Confessions of a Closet Environmentalist

Nah, not really. But you guys want to know the Top 5 funniest dutch words of all time (at least in my mind)? Either because of how they are spelled, pronounced or mispronounced, these crack me up every time.

Wanna guess what they mean? I even translated the context for you to make it easy. Find out after the jump.

#5: burger, as in American burger. Nope, nothing to do with McD’s.

#4: hoor, as in “Ja, hoor!”. Pronounced wh0re. Ya, rly! Of course it means something else! What did you expect? This is a family blog!

#3: monster, as in “Did you gather any monsters in the field today?”

#2: lucifers, as in “Have you seen the lucifers? I need a smoke!“

#1: ghettoblaster, as in “Turn on the ghettoblaster! Let’s have some fun!!1!“

#5: Well, I can tell you that I’ve had lots of laughs witnessing phone calls with the Dutch Immigration, when someone identifies themselves as an American burger in broken dutch. I bet it probably sounded something like “I can has American burger?” to them. Well if you must know, an American burger is no more no less than a citizen of the United States of McDonalds… er, I mean America.

#4: Did you know it’s perfectly acceptable to call someone a hoor in this country? It is! But only if they ask you something, in which case you can confidently reply “Ja, hoor!“. Ok, so it’s just a figure of speech that literally means “hear”, but who cares.

#3: Yes, in a research university like Wageningen, field monsters are a very standard thing actually. That’s the dutch word for samples.

#2: Ah, lucifers… Well, since the dutch already legalized most capital sins anyway, they might as well go ahead and worship Satan, right? Oh, don’t worry, my soul is safe, the only lucifers around here are matches. And I don’t even smoke. I wonder if it’s the sulfurous smell? Er, I mean phosphorous

#1: I would’ve thought the ghettoblaster would be special weapon in Ghostbusters, reserved for dead rappers or something. But no. Spot the ghettoblaster on this site. Did you find it?