(Screenshot of a social media post, user posting an image of Jar Jar Binks with a speech bubble for the post replied to. Post is from a Dutch politician stating "We hebben een serieus probleem met de politieke ontwikkelingen mbt de dwangwet en ik hoop dat dat de komende dagen kan worden opgelost. ")
Also, who can forget this favorite
(Screenshot of a translator app.
English: spank me daddy.
Dutch: geef me een klap papa)
Ah, you’re right. According to a random Dutch website it’s short for “met betrekking tot”.
Though to be fair, the matching German abbreviation is “bzgl.” because why use three words when you can just say “regarding”.
While “met betrekking tot” is pretty archaic in and of itself, the shorter “betreffende” sounds even more archaic. I think a more commonly used word in daily speech would be “over”.
Word for word, ‘met betrekking tot’ is directly something like ‘med betraktning for’ = ‘with consideration towards’ in modern language, while the modern Norwegian version of the same is ‘med tanke på’ = ‘with thought on’.
Meaning the same, but the old one sounds archaic, from the time when Norwegian had formal and informal language, like most languages still has, but that somehow disappeared gradually after the war, to the degree that we now often sound rude.
The abbreviation written out, my translation would have been word for word, and not guesswork. I know Dutch and Norwegian are very similar grammatically, so I’d assume it is the same in that using just the word for ‘regarding’ would just not make any grammatical sense, hence why we have the acronym. Simplification without simplifying anything, now that is efficient simplicity.
Ah, that’s nice to know. Also I finally figured out what “dwangwet” means because for some reason this Reddit post is the top result:
https://old.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/comments/19amlup/dutch_cant_be_a_real_language/
The top comment does seem very slightly familiar. Even the use of brackets wtf