Berneddi M.Ed. Engl.
Trade negotiations. Can you see & correct two errors made by China's gov. news agency...? [Business English]

Sometimes, even when the language we have composed is appropriately complex or sophisticated, we sometimes forget the most basic grammar rules.

 

If you are an interested learner in the field of Business English, look at the following two English extracts about recent natural gas negotiations between Chinese and Indonesian parties, written by the Chinese government's Xinhua news agency (you can find this article by searching for "hike of gas from Tangguh" with the phrase in quotation marks):

 

"<em>The Indonesian renegotiation team has made agreement with buyer in Fujian, China...</em>"

 

"<em>...the gas price at that time was at 3.3 U.S. dollars per mmbtu... Starting from July 1, we have agreed the price is 0.065 multiplied by JCC, and then plus 1.5 U. S. dollar per mmbtu,</em>"

 

I can see a simple grammar error in each extract. It is easy for English learners to overlook these small errors; however, it may be obvious to a native speaker that this article is written or edited by a non-native speaker.

 

Which small grammar error can you see and explain?

 

Oct 15, 2014 11:47 AM
Comments · 4

<em>(... continued)</em>

 

The other problem also concerns the English grammar of singular and plural.

 

Most of you would know that English grammar indicates that we should say: "1 dollar", "2 dollars" etc.

 

However you might not have known that decimals below 2 and even below 1 are used with the noun in plural form: <em>"1.17 dollars, 0.0028 grams, one and a half seconds etc."</em> - the singular noun is not used here except for exactly 1 dollar, 1 gram and one day. (But note that fractions below 1 are different in that we would not use the plural noun, and instead say <em>"half a second, seven tenths of a second etc."</em> as compared to <em>"0.5 seconds" and "0.7 seconds"</em>)

 

Thus the news report should have used the plural <em>"1.5 U. S. dollars per mmbtu"</em>.

 

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The frequency of small errors is often what differentiates the writer of "bad English" from a writer of "good English".

October 22, 2014

Well, it's been quite a few days since I first posted this topic, so I thought I'd better give the answers now.

 

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The first error is a very common student error and can be avoided if you follow one of my rules:

 

"If you use a SINGULAR COUNTABLE noun, then you MUST have an ARTICLE ("a"/"the") for that noun - otherwise don't make that noun singular and change it to PLURAL."

 

The word "buyer" in the original example, is countable and used in the singular here, but it is missing an article, so we need to correct the error.

 

One grammatically correct way would be to change the singular noun to plural: <em>"The Indonesian renegotiation team has made agreement with buyers in Fujian, China..."</em>

 

However, the news story more likely meant to say: <em>"The Indonesian renegotiation team has made agreement with a buyer in Fujian, China...".</em>

 

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<em>(continued...)</em>

 

October 22, 2014

Good point KNIGHT!

 

Well, "an agreement" is a third possible error. I was aware of this possibility, but I didn't originally count it as a clear error. The reason is because "agreement" (as are quite a number of "-ment" nouns) can sometimes be used as an uncountable noun. (Nouns which can be both countable as well as uncountable are the trickiest!)

 

As for "agreed", I don't think that is an error. I think that all the following examples are fine:

- "We agree the price is $20 from today."

- "We agree that the price is $20 from today."

- "We agree for the price to be set at $20 from today."

 

There are still two basic errors - one in each extract - yet to be mentioned.

 

October 15, 2014

...made an agreement....

 

I am not so sure about the second extract but I will try:

.. Starting from July 1, we have agreed for the gas price to be 0.065 multiplied by JCC,....

October 15, 2014