The plural of person is ‘people’, except in legalese and occasional old-fashioned texts.
Category Archives: Advanced
On the level
It’s “at”, not “on”. Negotiations at the European level. Coronavirus cases still at a high level. Figures at the level of the individual business units.
We live on the Bovenweg
No, I’m afraid you don’t. You live on Bovenweg. There’s no article needed for a named street or road or square.
High wines and high breakfasts
What? No way. There’s “high tea”, a specific and very English concept. But you can’t misappropriate “high” for anything else.
(Grand)parents and (sub)contractors
Bracketing off part of a word to express alternatives may be very compact on the page, but it’s not acceptable English punctuation.
Noun stack order
A sequence of nouns for the sake of brevity, to make a snappy title or newspaper headline. Like the one above. The order in English isn’t the same as in Dutch, though.
GB, England and the UK
The term “Great Britain” has nothing to do with delusions of grandeur. It’s just the biggest island in the group, same as Gran Canaria or Grand Cayman.
Training
There’s no such thing as “a training”. You either receive training – a general, uncountable noun – or take a training course.
The prevention of longwindedness
Dutch writers love the structure “the + (verbal noun) + of” where English prefers the gerund: “preventing longwindedness”.
“How to” isn’t a question
The word “hoe” and a verb in the infinitive can be used in Dutch to fomulate a short and snappy question. The same structure in English describes a set of instructions.
Advanced Dunglish 