“I had a phone conversation with ten dentists” in English is a conference call, but in Dutch it would usually mean ten separate calls, one with each.
Tag Archives: dunglish
By starting sentences like this…
… you are forced into a clumsy structure. Avoiding it lets you make the syntax snappier.
People persons
The plural of person is ‘people’, except in legalese and occasional old-fashioned texts.
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.
Computer-generated Dunglish
The most striking point is that computerized NL-EN translation makes the same mistakes as Dutch people when they write English.
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.
Advanced Dunglish 