Test your English with these quizzes.

Once every two weeks I create a quiz for my newsletter. On this page, I collect all of them. Have a go, if you dare.

Quiz 9

(Originally published 7 June 2023)

Some typical Dutch mistakes. What is wrong with these sentences?

My mother and her sister are a twin.

I have a great live.

The organisation did a research.

This is thé guide for dining in Amsterdam.

My little man is doing something in the below picture that he shouldn’t be doing in Dutch, or in English. What is the idiom in Dutch? And in English?

Answers

My mother and her sister are a twin.

Should be: My mother and her sister are twins.

The word “twin” in English refers to one person who is part of a set of twins. So your mother is a twin, and her sister is her twin. Together, they are twins.

I have a great live.

Should be: I have a great life.

Many Dutch speakers don’t hear the difference between “life” and “live”, but to native speakers this difference is quite clear. This means that mixing up “live” and “life” is more confusing for native speakers than Dutch people think.

When a show is broadcast at the same time as it is being recorded, it is live.

When you are born, grow up, and die, that is your life.

(The verb “to live” is also spelled with a v, but it has a different vowel sound, so it is not the word that people get confused about.)

The organisation did a research.

Should be: The organisation did some research. Or: The organisation did a study.

The word “research” is uncountable in English, like “love”, “water” and “information”. You can do some research. You can do research. But you can’t do *a research*.

You guys have it better than Germans. Germans have the same problem with “research”, but they also have that problem with “information”. In German, Informationen are countable. A common mistake for Germans speaking English is *can you give me an information?* Sounds weird, right? Well, that’s how you sound when you say *the organisation did a research*.

It’s not that people won’t understand what you mean. It just sounds odd.

This is thé guide for dining in Amsterdam.

Should be: This is the ultimate guide for dining in Amsterdam

Two issues here. Firstly, you cannot put stress (= klemtoon) on a word in English by using an accent like that. Stress is signalled with italics. So if you really wanted to, you could write:

This is the guide for dining in Amsterdam.

However, English speakers just don’t really do this. Though the above sentence is technically correct, an English speaker would struggle with it. Instead, we add an extra word in English, usually “the best”, “the ultimate” or “the leading”.

Idiom in picture

Een gegeven paard niet in de bek kijken.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Quiz 8

(Originally published 24 May 2023)

Fun with prepositions! What does the Dutch speaker mean, and what does the English speaker understand?

I’ve been looking after my keys everywhere.

I brushed my teeth, got dressed up, and went to work. Like every day.

We should start without Karin, she is always too late.

I don’t have time to play with you right now, Jonah. Go play with yourself.

This idiom is the same in English and in Dutch. What is it in Dutch? And in English?

Quiz 8 answers

I’ve been looking after my keys everywhere.

What the Dutch speaker wanted to say was “I’ve been looking for my keys everywhere”. (Ik heb overal naar mijn sleutels lopen zoeken.)

“I’ve been looking after my keys everywhere” means “Ik heb overal voor mijn sleutels lopen zorgen”.

I think the reason Dutch speakers do this is that they know they need some kind of preposition after “look”, and zoeken naar sounds much more likely than zoeken voor, so they choose “after” instead of “for”. That’s my guess, anyway.

“To look” is a terribly tricky verb when it comes to prepositions like this, here’s a short list:

to look for = zoeken

to look after = zorgen voor

to look up = opzoeken of omhoog kijken

to look down on = neerkijken op

to look around = rondkijken

to look forward to = ernaar uitkijken

to look into = nagaan/ onderzoeken

to look out = oppassen

I brushed my teeth, got dressed up, and went to work. Like every day.

What the Dutch speaker meant to say was “I brushed my teeth, got dressed, and went to work. Like every day.”

“I brushed my teeth, got dressed up, and went to work. Like every day.” means “ik poetste mijn tanden, trok mijn smoking/ baljurk/ kostuum aan, en ging naar mijn werk. Zoals iedere dag.”

“To get dressed up” means either putting on really nice clothes for a party, or it means putting a costume on, like a Halloween costume.

Because the Dutch word for getting dressed is aankleden, Dutch speakers feel they need to add a preposition to translate the “aan”.

We should start without Karin, she is always too late.

