Unfortunately Peanut Butter - Tote Bag Design

Languages often have their own little quirky sayings that everyone knows and uses, but sound completely ridiculous when translated into another language. The Dutch love their cliché phrases, and it’s a shame we can’t use them in conversations with our expat friends without sounding like idiots. To break this little language barrier, I chose to highlight one of our proverbial gems, ‘Helaas pindakaas’. Literally this means ‘unfortunately peanut butter’,  but would translate to ‘too bad’. Apparently this was first used by schoolchildren as a joke, and became so popular that adults started saying it as well. It was even used in a newspaper in 1993. So, if a Dutch person says something that initially makes absolutely no sense to you, just ask them what it means. There could be a really nice story behind it!

 

Designed while employed at DesignBridge

Photography by Richard Rigby