100%) in bake-off bread at all Dutch supermarkets. At least I was zatt with all those things.
How can the price of these jump from 16 cents to 32 cents overnight, of different brands at different supermarkets? It is a conspiracy, I am sure of it.
Example sentence:
"I'm zatt with this shit"
[* Although I said that zatt can replace swearwords, it doesn't necessarily mean I believe that they should.]
In Dutch, the word "dakloos" is used to refer to homeless people. "Dak" meaning roof, and "loos" being the suffix meaning "without" (We saw this earlier in the Gazelle with "nutless").
There are a couple of reasons why I think this word is much more appropriate than the English "homeless".
Firstly, "home" is such a subjective word. One's home generally suggests a place where you feel at ease, whether it is a country, a town, or a building where all your stuff is. "Home" is one of those words that are a direct result of the bullshitting PC generation. A home is much easier to sell to people, it sounds nicer. But people don't live in "homes", they live in houses. A "home" is supposed to be comfortable, suggesting there is an excited dog, an obedient housewife, and a hot pie on the windowsill waiting for you. But this is just bullshit. You can do whatever you want with a house. Homeless people don't need a home, they just need a roof over their head. So, why don't we call them "houseless"?
This is how the comic legend George Carlin put it. (He then goes on to give a solution for homelessness)
Secondly, and the reason it should be called "dakless-ness", is because "daks" is a colloquial word meaning "trousers". It is most commonly used in the old English Dominions of Australia and New Zealand. Now, if one is dakless, you know they have some serious financial trouble and aren't just lazy.
Thirdly, yours truly is a recent dakless person and I want to raise awareness of this plight before my internet capabilities are gone. So before, I start growing my beard, cutting the fingers off my gloves, stealing a shopping cart, peeing in my underdaks and making funny signs, remember that it is not a home I want. I just want a roof above my head.
Example Sentence: "Tell your children to avoid the dakless"
Noun: a loser (person), a pushover, a fall guy, a sap, a coward, a dweeb, e.t.c.
Sukkel is another Dutch word which can be used as an effective insult, but doesn't necessarily have to be. It isn't a particularly stinging insult, but the nature of the word makes it a great way to kick somebody who is already on the ground. The nuances of the word suckel might best be explained by certain scenarios.
Scenario One:The chronic sukkel
Some people are just born sukkels. They are people who, no matter what they seem to do, bad luck will follow them. However, at a certain point, you begin to lose pity for them. I mean, "the only common demominator from all your bad luck is you", right? And who knows, maybe these people want to keep up their sukkel-ing ways. The most classic example of a chronic sukkel would be William H. Macy from the movie, The Cooler. Bernie Lootz is such a sukkel, that he is employed by a casino owner to walk around the casino and 'cool down' people with a hot hand. Of course, he is such a sukkel that after a while, he can't even be a sukkel anymore.
What a sukkel.
Scenario two: The klutz.
This one is pretty simple. It is hard to have pity for people who break your stuff, no matter how sorry they are.
Okay okay, stop looking at me like that! I forgive you. You sukkel.
Scenario three: The wimp
The coward is a classic sukkel, and gives anecdotal evidence that sukkeling is a character flaw rather than unavoidable bad luck. This video is of a sukkel at a baseball game who dodges the ball coming towards him, letting it hit his girlfriend instead.
Notice the way that the girlfriend doesn't appear to be angry at him. She is a sukkel too.
Scenario four: The easy victim For some people, it is just too easy. If you try to take the money, you are such a sukkel.
Scenario five: The pussy-whipped guy
This is related to scenario four, and is often the most tragic form of sukkel-ism. You know, the guy who changes everything in his life for a girl. You know, the guy who disowns all their old friends, stops drinking beer, and starts wearing pleated pants? We all know someone like that. This form of social-castration is all the more tragic as it is brought on by somebody else.