What the speaker should have said is “We should start without Karin, she is always late.”

If you are “too late”, to an English speaker this means you miss the event. You arrive when it is already over. Karin will be missing the meeting completely.

To be fair, I think an English speaker would understand the sentence correctly in this context, especially when Karin comes in, hot and sweaty, ten minutes later. But it is a good thing to keep in mind!

I don’t have time to play with you right now, Jonah. Go play with yourself.

What the speaker should have said is “I don’t have time to play with you right now, Jonah. Go play by yourself.” (Ik heb nu geen tijd om met je te spelen, Jonah. Ga maar in je eentje spelen.)

Dear reader, if you are going to learn only one thing from this quiz, learn this: “Go play with yourself,” means “Ga maar masturberen.”

Oi, Heddwen, some of those aren’t prepositions

“Too” is an adverb. But it feels kind of prepositionny, right? I just really wanted to have that sentence in the mix. Mea culpa.

Verbs like “look for”, “look into”, “look after”, that change their meaning depending on the preposition, are called phrasal verbs (or prepositional verbs, more here). Some grammar experts feel that the preposition is not a preposition in this case, but an adverb or a particle. Just so you know.

Pictured idiom

The idiom is of course “een wolf in schaapskleren” which is unbelievably similar in English: “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

Quiz 7

(Originally published 10 May 2023)

How can you rewrite the sentences below in correct English?

I live in The Netherlands, how about you?

The students closed their book.

The idiom depicted here is the same in English and Dutch. What’s the idiom in Dutch? And what is it in English?

Quiz 7 answers

Correct: My name is Anja, and I am your contact person.

I’m just leaving this here for people who received my newsletter via email and are confused: the email version of my newsletter had a bit about “contact person” not being correct English. However, I have since learned that “contact person” is fine in American English, and is making its way across the pond to the UK as well.

Yay for Americans making English easier for Dutch people!

Incorrect: I live in The Netherlands, how about you?

Correct: I live in the Netherlands, how about you? (No capital T for “the”)

The “the” in “the Netherlands” does not get capitalised in English. Neither does the “the” in country names like “the United States” or “the Republic of China”.

When “the Netherlands” is at the beginning of a sentence, or is used on its own as a heading or title, the “the” is capitalised. If you were thinking that you see a capital t quite regularly, that’s the reason.

The only two countries that get a capital T in their “the” are The Gambia and The Maldives, but even in these cases not everyone agrees.

Important note: “The Hague” does have a capital “T”!

Incorrect: The students closed their book.

Correct: The students closed their books.

In Dutch you can say “de leerlingen deden hun boek dicht”. However, if you say “the students closed their book” in English, it sounds as if all the students have only one book to share, and they are all huddled around it and closing it together.

Idiom in picture: as quiet as a mouse

Zo stil als een muis is the same in English, but don’t say *as silent as a mouse*. Though people would probably understand you, it is not how the idiom goes, and just sounds a bit off. More translations for “ zo stil als een muis” here.

(In the picture, the little man is holding his finger up to his mouth and saying “sssh” to the mouse. I made this unclear on purpose, of course, to make the quiz more interesting. It has nothing at all to do with, you know, the fact that I can’t actually draw…)

Quiz 6

(Originally published 26 April 2023)

Can you spot the mistake in the sentence below?

You will loose all your money if you invest in that company.

What does the Dutch person mean, and what does the English speaker hear?

If you’re really motivated for that particular study, you should give it a go.

I can’t hear the music from the box.

A Dutch city-scape on a plate, credit to Fabian Berg. What does the English idiom “to have a lot on your plate” mean?

You will loose all your money if you invest in that company.

Should be: You will lose all your money if you invest in that company.

“Loose” is the spelling for “los”

My button is loose – mijn knoop zit los

“Lose” is the spelling for “verliezen”

I always lose – ik verlies altijd

People make this mistake all the time, including native speakers.

There are two reasons (I think).

The first has to do with final devoicing: Dutch people don’t hear the difference when they are reading what they are writing in their heads. For me, as a native speaker, “lose” sounds like “loo-zzz” and “loose” sounds like “loo-sss”. For Dutch speakers, both words sound like “loo-sss”, and the spelling becomes a bit of a coin toss (= muntje opwerpen, dus 50% kans).

