Among other things

Although it’s perfectly valid English, it’s not all that common a phrase and often not the most natural equivalent of the Dutch “onder andere”.

The default, literal translation of “onder andere” = among others or among other things is usually a bit longer and uglier than it needs to be. There are other solutions, including:

• Well, I just gave you the commonest one: including
• In scientific or legal writing, there’s the Latin inter alia
• And in fact, the reality in practice is often that you’re giving one or two examples (and/or hedging your bets in case you’ve forgotten some). In which case, the natural English will more probably be:
  • for example
  • for instance
  • e.g.

The abbreviated version “a.o.” that many Dutch people come up with is even less helpful, by the way: the natives simply won’t know what you’re trying to say. (But fake abbreviations are another post altogether – due soon!)

Prevalence: endemic. Okay once or twice, but like most of these overused words, it soon grates and becomes clunky…
Frequency: high. …especially when the same author uses it ten times in short order.
Native: yes. It’s a valid phrase. Occasionally.