December 20, 2019

‘Boomer’ is Dutch Word of the Year

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 11:20 am

Dutch dictionary Van Dale has chosen ‘Boomer’ as the Dutch word of the year. Yes, it’s an English word the Dutch have appropriated (like oh so many) and has the same meaning as in English: someone, usually a senior citizen, with old fashioned or conservative views. It’s an abbreviation of ‘baby boomer’, a person born in the years following the World War II, when there was a temporary marked increase in the birth rate.

For the record, this means people born roughly between 1946 and 1964. I say this as 24oranges HQ was created by two folks of Generation X, (aka Gen X), the group after the baby boomers and preceding the Millennials, although Gen Y and Gen Z also get thrown in the mix when referring to younger generations.

The ‘OK Boomer’ meme and expression floating around didn’t go unnoticed in the Netherlands, a hugely anglophile country, but watch where you aim it. If you aim it at anyone older than you, you’ll look the fool once you need ‘our’ help in life, and you already do, which is often the reason for the meme in the first place.

Boomer, which received almost 42% of the votes, took off when a member of parliament in New Zealand targeted it at an older colleague when addressing climate change issues. It spread like wildfire afterwards. Other words – actual Dutch ones – were fashionable words such as ‘klimaatspijbelaar’ (‘skipping school for the climate’, aka someone playing hooky [American English] or playing truant ([British English]) and ‘klimaatdrammer’, a person constantly hammering on about climate change.

Last year’s winner was all about ‘Frisians blocking the motorway’.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

Tags: , , ,

December 18, 2018

Frisians blocking the motorway Dutch Word of the Year 2018

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 2:40 pm

‘Blokkeerfries’ has won the Dutch Word of the Year 2018, followed by ‘yogasnuiver’ (‘yoga sniffer’) and ‘mangomoment’ (‘mango moment’) in third place.

‘Blokkerfries’ is described by Dutch dictionary Van Dale (a collaboration between the Dutch in the Netherlands and the Flemish in Belgium) as one of the people who blocked a motorway in [the Dutch province of] Friesland in order to stop others from demonstrating against an aspect of the Sinterklaas tradition, considered by some as a defender of it. You’ll notice they are not explicitly mentioning the now controversial ‘blackface’ aspect of Zwarte Piet, but that’s what was generally meant at the time.

A ‘yoga sniffer’ is someone that usually has a healthy lifestyle, but then once in a while goes overboard with party drugs and cocaine when they go out. For the advance class, if you do encounter the Dutch word ‘cultuursnuiver’ (‘culture sniffer’), it means someone who takes in culture, which is a positive thing.

‘Mangomoment’ refers to a Flemish television moment where a patient experienced a moment of happiness when the presenter of the show brought them a mango. Van Dale says it means a moment of happiness experienced by a seriously ill patient due to a seemingly insignificant, non-medical act or comment from a doctor or healthcare provider during normal healthcare activities.

(Link: nu.nl)

Tags: , , , , ,

December 17, 2018

Dutch Word of the Year 2018 vote almost done

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 4:07 pm

If you are so inclined, you have until 5 pm today to vote for the Dutch Word of the Year 2018 by following the link below. Tomorrow, the winners will be announced.

The Van Dale dictionary folks have 18 new words on the shortlist, and I’m going to attempt to explain a few of them that seem to be talked about the most, or at least that’s what I’ve been reading.

– Balanstrutje (‘Balance bitch’). One of those more well-to-do Dutch women preaching bullshit about balancing work and career (and self-care, and whatever else) purely to flog shit to other gullible women.

– Blokkeerfries (‘Blocking Frisian’). The name for Zwarte Piet defenders from Friesland who thought it was OK to illegally block a motorway to protest the change of ZP’s appearance because they felt it attacked their cultural identity.

– Primarkpremie (‘Primark premium’). Named after the Irish chain Primark, a ‘Primark premium’ is when Dutch -based companies receive subsidies for staff who earn no more than a quarter more than minimum wage.

That last one makes a lot of people’s stomach turn and could win, we’ll see.

(Link: woordvanhetjaar.vandale.nl)

Tags: , ,

December 21, 2016

‘Bully vlogger’, Dutch word of the year 2016

Filed under: Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 2:27 pm

‘Treitervlogger’ (‘bully vlogger’) was coined in September 2016 by the Dutch press and is defined as ‘a vlogger who films their friends bullying locals, sometimes even egging them on’. It sounds very specific and it is, as it is based on a series of bullying incidents in Zaandam involving a young Dutch-Turkish man, his friends and their ‘hoodvlogs’, a Dunglish term for ‘neighbourhood vlogs’. Although the instigator apologised for his behaviour after cooling off in a jail cell fora few days at some point, he plans to keep vlogging – lucky us.

More than 100,000 votes were tallied, with ‘treitervlogger’ getting 35% of them. Second place goes to ‘pokémonterreur’ ‘Pokémon terror’ with 23% and third place to ‘Trump the Liarisme’ (‘Trump the Liarism’) at 11%.

On the lighter side, the Flemish went with ‘Samsonseks’ (‘Samson sex’), which refers to parents having sex while their kids are watching ‘Samson en Gert’, a children’s show about a man and his dog.

This entire annual process is done for the Van Dale dictionary, which has the Netherlands and Flanders working together and celebrating their cultural differences.

