A brief aside for translators: if the author has italicized something merely to emphasize that it’s borrowed from English, there’s no need to take that formatting across!
Category Archives: Grammar
Corresponding… to or with?
Stick to “correspond with” for communication and “correspond to” for things matching up.
English as she is spoken
The Dutch are great communicators who get their message across well in spoken English. But actually putting the spoken word on paper is a pig with a different snout altogether.
The blog’s purpose
There seems to be a common belief that the possessive form must only be used for animate objects. That is (of course) complete bollocks.
South America, West Africa, North Korea
None of these take a hyphen in English. Simple.
Arithmetic
Hold on, that’s the same in all languages… isn’t it?
Ordinal numbers
All ordinal numbers can be written in Dutch with a superscript “e” but that isn’t the case in English: first, second and third each need the last two letters to be used.
Not only… but also
The phrase “but also” refers back to an earlier part of the sentence (usually flagged with “not only”) to add extra or even contrasting information. It can’t start a sentence or stand alone.
Accents for emphasis
Adding acute accents to the vowels of a word to signifiy that it should be emphasized is a purely Dutch typographical convention.
An enormous wealthy individual
Remember that you need to use an adverb (-ly) when describing how an action is done or when modifying an adjective.
