r/lovethissmug • u/RespUnin • 15h ago

😻 Meme Or Other Online Trope 😂 I love these Dutch posts

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It's like if someone went to a business conference but only spoke through Doge memes

2.6k Upvotes

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155

u/a_demon_from_hell 15h ago

As someone who is Dutch I hate these memes because I simply cannot comprehend what's so funny about any of this 😭

140

u/oogrug 15h ago edited 15h ago

dutch orthography looks "silly" to non-dutch speaking anglophones because, among other things, multiple words are close enough to english that they read like misspellings (serieus, kan, probleem) or slang (dat dat). then there are words whose spellings don't make intuitive sense to many anglophones (mbt). and while people who read dutch know that oo and ee represent /oː/ and /eː/, many anglophones read them as /uː/ and /i/; importantly, when oo and ee function as digraphs in english, the words often feel silly, cute, or otherwise unserious (poop, boob, goo; pee, wee, bee)

21

u/Nigel2602 12h ago

To be fair, mbt is an abbreviation for 'met betrekking tot' (Wilders even spelled it wrong, it should be m.b.t.). Spelling a full word like that wouldn't make sense in Dutch either.

8

u/LaunchTransient 12h ago

Wilders even spelled it wrong

Twitter had a character limit of 140 characters (though when Wilders posted this the limit was up to 280), which encouraged people to cut superfluous punctuation. I can only imagine that is the reason.

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u/a-stack-of-masks 9h ago

Nah ink is duur fam. aint nobody got time or budget for interpunctie.

1

u/brofishmagikarp 4h ago

Het is inderdaad duur fam, hebben we korting voor nodig

1

u/Any_Description_4204 11h ago

Nah most people don’t take the effort to put periods in abbreviations, especially on mobile when you have to switch to another keyboard for it

1

u/LaunchTransient 11h ago

The full stop is standard in the bottom right of mobile keyboards.

22

u/Ishmael_1974 13h ago

Dutch was invented by a German who was pretending he could speak English

10

u/Catch-Straight 11h ago

As if English isn't the bastard child of french and german

1

u/sempowalxochitl 10h ago

Mbt is an abbreviation of “met betrekking tot” which means “with respect to” 

1

u/Insidiatori02 6h ago

Regarding - fits way better

37

u/BadMeatPuppet 15h ago

I know zero Dutch, but due to the similarities between the two languages, I can read and understand some Dutch sentences; however, with the English pronunciation in my head, it sounds ridiculous, like a parody of English.

7

u/shiggyhisdiggy 15h ago

The Dutch pronunciation isn't much better, have you heard them speak? Watched a Dutch horror movie about a lion once and was laughing my ass off because every other sentence sounded like someone failing to speak English

5

u/MericArda 13h ago

And our Gs sound like gargling on air.

1

u/Cheetah_05 11h ago

Just be from the good part of the country

33

u/onarainyafternoon 13h ago

It’s only funny if you’re an anglophone and use English very regularly, but also at the same time don’t know Dutch. The only reason this is such a funny thing for so many people is because so many people are fluent in English as a first or second language. So then they look at the way Dutch is spelled and spoken, and it appears like Jar Jar Binks trying to speak English. I admit that I think it’s hysterical, but it’s got nothing to do with thinking you guys are below me or anything; it’s just funny from my own perception. Another commenter said it’s like the uncanny valley for English speakers and I think that’s a really great way of describing it.

14

u/Dismal_Macaron_5542 13h ago

I will say, as someone who speaks both English and German but not Dutch, I think its extra funny because I can basically understand everything

2

u/a-stack-of-masks 9h ago

The real flex is understanding spoken Frisian or written Limburgish.

In case you're wondering, speaking Limburgish is spelled "plaat kalle" with modifiers depending on what town you're from. I'd write out some Frisian but my phone doesn't support Abyssal Script.

