There are a few small words that bespeckle native English yet are rarely used by non-natives. A very useful one is “keep”.
Tag Archives: engels
An Officer and a Gentleman
Nothing tricky about this one. A role or profession in the singular requires an article: “he is a teacher” or “she is the CFO”.
Power, force and strength
Three concepts with distinct, interrelated meanings in physics. And lines that are blurred in everyday usage in differing ways in the different languages. Tricky.
Zero Dark Thirty
There are all kinds of ways of expressing times and writing them down, but the commonest formats in English aren’t the same as the usual Dutch ones.
Alphas and betas
An “alpha” or “beta” person in Dutch refers to how scientifically-minded they are. In English, it is at best reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.
Trajectories are for ballistics
The curve taken under gravity by a thrown object, or a metaphorical upward progression such as a career. Not a generic synonym for a route or pathway.
Writing in “the English language”
Speaking “the English language”. Mastery of “the English language”. Um… what’s wrong with just saying “English”?
Ellipsis and so forth…
Using three dots – an ellipsis – to mean “et cetera” isn’t normal English punctuation.
Eventually
Most Dutch writers are aware that “eventual” means “uiteindelijk”: in the end. But they’re still often unsure how to deal with the faux-ami “eventueel”.
Hanging prepositions
When two different prepositions are needed in a list of actions, it can read better if you repeat the noun (or use “it” or “them” as a placeholder).
Advanced Dunglish 