People regularly tell me that they keep hearing natives use the words and phrases I say should be avoided. Which we do; the question is how often. Here are some figures to help back it up.
The largest body of text I have easily available that I can be 100% certain is absolutely uncontaminated, fluid native speech is my own writing. Okay, novels aren’t necessarily the material you want to be comparing a scientific paper against, but the prevalences of the words listed below are so dramatically different from Dunglish that I think the point is clear enough. These are the occurrences in approximately 230,000 words (say 700 pages) of writing:
- timely – zero
- insight – zero (in the singular, 2 in the plural)
- optimal, optimally – zero
- enable – 1
- indicate – 2
- trajectory – zero
- support – 7
- contribute – 12
- ambition – zero
- of value – zero
- the way in which – zero
- of importance – zero
- equip – 1
- relation – 2
- persons – 3
- manner – zero
- so-called – zero (in the sense of “known as”)
Back after a couple of weeks’ holiday – the first time we’ve been able to get out of the country for a couple of years! And in other news, I’m going to be doing a webinar based on this blog in October for the Dutch translation and interpretation society.
Prevalence: — n/a
Frequency: — n/a
Native: — n/a
Advanced Dunglish 