The way they do things in the Netherlands....
I suppose most of us have a certain idea of the Dutch and the Netherlands, and although I was well aware of the Calvinist background of many of them, this came as a bit of a surprise: The equivalent of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, cough, 'mediawatch-uk' (yes, it is written a la e.c.cummings) styles itself the Union Against Swearing. NIS News has more details.
A selection of what one must presume to be appalled burghers have been monitoring every last Dutch TV programme keeping a running tally of 'invective and cursing', and this year's figure totals some 112,000 instances, up 13% on last year, and "About two-thirds of the coarse language consists of obscenities or invective and about one-fifth of what the Christian organisation calls "taking the name of God or Jesus in vain".
There is further stat crunching to be seen, my favourites being these "On both public and commercial stations, swearing occurs on average 0.3 times an hour. The government-sponsored youth channel BNN is invariably the station averaging by far the most coarse expressions an hour (6.7 in 2006)".
It could be thatNational Viewers' and Listeners' Association mediawatch-uk *is* already doing something similar, but its spectacularly ugly and amateurish-looking website is awash with broken links, so I remain none the wiser.
I do not find swearing, blasphemy etc offensive per se, but I try to keep my language reined in on the off chance that others might, and also because endless effing and blinding is just so tedious.
A selection of what one must presume to be appalled burghers have been monitoring every last Dutch TV programme keeping a running tally of 'invective and cursing', and this year's figure totals some 112,000 instances, up 13% on last year, and "About two-thirds of the coarse language consists of obscenities or invective and about one-fifth of what the Christian organisation calls "taking the name of God or Jesus in vain".
There is further stat crunching to be seen, my favourites being these "On both public and commercial stations, swearing occurs on average 0.3 times an hour. The government-sponsored youth channel BNN is invariably the station averaging by far the most coarse expressions an hour (6.7 in 2006)".
It could be that
I do not find swearing, blasphemy etc offensive per se, but I try to keep my language reined in on the off chance that others might, and also because endless effing and blinding is just so tedious.
Labels: Media, Netherlands
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on Tuesday, May 08, 2007 at 7:27 am.
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Sorry... ;-)
DK
Ah, but you are the Rembrandt of swearing DK...
*coughs*
Holland isnt Amsterdam , that is an abberation that has lead to the Dutch being steroetyped as dope smoking porn mongers.
now the Germans they really are a nation of arrogant guilt ridden sausage munchers who love nothing more than a good watersports session whilst dresses head to foot in a rubber gimp suit.
I been to germany , I know this to be a fact.
Bollocks!
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