Advanced Dunglish… the blog
- Click the heading to read the blog post
- 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)
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.
Youth and young people
“Youth” has several meanings but often with an old-fashioned, condescending, daddy-knows-best feel to it.
I before E (except after C)
Lots of people think this (or even just the first part) is supposed to be a spelling rule and get annoyed by the exceptions. But they’ve only learned part of it!
Hernia
Scientifically, it means an internal body part protruding where it shouldn’t. In everyday speech, however, Dutch uses it for a back problem and English for an abdominal one.
Using “a” and “an” with digits
As a greeting or introduction, it’s always “welcome to” rather than “welcome at” or “welcome on” or any other such preposition.
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