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.

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

21 Responses

  1. Amanda Blog and Kiss says:

    It’s funny cuz it’s true.

    (hahaha kidding Stu!)

  2. zed says:

    I thought this may have been the tale of you spending the evening in A&E after cutting your finger open – you cock!

  3. Invader Stu says:

    Amanda – I am rubber you are glue… :p

    Zed – Oh… that story is coming later… trust me.

  4. kiki says:

    Nice.
    Did i ever tell you about the time a group of us went cycling and my dad asked for a pause so he could jerk off his coat (“Even m’n jas aftrekken”)?

  5. kiki says:

    Then again, my dad also asked the ladies in an Italian ice cream shop for a scoop of c**t flavoured ice cream (he meant fig). I think he does it on purpose.

  6. Invader Stu says:

    I think your dad has found a cleaver way of getting away with saying whatever is on his mind :p

  7. Angela says:

    hahaha this is funnier than when you’d “done” Marjolein

  8. Carol Bontekoe says:

    Hahaha that is funny.I love the parents mid-being-English. When I lived in Kyrgyzstan and I was just learning Russian I told my friends mom she tasted good. I meant that her cooking was good :P
    The dismembered body is next to the hilton andmontessori school in oud zuid. You can see it from de toomler once you get into that area it is hard to miss.

  9. VallyP says:

    Well at least it was your girlfriend’s parents who said it……you should be fluffing up your feathers already! Quite a compliment in fact…although how they should know I’m not sure ;-)

  10. Invader Stu says:

    Angela – I thought it was a good follow up story :)

    Carol Bontekoe – Thanks. I know that area. I’ll have to check it out.

    VallyP – Me neither :s

  11. Isabella says:

    I love these mix-ups & my favorite is “dik.” Eyebrows really rise when this word is overheard in America, no matter how it’s used ;-)

  12. Anita says:

    I think your mother-in-law is a positive person and foresees all your potential.

  13. Invader Stu says:

    Isabella – Is it the same when in America when an English person is going to smoke and call it ‘having a fag’?

    Anita – You do know in England it is an insult to call someone a cock right? :P

  14. Lily says:

    Oh, that was a good one :)

    We waited over 4 years before our parents met. Mine wanted to wear suits….I told them to stay in their tourist gear. We got round to the Dutch parents and they were in their best clothes. My Mum was NOT happy. Ooops. And his parents speak no English. It was still pretty gezellig :-)

  15. Invader Stu says:

    Hehe. Sounds like it was fun. We made sure that her parents would not be wearing suits either :p

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