For example, English speakers commonly mix up your/you’re or there/their/they’re. I’m curious about similar mistakes in other languages.
I’m a native French speaker, specifically from the Acadian parts of the province of New-Brunswick (Canada). We have a lot of vocabulary, grammar and syntax that people who speak a more standard French might frown upon (lots of borrowing from English but also a lot of old French words which disappeared in Europe but not here, as well as some Indigenous influences). Fuck anyone who judges our dialect and accents, I love the way we speak.
That being said, there are a few things that bother me:
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The pleonasm “plus pire” (most worst, or most most bad). There are a few common pleonasm but this one is the only one that truly irks me for some reason.
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“Si que” (if that) because of something that was drilled into me by my dad, “les si n’aiment pas les que” (“the ifs don’t like the thats”). Using “si que” is like saying “if that I say this” rather than “if I say this”.
The more I think about it the more I guess my stance on this is that deviating from standard French is fine and even cool when it adds meaning or nuance. I just dislike it when it’s purely redundant.
In France there are some mistakes that became social markers.
People following conspiracy theories are mostly bad educated people, and they wrongly conjugate some verbs.
The most common examples are:
- “Nous sachons”, instead of “Nous savons” (we know)
- “Ils croivent” instead of “Ils croient” (they think, they believe)
- “Comme même” instead of “Quand même” (nonetheless, despite, kinda hard to translate)
Making one of those mistakes will immediately tag you as a fool.
Like Saigonauticon, I’ve never heard any of these!
In my neck of the woods you’ll find people adding a first person plural ending to third person plural verbs (ex: “elles mangeons” instead of “elles mangent”) which is common enough to not bother me or strike me as a sign of stupidity, and at least differenciates between the singular and plural forms of a verb.
One thing I didn’t mention in my original comment that does bother me is something kinda similar some people do with the verb “être”, like a teacher I had in high school. Instead of “ils étaient”, she’d say “ils sontaient”, simply adding the typical imparfait conjugation ending to the present “ils sont”.
Les cours avec elle sontaient un peu tristes, et malheureusement assez représentatifs de la qualité de mon enseignement.
Interesting, in Quebec I’ve never heard the conjugations to the left!
When we need to strategically indicate this kind of thing, we just curse excessively. Often they are strung together into a profane litany that continues on for some time! I always thought it was quite artful.
I’m not a linguist, and studies about the French in my region are few and far between, so I’m not comfortable stating anything as fact. However, as far as I can tell, it’s not context-dependant and never adds any meaning.
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In Korean we have these conjugated forms. They both sound the same:
- 나아
[na.a](from 낫다) be/become better - 낳아
[na.a](from 낳다) give birth (to a baby)
So when given A as an example:
(A) 감기에 걸렸어요. I got a cold.
(B) 빨리 나으세요! Hope you get better soon!
© 빨리 낳으세요! Hope you give birth soon!For some reason Koreans across all ages write C instead of B by mistake. It became a national joke at this point and some do it ironically on purpose. I used to teach Korean. Imagine my face every time.
There are more but I’m on my phone. Will do more later.
the laguage is evolving, don’t stop it grow
- 나아
Interesting question! Mandatory note that natural languages by definition aren’t designed, and are always evolving, so if enough native speakers do something it is correct.
Descriptivism gang 😎
In Thai folks stopped saying -ร -ล clusters outside of educated/business settings & has led to spelling errors popping up everywhere. An example: กร- is a common start to words, but the most popular dish, กะเพรา (ga-prao), is seen as กระเพรา, กระเพา, or even กะเพา.
Lithuanian here.
What mostly grinds my gears is Lithuanians taking an English word and adding a Lithuanian ending, and often even a wrong one:
breakupinosi instead of išsiskyrė, faitinosi instead of mušėsi , etc.
Some other gripes include optimaliausias i.e. most optimal. Optimal is already the best, what is the point of saying bestest?
Adding pointless phrases like ta prasme i.e. in that meaning is also common but seen as a major style error.
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could of (could’ve)
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try and (try to)
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if I was… (if I were)
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effect/affect
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less / fewer
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not adapting adjectives, like “this fits real good” (really well)
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I am a non-native speaker of Vietnamese. There are some pretty horrible mistakes you can make, honestly. I’ll go through a few of them.
In Vietnamese, non-native speakers often confuse the word for ‘mother in law’ with the word for the male genitalia.
Also the word for “large” with the word for the female genitalia. So when ordering e.g. a large meal, if in doubt, just use the word for L (“luh”) instead of lớn.
When referring to your mother-in-law, practice with your partner before the first meeting. Then, quickly ask for permission to call her “mother”, which is easier for non-native speakers to pronounce.
