Adjective: "useless", something without any forseeable purpose
If a Dutch person is performing a task that has no possible benefits, that task is often called "nutteloos". However, from my English-speaking background, whenever I hear this word, it sounds much more descriptive, as it suggests neutering and eunuchs. This is never a nice thing to think about (or FYI, to google search... this will take a few weeks to get out of my mind...)
Anyway. So I think we can all agree that, not having any balls renders a male useless for some specific tasks. However, we can extend this expression to actions too, to really drive home the pointlessness of it. For example, it may be nutless to get a brazillian if you are a eunuch.
I also like the structural parallels with the well-known expression "as useful as a spare prick at a wedding", for which the Gazelle equivalent would be: "as useful as an empty nut-sack". I like it. It is an effective, poignant analogy that easily crosses over into the English domain without explanation.
It can also be said that something 'has no nut'. [Het heeft geen nut], which means the same thing as nutless.
Antonym: When something is, on the contrary, useful, Dutch people call it "nuttig". I like to translate this to"Nutty", which always brings a smile to my face as I recall this scene from Austin Powers.
Example sentences: "Abstinence is nutless" "I don't want to clean my room, it has no nut. It will just get dirty again"
The dutch word "trakteren" has the above meaning, which again brings up the issue of vague, waffly English definitions where Dutch has a clear word for it. "Shouting" by itself has another more dominant meaning, and treating someone sounds more like when the parents of your best friend buys you an icecream after you went and played at the park. Treating someone to a beer, it's a little belittling, or maybe illegal. Just ask Michael Jack... Oh wait, he's dead. What have we learnt?
So next time, "tractor" someone, please.
Tractoring has a slightly wider definition in Holland. See, when they have a birthday, they actually do things for other people. I know, it's as if they don't even want to be a needy, attention-seeking, greedy, spoilt little bitch. Weird. When children have birthdays, they are almost obligated to buy all their classmates a small gift, and adults usually have some kind of party where guests aren't even supposed to bring their own alcohol. I know, it doesn't make any sense. For this reason, the MTV show "Dutch Sweet 16" is the lamest show ever.
Last year for my birthday, I had to cook for all my extended family, and several times during the evening they asked me to fetch the next round of drinks. I was tractoring around all day, and I didn't get even one gift. But on the bright side, we don't have to bring gifts or booze to birthday parties, so it all works out in the end. Expending a lot of energy once a year for a birthday is much better than doing it all year round. It is like immunising yourself against brithday parties. The Dutch are onto something here.
Example Sentences:
"If you're tractoring someone to a hay-ride, chances are, you're a redneck"
I will start with quoting comedian Demetri Martin:
"I think they named oranges before they named carrots. What are these? ...Oranges. What about these? (Oh shit)... Long Pointies? ..."
Left behind is the colour orange, which, by judging from what I see around me, is probably the most important colour in the world. It surely deserves its own name. So, my solution is to import the Dutch word "oranje" into the English lexicon. Because, I mean, Holland pretty much owns the colour. Besides, calling an entire colour (and even a secondary colour at that) after something from the real world is pretty stupid. We can't degenerate the colour to the same level as the made-up "salmon".
It is weird that Holland has an entire colour that we call our own. I mean, the Dutch basically own everything that has a visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. To my knowldge, there is no other country that has this phenomenom. Sure, every country has its national colours, but they have to share it with other countries (suckers). However, to my knowledge, the colours purple and pink are still available. So, if some country that noone really cares about, say, Uruguay, just decided to clothe all their athletes in baby pink, that would be a really great way to gain recognition in the world.
Of course, the spelling of oranje would have to change, otherwise people would say "oran-gee", which would be retarded. (I had friends who said they enjoyed drinking "Onan-gee-boom". I had to think really hard about it before I realised what he meant.) There is a logical reason why oron-yeh has become the symbolic colour of Holland. It has something to do with kicking Spain's ass a few hundred years ago. [Foreshadow] In fact, Orange would probably still be on our national flag were it not for one small detail. From Wikipedia:
"The first stadtholder of the Dutch Republic was William I of Orange, who joined with Dutch nationalists and led the struggle for independence from Spain. Partly out of respect for him, the first flag adopted by the Dutch was a horizontal tricolour of orange, white, and blue. It became known as the Prinsenvlag ("Prince's flag") and was based on the livery of William of Orange. The orange dye was particularly unstable and tended to turn red after a while, so in the mid-17th century, red was made the official colour."
I think with all the other countries who have tried to copy the Dutch flag, and now that we have colourfast oron-yeh dies, we could well revert back to the original flag. Not that it is neccessary, as oron-yeh is already our own colour. In summation, a colour, so important and with such a history, should not continually be referred to by simply the name of a fruit.
Way-kah is the Dutch pronounciation of WK, which stands for Wereld Kampionschap (World champoinship). In Dutch it would sound very strange to say "cup", as this usually refers to single portions of salad dressing, or bra sizes. Being a football country, there is never any doubt as to which sport this Way-kah concerns. This is ingrained into Dutch youth, no matter where in the world they are raised. The contraction is necessary because it reduces the amount of syllables from six, to just two. And considering how often the Dutch talk about the World Cup, this contraction probably adds a few percentage points to the GDP.
In English, "World Cup", contains only two syllables, so a contraction is hardly necessary, not to mention that the contraction would then be "WC" which has four syllables and is the place where you defecate. However, other than in England, saying "the World Cup" wouldn't always refer to football (or the blasphemous word "soccer"... urgh.) This could refer to hundreds of different sports, all trying to cash in on the World Cup name. Just take a look at this list. Some of these sports are even made-up sports. I mean, what the hell is "bandying"? And no, I will not give "bandying" the dignity to take 3 seconds out of my life to wikipedia it. It's the principle of the matter. Because as much as I love a few other sports, only football has the potential to be a true world-sport. Even the bigger sports such as baseball, rugby and basketball have a very limited amount of countries who even stand a chance.
Therefore, a single word to refer to the football world cup is probably a good idea. Of course, this would only be temporary, until there is no doubt in any English-speaking country that there is only one World Cup, and that is for football. Because you know it is coming. So, in times of doubt, refer to it in its Dutch. The way-kah. It will be especially relevant if we are the winners this year.
Example Sentence: "The Brazilians had a big wah at the way-kah."
Bonus: Way-kah might be even easier to remember thanks to Shakira's annoying Waka-Waka song. In her wierd Cher-like voice, she almost even pronounces "Waka" similar to "way-kah".
(Although annoying as this Shakira song is, it is a thousand times better than the annoying official FIFA song, whose lyrics are "wooo-yo-oh-ye-oh" and "Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag Wave your flag" Seriouslt, these lyrics are as annoying, repetitive and ADD as the goddamn vuvuzela. Thank you Africa.)
Bonus number two: Here are some images of the way-kah crazyness in Holland right now. There is no doubt here as to which sport the WK belongs to. I mean it is "the" World Cup, not "a" World Cup. You would think that this is a shop that sells orange things. No, this is a bank. Paint it Orange.
Part of the FIFA goal this Way-kah, as shown before the anthems, is the campaign "Say no to Racism"... Unless it is against the Japanese. (Or, say "yes to Nationalizm!")
You would think that these are just some drunken fans, but they are in fact our Prime Minister and his husband.
And here is another photo of our Prime Minister and his husband. Hup Holland!
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.]