8

u/Slight-Violinist-575 13h ago

I am not an anglophone and it still is funny af. The only requirement for the funnies is fluency in English

3

u/BlondeBubbel 10h ago

I’m Dutch and that’s exactly it

1

u/Repulsive_Wafer_6468 9h ago

Funny because English is actually the Frankstein language here

9

u/LilianaNecromancer 14h ago

We hebben een serieus probleem

To an English speaker just reads like silly English. That’s it

6

u/MisterDutch93 14h ago

They’re reading Dutch with English pronunciation and inflection, which sounds funny to them because it almost makes sense while being gibberish at the same time.

5

u/RaptorCelll 12h ago

I'm sorry to tell you Dutch speakers, but to English speakers (Germans sound off if it's the same for you guys) but your language is intelligible enough to us that it just looks like silly English.

2

u/Catch-Straight 11h ago

I imagine it's also only funny when reading it.

2

u/a-stack-of-masks 10h ago

I wonder if the reason so few Dutch people get this is because being bilingual is the minimum here. I think English would be similar for us if we didn't see any until we were adults, but by 12 everyone speaks it (and probably a bit of German, French, maybe some Spanish or Latin, plus wherever extra languages you took from home like Bahasa, Turkish or Arab) so the only funny language to us is Afrikaans, which is often closer to Dutch than Plaat or Frysk are.

Which is all to say that maybe us proper Europeans are just too educated to get your jokes lmao get dunketh upon.

1

u/Such_Split997 6h ago edited 6h ago

To me it always comes across like if an Italian were to make a huge fuss about Portugese being different. 

Like to us Afrikaans resembles how they used to do racist stereotypes in comic strips , from the word order to elements like the double deny, and we don't have like a bunch of memes about Afrikaans speakers. 

Meanwhile the South African headline "Hitler Dood , wat nou" , which is objectively a funny title in standard Dutch because "wat nou?" is informal to us ( like "now wot ?" ) ( but just "what happens next?" to South Africans )  , has become a meme with English speakers thinking it's Dutch and therefore funny. 

5

u/komodopal 15h ago

Since Dutch is so similar to english it sat at the uncanny valley of language familiarity for english speakers. Except it makes them sound funny to english speakers.

7

u/Tricky_Challenge9959 15h ago

It reads like really bad English and German. It has a similar vibe as the langauge in r/ssdfg

2

u/Floordove 9h ago

"hahaha ik win van jou neger GEKOLONISEERD!'.

These are all very sad children that have, and not will ever, have a developed brain.

1

u/Insidiatori02 6h ago

Moet dit?

2

u/Solnight99 9h ago

English has the same heritage as Dutch on one side, but all of the "sophisticated" words are Latin-derived through French, so Dutch looks similar to English without the Latin. Also, the spelling is similar to English, but in the same way that English gibberish (different languages have different gibberish) is similar to English, so it looks funny.

2

u/Methanator 8h ago

despite the many French (and North Germanic) influences on English, it is still a West Germanic language. So English has the same heritage as Dutch on both sides

1

u/Solnight99 8h ago

If we're being that technical, languages don't have "sides" like people. I explained it that way because it makes more sense to a layman.

-1

u/Methanator 7h ago

indeed they do not, your explanation suggests that English is only part Western Germanic though, and that is not right

1

u/PaleDark4 12h ago

As someone who speaks Dutch but is not Dutch it's sometimes really funny

1

u/godverdejezushey 10h ago

It's the same way they say poopenfarten for German

1

u/Sad-Pattern-1269 9h ago

It looks like someone is writing in an intentionally silly way, like OWO speak if you're familiarl. it's just legible enough to know the words but spelled weirdly

1

u/Flow1234 2h ago

Fellow Dutch, they're reading it with English vowel sounds and not Dutch. For you and me that would be "Wie hebben ien serius probliem"

0

u/MericArda 13h ago

As a fellow Dutchman I can never take a yelling in Dutch seriously.