However, native speakers make this spelling mistake too. Their problem is not the ending of the word, but the middle. Most English words that end in “ose” have a different o-sound: prose, expose, those, close. To spell the word “lose”, it makes much more sense to have a double o, like “moon” or “brood”.

I think it is very likely that Dutch people also make the spelling mistake because they see “loose” to mean “lose” on the internet all. the. time.

If you’re really motivated for that particular study, you should give it a go.

The Dutch person means “studie”, but should have said “If you’re really motivated for that particular degree programme, you should give it a go.”

The English speaker hears “Als je echt gemotiveerd bent voor dat specifieke onderzoek, dan moet je proberen participant te worden.” More here.

I can’t hear the music from the box.

The Dutch person means “I can’t hear the music from the speaker”

The English speaker hears “Ik kan de muziek uit die doos niet horen”. More here.

What does the English idiom “to have a lot on your plate” mean?

I can’t come to that meeting, I have too much on my plate right now.

= teveel (stressvol) werk te doen

Sorry, I’m late again, I have a lot on my plate right now

= veel werk, veel stress, veel aan mijn hoofd

I’m sorry I’m being such a bad listener, I just have a lot on my plate right now.

= veel zorgen, veel aan mijn hoofd

Quiz 5

(Originally published 12 April 2023)

This little speech has 6 problems. What is the Dutch speaker trying to say, and what should they have said?

“I remember my basic school days fondly. I was a little brutal sometimes, never working at my bureau. I sometimes even threw my gum at other children. But I loved the music lessons, playing the flute. I was very brave during those lessons.”

The idiom depicted here is the same in English and Dutch. What’s the idiom?

Answers quiz 4

She’s a photograph

Should be: She’s a photographer

I did my second interview on Monday (I haven’t had time to write the article yet, mea culpa!). My interviewee and I agreed that there were some mistakes Dutch people make that will make even the politest native speakers snigger (= gniffelen). A little later, I came up with a great example: mixing up “fotograaf” and “photograph”. Makes me smile every time. More here.

She takes photo’s

Should be: She takes photos

Perhaps the commonest mistake in the written English of Dutch people. And it is one that can be fixed by memorising one simple rule: there is never an apostrophe in an English plural (with one insignificant exception)

You’ll see this one in my quiz more often. It is a ubiquitous (= alomtegenwoordig) mistake, which is made by many native speakers, too.

I found her contact details on the Internet (capital i)

Should be: I found her contact details on the internet (lower case i) (even better: I found her contact details online)

For many years, Microsoft Word and other text-editing programs would tell you that the word “internet” should be written with a capital letter. It no longer does so (not in my 2019 version, anyway, I just checked), and with good reason. Most English publications stopped capitalising the word “internet” many years ago, and since November 2022, even the reasonably conservative Garner’s Modern English Usage has conceded that the i should be lower case:

The customer is king

When I first heard “the customer is king” I thought it was an incorrect translation of “de klant is koning”. Far too literal. The idiom as I had always used it was “the customer is always right”.

But having looked into a database of English texts from newspapers and other online publications, it seems that “the customer is king” is truly a much-used and well-understood phrase in English. It is more common in American English than in British English, which might be why I hadn’t heard it before.

I have not been able to find where it came from (only conjecture (= giswerk) without sources), my own guess is that it came to America with German immigrants translating their phrase “der Kunde ist König”.

Answers quiz 3

Question 1

It’s a Monday, the first of the month, and you get an invitation for a party “next weekend”. Is the party going to be in the weekend directly after the week you are in, the 6th and 7th of the month, or a week later, the 13th and 14th of the month?

If your answer is “no idea”: congratulations! That’s the right answer.

In general, older Britons would call the 6th and the 7th “next weekend” whereas younger Britons would call that one “this weekend”. The younger generation would call the 13th and 14th “next weekend”, with older people calling that one “the weekend after next”. But there are plenty of older and younger people who do it the other way around, and the study that I got this data from (carried out in 2021) was only run in the UK.

I don’t have numbers, but from my experience, usage is also mixed in other English-speaking countries.

So what can you do? One simple rule: always note the date.