(Link: nos.nl)

Tags: , , , , ,

May 30, 2016

Dutch dictionary wins top British design prize

Filed under: Design,Literature by Orangemaster @ 9:18 am

British advertising agency D&AD have recently announced this year’s winners of their D&AD Pencil Awards for creative excellence in design and advertising, and the Netherlands nabbed seven awards this year, three less than last year. Studio Joost Grootens picked up a coveted Pencil award for the design of the new Dikke Van Dale, the “oldest and most extensive dictionary of the Dutch language”.

The pearly white cover presents a major break with the familiar dark hues [dark blue, maroon, etc.] traditionally used by the publisher. This signals the current association between the pursuit of knowledge and our use of white and silver digital devices as the portals to information.

With Almost 5000 pages of knowledge and in its fifteenth edition, this year the Van Dale was also fitted with navigational elements such as colours, symbols and illustrations.

(Links: www.dandad.org-1, www.dandad.org-2)

Tags: , ,

December 17, 2013

‘Selfie’ is the Dutch word of 2013

Filed under: IT,Literature,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:37 am

Another English word has become a Dutch word, as ‘selfie’ has been chosen by the Van Dale dictionary as the Word of the Year 2013. A selfie is a self-portrait taken with a digital camera, smartphone or webcam. A feature of the selfie when taken with a smartphone is that you can see the phone in the picture. The international media is currently swooning over a picture of Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt taking a picture of herself with Barack Obama.

Social media and IT have definitely changed Dutch vocabulary for good. In 2012 we had ‘Project X-feest’ (‘Project X party’), a local word from the name of a birthday party event on Facebook turned into a riot and in 2009 ‘ontvrienden’ (‘unfriend’) on Facebook, Twitter and other apps was the winner.

The Van Dale only started inventorying words of the year in 2007 and before that it was done by companies and blogs only going back to 2003. ‘Selfie’, ‘Project-X-feest’ and ‘ontvrienden’ are social media and IT related, while other words stem from traditional media such as ‘gedoogregering’ (a type of minority government that keeps things quiet) (2010). The crowd favourite at parties is ‘swaffelen’ (2008). If you don’t know it, click to read about it.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl)

Tags: , , , ,

October 22, 2013

New Dutch words are just English in hollandaise sauce

Filed under: IT,Literature,Technology by Orangemaster @ 12:40 pm

Dutch dictionary Van Dale is considering a bunch of English words as well as translated English words to be included into the Dutch language. The words are often slang that goes mainstream and IT-related words.

    Selfie – Same meaning and spelling as in English, taking a picture of yourself with a mobile phone.
    Shishapen – In English ‘shisha pen’, an electric cigarette, shisha being of Egyptian origin.
    Sukkelseks – Dutch for low-quality sex, although I thought it meant ‘pity sex’.
    Gamechanger – ‘Game changer’, used by politicians and business people.
    Factchecken – ‘Fact checking’, since the Dutch already use ‘checken’ (‘to check’) because it is more to the point than a Dutch construction.
    3D-printer – Again the Dutch use ‘printer’, so this is a logical extension.

In May of this year, words like ‘religiestress’ (‘religion stress’, stress caused by religious beliefs) and ‘chillaxen’ (‘to chillax’, a slang word that combines ‘chill and relax’) were added to the online version of the Van Dale.

And finally words that are actually Dutch: ‘vingerpistool’ (‘finger pistol’, a gesture that indicates you’re shooting at someone) and ‘roeptoeteren’ (roughly pronounced ROOP-too-tee-ren), to give your opinion in a really loud and poorly considered manner.

(Links: www.nieuws.nl, www.rtlnieuws.nl)

Tags: ,

November 30, 2011

Marketers make stunt out of scrapping word from dictionary

Filed under: Food & Drink,Literature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:58 pm

I love the smell of a good marketing stunt in the morning: jarred food company Hak is campaigning to get a word out of Dutch dictionary Van Dale. The word is ‘potdicht’ (literally ‘jar tight’, meaning tightly closed and implying cannot be opened) and since the claim that their new jars are no longer ‘potdicht’ and easy to open, they feel the word should be scrapped from the dictionary. It is totally absurd to scrap anything that does not exist anymore on a whim, and so a lovely marketing stunt it is.

Besides offering jarred Dutch food products, their claim to fame with the non Dutch is that their jars are see-through. You can see what you’re buying and they do look nice on the shelves.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl)

Tags:

December 15, 2010

Dutch word of 2010 qualifies unusual minority government

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 10:07 am

The Dutch word of the year, according to Dutch dictionary Van Dale (a Dutch-Belgian joint publication), is ‘gedoogregering’, a government (‘-regering’) (albeit it a minority government this time) with silent support (‘gedoog-‘ means ‘tolerated’). The silent support comes from one of the three political parties who agrees to everything the other two parties want in exchange for deals made beforehand in an ‘gedoogakkoord’, or a ‘silent party agreement’. The Dutch have not had a minority government since WWII and is also dealing with a right-wing party that is anything but silent.

The runner-up word of the year is something the English-speaking world may know from Jamaican dancehall music and was described on Dutch telly very politely as ‘an erotic dance’: ‘daggeren’ (‘daggering’). It’s basically pretending to have jack-rabbit like sex on the dance floor (dry humping), usually to the beat of the music. Lucky for us, some white trash reality show apparently features this often.

The number one Dutch word in Belgium also has to do with sex: ‘tentsletje’ (‘tent slut’), a girl that sleeps with lots of different guys (goes from tent to tent) at those big summer festivals.

(Link: woordvanhetjaar.vandale.nl)

Tags: , ,