Advanced Dunglish… the blog
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- After opening a post, you can:
- select various categories such as Punctuation or US-UK issues to find related posts
- select tags to find other items about the same specific topic
- leave comments (kan ook in het NL, uiteraard)
Cause and effect
“Causing something to take place” isn’t incorrect. But 99 times out of 100, the native speaker would say it was “made to happen”.
Spoken dates
Although we generally say something like “the fifth of November” or “April the seventeenth” (or variants depending on US/UK etc.), it’s not normal to write it out that way.
We suggest to avoid to make this error…
Many cases of an action being expressed in Dutch with an infinitive are more naturally written in English with the “-ing” form.
Gallons, tons, fluid ounces…
When converting units, be aware that not all the imperial measures are the same in US and UK English (let alone the equivalent legacy words in Dutch).
Executing, accomplishing, performing
When a task is being done, far simpler alternatives are available. The one that is most commonly overlooked is to “carry out”.
A bit of this and that
Strangely enough, the usage of those two simple, everyday words is quite often the other way round in Dutch when referring to abstracts rather than tangible objects.
What comes between junior and senior?
Well, not “medior” at any rate. That’s a fabrication, an anglicization.
Habits such as: colons before lists
Dutch typography regularly seems to use a superfluous colon to introduce a list of items – sometimes even a ‘list’ of one!
“Euro” as a prefix
Eurocrat, Eurotrash, Eurospeak… prefixing something with “Euro” in English is often intended as a negative connotation. Unlike on the Continent.
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