A little something about Dutch

Although this might seem trivial, I find this really interesting. This video, promoting a dutch language school by “teaching” the audience swear words, actually doesn’t touch upon what’s so unique about them in the first place: references to diseases. Because of their long history of self-preservation and survival, the worst thing to say to someone at the time was to wish them cancer or syphilis.

This dilution of their own cultural uniqueness to cater to an international audience is really fascinating. Afraid of being misunderstood, they would rather revert to teaching how to say “asshole” then “may you be struck with gangrene”.

Language separated from culture.

By designswarm

Blogging since 2005.