A nice simple one today: it’s “sensitive to” and not “sensitive for”.
The concept of sensitivity turns up in a suprising variety of documents and contexts, but in the sense of being responsive and reacting, it’s always sensitive to.
- allergies: sensitive to pollen
- statistics: sensitive to small variations
- technical: sensitive to temperature fluctuations
- emotional: sensitive to someone else’s feelings
- and so forth
Other words than “on” can appear in other senses. Being prickly about a subject, for instance, could be “he was sensitive about his height.” But not for.
Prevalence: moderate. Higher than you might think – the concept turns up in all sorts of documents.
Frequency: very high. Bingo every time, pretty much. Dutch uses voor in this context, and so Dunglish uses for.
Native: no. This kind of misused preposition isn’t a native error.
Advanced Dunglish 