Dutch words that sound obscene in English

  1. Cock/Kok: family name. Also kok: cook, coccus. Re David Cameron’s #piggate laddishness, British Labour MP Emily Thornberry has posted a pack of pickled smoked cut beef (not pork) marketed under a brand of Darwin Award-worthy stupidity, Cock’s Fresh. De Cock is the family name and the products are preserved, not fresh. If you tell a glowering Antwerpian that filet d’Anvers / Antwerpse filet / Antwerp fillet is indistinguishable from any other carcinogenic cow you will not understand his response.
  2. Dik: fat. A Dutch GF -mainly good at hitting balls and running fast- went through an entire summer singing “Short dick man” in the belief that she was prejudiced against obese dwarves:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wNx1CBym7s

  3. Kont: bum.
  4. And so voort.

The Spanish take a perverse pride in the belief that their politicians are the least gifted linguists beyond the barnyard, but few Dutch politicians are anything but adequate in the language of the money-laundering capital of the world – surely a sign of their honesty. This leads to Dunglish (more). For example, fokken is to breed (animals). An old joke which all educated foreigners in Holland are told at least once a week relates a conversation between Prime Minister Joseph Luns and John F. Kennedy:
JFK: So what do you do for a hobby?
JL: I fok horses.
JFK: Pardon?
JL: Yes, paarden (horses).

Which brings us neatly back to the new joke about the leaders of both the UK’s major parties having been accused in the past week of having fucked a pig.

What was this blog about?

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A friend who has had the pleasure (not Jess Phillips, leader of the Labour Party in 2016 and election-winner in 2025) tells me that Diane Abbott is a Weeble: knock her down and she gets up looking smug:

Appropriately there is a mistranslation right at the beginning of the Dunglish article: steenkool is coal; houtskool is charcoal.

]

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