Read more here

Question 2

How would a native speaker interpret these sentences?

Eventually, I will go home.

Te zijner tijd ga ik weer naar huis. Read more here.

His death was dramatic.

Zijn dood was theatraal. Read more here.

He’s a fanatical cyclist.

Hij is een fanatisch fietser. (Beetje doorgedraaid, dus). Read more here.

Question 3

The idiom depicted here is the same in English and Dutch. What’s the idiom?

De baby met het badwater weggooien. To throw out the baby with the bathwater. Read more here.

Answers quiz 2

The thing I find strange is that he never told me.

No comma!

There are two comma rules, one for Dutch, and one for English, that lead to opposite results.

The Dutch rule is always add a comma between two finite verbs (=persoonsvormen). This means the translation of the sentence above becomes

Wat ik raar vind, is dat hij het me nooit verteld heeft.

Note the comma. It has to be there, and its obligatory presence has been drilled into Dutch speakers at school.

English has a different word order: two finite verbs can never follow one another, meaning they have no use for the above rule.

Instead, English has a different rule that just happens to lead to the opposite result in this kind of sentence. This rule states: never separate a subject from its finite verb (persoonsvorm) with a comma. In the sentence above, “the thing I find strange” is the subject that belongs to the finite verb “is”, meaning these cannot be separated by a comma.

Because Dutch people have the Dutch sentence and rule in mind, they often put a comma between the subject and its finite verb. To many English speakers, including me, this is quite a glaring mistake, because just like the above rule was drilled into Dutch speakers’ brains at school, our comma rule was drilled into us. Unfortunate!

More information on commas here.

Our kitchen isn’t open yet, but you can order bar snacks.

You cannot translate the Dutch word “kleine kaart” with “small menu”. For an English speaker, a “small menu” is a menu that is literally small. Click here for some pictures that I took after being frustrated one too many times by the English versions of Dutch restaurant websites.

Perhaps you were in doubt about the kitchen being open in English. This is one of those phrases that is the same in Dutch and in English. Just like in Dutch, in English an “open kitchen” can be a kitchen in a house that is part of the living room, but it can also refer to the opening hours of a restaurant’s kitchen.

I’m feeling fit, because I’ve been working out on my exercise bike.

Hometrainer is one of those Dutch words that sounds English but isn’t. More info here.

You’ll get your warm round of applause, it’s just a question of time!

This sentence may have sounded too Dutch, but there was only one slight problem: we say “a round of applause” rather than just *an applause*. It is no problem for a round of applause to be warm in English, and “a question of time” is also correct English, despite some journalists thinking it is not.

Answers quiz 1

Please join our writers’ room next week.

A writer’s room would be a room for just one writer. Because there will be more than one writer, the word you need is “writers”, not “writer”. To put “writers” in the possessive form, you add an apostrophe: “writers’ room”. Read more here.

My cat is very playful.

The word “full” (=vol) is spelled with two l’s in English. Any other word ending with “ful”, like “wonderful”, “successful” or “playful” only gets one l. Read more here.

I’ve put our appointment in my calendar.

“Agenda” is a false friend. In British English, the word “agenda” only refers to the talking points set before a meeting. (American English does sometimes use “agenda” to mean appointment book, which is why I used the word “holiday” instead of “vacation”.)

The little book called an “agenda” in Dutch is referred to as an appointment book, a planner, or (British, and slightly outdated by now) a diary. “Calendar” is the safest option, because everybody will understand it, and because the electronic appointment planners you most likely use at work are called “calendars”. Read more here.

The girl, wearing her favorite gray face mask, scowled at me.

I put this one in for the advanced English speakers among you. Even many native speakers would not notice the problem here, unless they are speakers of American English.

This sentence is in American English, you can tell by the spelling of “favorite” (UK English: “favourite”) and “gray” (UK English “grey”, though this difference is less strict).

In American English, the word “frown” refers to the mouth, not the eyebrows (hence “turn that frown upside down!”). If someone is wearing a face mask, you would not be able to see them frown. When talking about the eyebrows, an American says “scowl” or “furrow the brow”. Read more here.

Extra points

Extra points to you if you were bothered by the British word “holiday” in one sentence and the American “favorite” in the next!

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