Peter's Blog

Despite (or rather because of) being very good English speakers, I’ve noticed many Dutch people making the following mistakes:

price versus prize: While both things are represented by the word prijs in Dutch, they have separate words in English. You win a prize while the cost of something is its price. I’ve seen this mistake a lot.

‘s for the plural form of a word ending in a vowel: You and your friend would eat burritos, not burrito’s. Generally ‘s is used to indicate possession and the existence of multiple of thing is indicated by s or es at the end of the word. If the single form of a word ends in y — which, depending on who you ask, is or isn’t a vowel — its plural form ends in ies. So, libraries, not library’s. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, though: I’ve noticed that some English speakers like to use ‘s for the plural form of proper names, particularly capitalized acronyms. For example: There are many little CIA’s around the world. That being said, I prefer CIAs.

its versus it’s: Perhaps not fair to list here, as native English speakers also often make this mistake, but its refers the possession of something refereed to by the pronoun it (such as his for he and hers for she). it’s is a contraction of it is. So, despite ‘s normally being used to indicate possession, sometimes it isn’t and instead indicates a contraction. Yes, it’s confusing. Theirs and there’s work the same way.

musea: Despite Dutch and English sharing the same same singular form, museum, its plural in English is museums. Given the word’s etymology the Dutch form is probably more ‘correct’ (i.e. traditional), but there you go. Once or twice I’ve also seen collega’s instead of colleagues, perhaps for similar reasons but most likely simply because the authors weren’t aware of the proper English word.

Can you think of any others? I’ll try to update this as I find them.

Update, 2010-07-20:

advise: You can advise someone or give them advice. Notice one’s a verb and the other’s a noun.

Update, 2010-08-25:

technic: Ok, it is technically a word but I never see a native speaker using it. Use technology or technique instead, depending on the desired sense.