Watch the overtones: it’s not only telling you a term is used but also implying that it’s incorrect. A so-called expert or so-called friend is not to be trusted!
Author Archives: Mike Wilkinson
Generalized case plurals
“I had a phone conversation with ten dentists” in English is a conference call, but in Dutch it would usually mean ten separate calls, one with each.
By starting sentences like this…
… you are forced into a clumsy structure. Avoiding it lets you make the syntax snappier.
People persons
The plural of person is ‘people’, except in legalese and occasional old-fashioned texts.
On the level
It’s “at”, not “on”. Negotiations at the European level. Coronavirus cases still at a high level. Figures at the level of the individual business units.
We live on the Bovenweg
No, I’m afraid you don’t. You live on Bovenweg. There’s no article needed for a named street or road or square.
High wines and high breakfasts
What? No way. There’s “high tea”, a specific and very English concept. But you can’t misappropriate “high” for anything else.
(Grand)parents and (sub)contractors
Bracketing off part of a word to express alternatives may be very compact on the page, but it’s not acceptable English punctuation.
Computer-generated Dunglish
The most striking point is that computerized NL-EN translation makes the same mistakes as Dutch people when they write English.
Noun stack order
A sequence of nouns for the sake of brevity, to make a snappy title or newspaper headline. Like the one above. The order in English isn’t the same as in Dutch, though.
Advanced Dunglish 