Can we just recap for a sec here. What is dinges? Well, it Flemish slang. It's got about 3 million uses, but we can summarize it in 4 main uses:
- Whatchammacallit? As in "Oh, you're going to the deli? Can you bring me some...uh...dinges? You know...that stuff...whatever it is called..."
- What's his name / what's her name? As in "Yesterday I was in a bar and I ran into dinges, you know, the guy with 8 inch moustache, what's his name again?
- Things, stuff. As in "Why do you have all these dinges in your purse?" or "There's a ton of dinges in that drawer that really don't belong there".
- Uh...uh. Stopword. As in "You know what I'm saying, man? I mean, like dinges, see what I mean?"
Technically, dinges is both singular and plural. One dinges, two dinges, many dinges, some dinges, no dinges at all. If you are inclined to differentiate singular and plural, then we'd rather have you:
- SAY: one dinges, two dingeses, so many dingeses.
- DO NOT SAY: one dinge, two dinges. That sounds just terrible. A dinges without an "s" is really not a dinges.
And that's all the dinges I have to say about that.
1 comment:
Do you ever receive any flak from speakers of ABN (like myself) for your use of *dinges* as the plural form? To me, it would be *dingessen* ... but of course, *dinges* just sounds better. (Yes, I searched your blog expressly to find your stance on this issue.) Anyway, it's always nice to see a bit of BeNeLux in my home town ...
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