This guy: such a sukkel
Of course, there are different levels of being pussy-whipped, but all of them makes you a sukkel. If you help an ex-girlfriend move your old furniture into her new boyfriend's house, you're a sukkel. If you see a girl on the side of the highway with a broken down car and you stop to help, you're a sukkel. If you pay a stripper a tenner for a lap dance and she doesn't even show partial nipple, you're a sukkel.
Hopefully, you have understood the different forms of sukkels in the world, and if you haven't, send me 10 dollars and I will explain it to you. (Sukkels)
verb: to talk nonsense, to blather on, to talk shit
This verb has gained wide appeal in Dutch, probably because the Dutch are very good at it. There are so many people that, for whatever reason, love to talk too much. Some people might be lonely (the elderly are often called an 'old lul'), they might be insecure and feel the need to talk a big game, they might be socially unaware and suffer from verbal diarrhoea, or they might be someone who wants something and is trying to talk their way into getting it.
There are two examples of the last form of lulling. The first is a direct result of the Dutch being ant fuckers. There are often so many rules in place, that getting some official business done can require a lot of paperwork and hassle. But the Dutch know that the best way to get anything done is to get someone on the phone, or go and meet someone responsible, and try lulling their way through it. This requires a delicate combination of friendliness, humour, playing dumb, and being shrewd. In this sense, the Gazellish 'lul' expands on the fairly limited English word "to lull", which is primarily a subtle way of tricking somebody. However, this is not quite accurate, as we all know that it takes two to lul: One to lul, and the other to be lulled.
In the other sense of lulling to get what you want, I had a colleague who said "I might not be so good looking, but I am capable of lulling any girl to bed."
This is especially appropriate since the word 'lul' actually is a slightly crude word for "penis". It can often be more accurately be translated to "douche", "idiot" or "fool". So, lulling might be like saying "dicking around". This also makes me laugh whenever I hear the phrase "there was a lull in the conversation", because it is often caused by someone making a fool of themselves. And it would make sense that people momentarily stop talking when someone flashes their piece during a conversation.
Note: This word's offensiveness dependes heavily on how well you know the other person. If a friend is talking too much or exaggerating a story, you'd tell him to 'stop lulling', similar as to how you could tell a friend to stop bullshitting, or to stop talking out of his ass (because, come on, it is often a guy thing). At least, that's what I tell my friends, which is perhaps why I don't have so many.
"Vergrendeled" uses the prefix "ver", which, according to Wiktionary can be used in three ways, of which the first is the most pertinent:
to do or to become what the stem (following this prefix) refers to
We saw this earlier on in the year with "verkaased" which gazelled into "be-cheesed", to become like cheese. Vergrendeled works in much the same way, as it turns the object being refered to into Grendel, the horribly disfigured mythical monster as featured in the epic Poem "Beowulf". To give an impression of what this may look like, let's get into a quick gallery of images of Grendel over the years. So, while there may be some historical discrepancy about what Grendel actually looked like, we can all agree that his appearance was not something to be desired.
Remember that tale about when you make a funny face, if the wind changes, you face will stay that way? Well, that is a classic example of being vergrendeled. Of course, objects can become vergrendeled too. The first time I heard it I was at a printer store, and a lady complained to the staff:
"My computer is ver-grendeled. Can you come and help"
I had a very graphic image of the computer being horribly disfigured and screaming insanely, which is kind of appropriate.
So, basically, anything that becomes misshapen or stuck in an undesirable way could be vergrendeled. This could be anything from a crashed computer, a skipping CD, a cake which has risen too much, two peaches that have grown into one, a particularly bad car accident, anything like that. The Gazellish way of thinking allows an undesirable situation become a much more descriptive one.
Example Sentence:
"This guy has been totally vergrendeled. What a sucker."
The Dutch language may be small and insignificant - much like the country itself - but it can offer so much. We here at The Weekly Gazelle believe that certain words like "Gezellig" can't be translated, so why bother? By learning to use certain Dutch words and contexts in English, we can expand our vocabulary. So English speakers, start using these words in your everyday lives, and Dutch people stop translating the impossible. In this way, our hope is that one day, we can all have a gazelle.
[First time readers are recommended to refer to the first post - Gazelle - first.]
