A dictionary-only word that you shouldn’t use in English. (With or without the -ae- spelling variant.) Nobody knows it.
Author Archives: Mike Wilkinson
Don’t get personal
Remember that ‘personal’ often has overtones of private, intimate and secret and not merely ‘related to the individual’.
The difference between both…
Unlike Dutch, English uses “the two” or “the two of them” and not “both” for comparisons and differences.
Sir McCartney…?
Nope. On the rare occasions you’re referring to somone with the title, it goes with the first name: Sir Paul. Otherwise ‘sir’ is a standalone without any name attached.
The most awarded beer in the Netherlands
Oh really? Who have they awarded it to?
Tautologous doublures
In an effort to make a text sound richer and wordier, Dutch authors sometimes include both the Dutch and English in the same phrase.
Only if…
Starting a full sentence with those two words is pretty much guaranteed to get your knickers in a twist, grammatically.
In relation to, with regard to
Texts by Dutch authors tend to be full of little phrases like these. Sure, they have their place, but there’s often a natural one-word alternative.
Usage and abusage
In contrasting pairs like this, the form without the prefix comes first. You can’t say “abusage and usage” of word order.
Twenty twenty-one
The way dates are said out loud is sometimes a little different to the spoken form of a simple number. Short and simple.
