John O'Mill

Who was John O'Mill?

Johan van der Meulen, better known by his pseudonym John O'Mill, is a Dutch author mostly known for his wordplay and limericks, and for using a macaronic combination of Dutch and English words and sentence structures he called "Double Dutch". Double Dutch appears English, but it cannot be fully understood without knowledge of Dutch, because it is based on the literal translation of Dutch idioms into English and the similarity in sound of certain words and expressions. O'Mill, who was until 1975 a teacher of English at the public high school "Rijks-HBS" at Breda near Rotterdam, was inspired by the clumsy English used by his pupils.