The word “and” creates a plural in English – in this example, you’re talking about more than one century, after all.
Category Archives: Advanced
Coronaspecial
Coronatijd, coronamaatregelen, coronacrisis, coronawerk… Dutch has adopted “corona” as a new prefix, but English hasn’t. Well, not yet. Not really.
Historic present
Using present-tense verbs to refer to past events can be a literary device for drawing the reader in and adding impact. But avoid it in minutes and reports in English.
What’s in a name?
Some historical, biblical and fictional figures etc. are referred to by anglicized names. Not surprising: the same happens in Dutch – Lodewijk XIV, Karel de Grote, Winnie de Poeh, Zweinstein…
The field of…
Major contributions in the field of microbiology… Great commitment to the field of science… When the word count for your paper’s abstract is limited, it can be annoying to discover it’s gone up by 5% in the English.
Checking the controls
Controls are mechanisms or procedures for making machines or processes behave as you want, i.e. controlling them, not checking them.
Over-gendering
Modern English is increasingly gender-neutral. Efforts to render forms of address such as “mw. mr.” too literally come out as confusing or plain laughable. Professions and roles in which the person’s gender is irrelevant don’t need to be gendered.
Species names
A goldfinch isn’t a goudvink. A coal tit isn’t a koolmees. Your pond is unlikely to be visited by a ring snake or a salamander.
One doesn’t
One no longer uses the indefinite third person singular, as the grammarians like to call it. Unless one is called Prince Charles.
It ain’t necessarily so
It’s an everyday word in Dutch that’s in every toddler’s vocabulary: nodig. The nearest single equivalent in English (necessary) isn’t.
Advanced Dunglish 