Errors In Dutch – The Good Kok
During the summer holidays my parents and my girlfriend’s parents met for the very first time. We had arranged to spend the weekend together in Friesland (where my girlfriends parents live). This might sound like the plot of a sitcom waiting to happen but once we had convinced my father that he really did not need to wear a suit to meet her parents (and make us look any more English then we already are) everything was fine. My parents and her parents got along very well and it was very gezellig.
To mark the occasion my girlfriend and myself decided to cook a traditional English meal of Indian curry for us all to enjoy.
We started to prepare the meal by cutting the vegetables and arranging the ingredients we would require. Both our parents sat at the nearby table, chatting with each other and occasionally watching us as we demonstrated our culinary skills.
As my girlfriend put the ingredients into the wok and stirred them I concentrated very hard upon my vegetable chopping duties to avoid adding to my collection of kitchen knife accident related finger scars. This must have given me the focused appearance of someone who takes cooking very seriously because my girlfriend’s mother smiled as she watched my careful slicing and dicing of a yellow pepper. She then slowly turned to look at my parents and with the same smile upon her face announced to them in her Dutch accent, “Stuart is turning into a real cock.”
A cock?!
There was a pause. I stopped mid-chop, my girlfriend stopped mid-stir and my parents stopped mid-being-English. We all looked at each other.
A cock?!
“Mum!” My girlfriend suddenly broke the silence, barely able to keep a straight face. “You just called my boyfriend a piemel!”
“What?! Nee, nee, nee. Dat was niet mijn bedoeling!” Her mother tried to frantically correct the mistake.
It was too late; with the silence broken we had already burst out laughing loudly and uncontrollably and were unable to stop. After we all regained the ability to breathe and wiped the tears from our eyes some time later we explained to her that the word she had been looking for was ‘cook’… She had of course been using the Dutch word kok, which is pronounced cock but means cook. At least I hope that’s what she had been doing.
Only in England ? Man ! I thought in the all English-spoken-world.
Hilarious story – what a moment!! I could feel the tension lol! I can picture your girlfriend’s mum’s embarrassment as she tried to apologise herself… poor thing. In the end, it was a sort of ice-breaker!
Cheers!
It was funny at the time and even funnier the way you tell it. I can hardly see to type the tears are running down my face. What really made me laugh at the time was when Simones Mum started laughing
We’re still telling the story to everyone as well
I was on vacation a couple of years ago with a group of friends. We ate all week at the same restaurant, run by a very friendly family. At the last day we wanted to make a photo of all the personnel. So one of my friends asked to the restaurant owner: “I wanna take a picture of you and all the cocks”. Everybody was quiet for at least two minutes. The man was in shock. I told him that it was a mistake, he laughed and gave us “korting”. We, Dutch, were very happy about that!