Every time I take the bus in Munich, I hear the number five (as in U5, the underground line I take) being pronounced incorrectly, namely as [faɪf] instead of [faɪv]. You can hear the correct pronunciation here. This common mistake among German speakers is also often made in the case of live; live is correctly pronounced as
Non-native speakers often struggle when they have to speak about powers. For example, the correct expression used for is ten to the power of three, although it is common to instead use the shorter form ten to the three. Similarly, is x to the (power of) seven. The exponents 2 and 3 (can you think
Two common mistakes are “nominator” instead of “numerator”, and “denumerator” instead of “denominator”.
In this post, I want to discuss some fascinating mistakes made even by very advanced speakers. They concern expressions which are borrowed from their native language (called Germanisms when borrowed from German), and are not used by native English speakers. The examples given below are typically absent in formal writing, but often show up in
Most high-quality science journals have editors who will proof-read your manuscript before it is printed or published online. While not all journals exclusively employ native speakers as editors, their English is typically very good. Therefore, the proofs you receive should not be regarded as an annoying hurdle on the way to another publication, but can
Since a substantial part of the material covered in this blog comes from my encounters with scientific papers and talks, I am wondering how many of you would actually like to get feedback regarding potential shortcomings regarding their English skills. I have never been a fan of public practise talks, simply because I think that
As a follow-up to my previous post on subtle but important differences in writing letters in German and English, see here, I would like to discuss letter closings. Most of you are familiar with phrases such as Best regards, Sincerely yours, Yours faithfully. In German, some common letter closings are Hochachtungsvoll, Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Liebe
I have noticed that people with a German-speaking background often mix up conventions when writing letters and emails in English. For example, in German, the text directly after the greeting is considered to be a continuation of the greeting itself. Therefore, the first word starts with a capital letter if it is a noun or
Many job adverts these days ask for excellent English skills, even if the job is in a country where English is not the official language. This requirement is often motivated by the wish of a company to act and appear truly international (the modern word is global), and of course by its business relations in
Have you also noticed that more and more German-speaking people refer to their parents as Mum and Dad when speaking German instead of, for example, Mama and Papa? This phenomenon does not seem to be restricted to those who have a strong relation to the English language, such as bilingual children or people who lived