For some reason, Dutch writers love correcting “social” into “societal”.
Category Archives: Grammar
0.5 tons
English use of plurals with numeric (decimal) fractions is peculiar, particularly in the spoken form.
Making do
Making a jigsaw in English would mean cutting the puzzle pieces out, not putting them together. One of many occasions where Dutch uses “make” but English prefers “do”.
Twins
A twin is a single person, who happens to have been born alongside another. That’s different from Dutch, in which “a twin” refers to the identical twosome.
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.
The singular of criteria…
…is “criterion” in English, not “criterium”.
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.
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.
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!
Fireworks
Dutch treats the broad concept of pyrotechnics as a singular noun, “vuurwerk”. English doesn’t: fireworks are in the plural.
Advanced Dunglish 