Finally, the word for ‘martial arts’ and ‘Vietnamese wife’ differs only by a single tone. If you make the mistakes above, you may perhaps find out why that is – usually via the medium of a flung sandal :P
native speakers cannot by definition make systematic errors. they cannot make “common mistakes”. if a thing is common, that’s the correct way to say it. so what do you mean? spelling mistakes? (spelling is a separate thing from language)
“ATM machine” is an error and hard descriptivism does not save you
lol no. why would it be an error? if that’s how people say it, that’s what it’s called.
what does the M stand for?
why do you think that matters? what actually matters is how people use language. admittedly, this also involves studying people like you who have weird ideas about language.
if you just listen to people, you’ll find that they use this phrase to talk about atm machines. that’s all that is required. it doesnt matter if you think the name for a thing was derived through a process you personally dont like. it’s still a name for a thing that is in common use and understood by people.
oh, also, do you think the “river avon” is also wrong? why or why not?
I don’t agree.
For example, in English it’s a common mistake to write “it’s” instead of “its”. Example: “The car is missing its mirror”. I’ve seen countless of times people writing, incorrectly, “the car is missing it’s mirror”.
It’s still a mistake even if native speaker do it, and it’s pretty common.
that’s a spelling mistake, which is an entirely different kettle of fish
That English natives have so much trouble distinguishing effect from affect keeps surprising me.
As for Dutch, the dt-issue is presented as if it is this hugely complicated set of rules. While in reality it is dead simple. Third person in the present time is ALWAYS conjugated as stem+t for regular verbs, except in ONE case: when the stem already ends in t. Dt isn’t special, it’s just the rule applied to all stems.
I am guilty of doing that but only because my computer keyboard doesn’t have an ñ.
At least in gnu/Linux
I only use Linux. Because Stallman doesn’t need to ride coattails to be a somebody.
How are you not using GNU stack with your Linux kernel?
For people on Linux, enable the compose key in your keyboard settings and then type [Compose] [n] [~].
The compose-key method for entering accented letters is by far the easiest to use for any desktop OS … but it’s not enabled by default because you have to give up some modifier key to use it.
It’s completely off-topic but Compose is amazing. Specially as you can actually customise it for your usage, with a .XCompose file. For me it’s the only think that makes phonetic transcription flow, otherwise you got to shift layouts back and forth to write something like “[tɾɐ̃skɾi’sɜ̃ʊ̯] ⟨transcrição⟩”.
Based solely off this comment, I just wanna say you seem like such a cool person. Anyone who has a custom file on their OS to facilitate using IPA characters is good people in my book.
Liar you just used it. Just admit you don’t like ñ’s dope haircut.
I’m not on my computer. My phone keyboard does all sorts of fun crazy things; some of them are even intentional.
In Romanian we have an “i” situation.
One kid = un copil Two kids = doi copii The kids = copiii (the article goes at the end of the noun)
To be = a fi (You) be nice = fii cuminte
It can be confusing, but the amount of people that are eating the ending "i"s is infuriating.
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There’s a certain level of irony in correcting people’s language while not reading the original question properly yourself.
yeah, fewer drama is prefered from them
There’s a certain level of irony in correcting someone for misreading the prompt when you’ve misread it yourself.
Two false assumptions you’ve made here:
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That English speakers are incapable of speaking other languages
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That the word ‘native’ can’t refer to English speakers
As an example, someone who speaks English and Spanish is qualified to answer this question. The word ‘native’ is ambiguous and can refer to either native English or Spanish speakers. This person can answer the prompt completely in English and still be correct.
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Ignoring the fact that OP was asking about non-English mistakes: the less/fewer distinction isn’t something that grew naturally. Some people writing down their opinions on grammar decided that the words indicate countable versus uncountable nouns, but that distinction wasn’t present in the language many people actually spoke. The first time someone made the distinction was in a comment about the author’s linguistical style preference rather than as a rule.
The entire thing is an invented construct taught in schools that doesn’t reflect how people use the language. Linguistic prescriptivism is ridiculous and grammar (and preferably spelling, though that ship has sailed for English) should reflect how people use the language rather than be limited by the opinions and rules of the people writing the dictionaries and text books.
I’ve never heard “I need at fewest three eggs” despite its supposed grammatical correctness. It’s been centuries and still we try to hammer the less/fewer distinction into kids, it’s time to give up and accept either already.
I see your point, but my personal view is that I like order. I don’t even care too much about specific kind of order. Chaotic-looking things can also be in-order (my favourite example is Vietnamese traffic).
I would argue
at leastis not equal tothe least. It’s a different word, despite being spelt the same. There are a few examples like that which, unfortunately, escape me at the moment.Also, don’t mean any offence, but text is difficult to relay that - I’ve literally loled at you mispelling
grammarin the sentence talking about grammar and spelling :DAt least and the least both use the same “least”. The context of their use mag be different, but if we’re sticking to strict grammar as written down by the booke, they’re both superlatives of “little”. The usage of less and least changed a bit when English dropped a bunch of grammatical cases over the years (“less of words” became “less words” because of this) but the word hasn’t changed much other than that the spelling got reformed a few hundred years ago to match pronunciation more closely.
I swear to god autocorrect is trying its bery hardest to turn grammar into grammer and I have no idea why. I’ve explicitly told it not to suggest grammer again but it keeps trying to incorrectly correct me. I blame AI.
