For example, English speakers commonly mix up your/you’re or there/their/they’re. I’m curious about similar mistakes in other languages.
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.
I’m Spanish, n and ñ are different letters. They are not substitutes. It is the difference between someone being 5 years old and someone having 5 anuses.
“Yo tengo 5 años / yo tengo 5 anos”
Looking at you, Will Shortz
I am guilty of doing that but only because my computer keyboard doesn’t have an ñ.
or configure your keyboard as English international, dead tildes. You can use ~ with an n to produce an ñ. At least in gnu/Linux that’s easy to do
At least in gnu/Linux
I only use Linux. Because Stallman doesn’t need to ride coattails to be a somebody.
For people on Linux, hit [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[u] then type [0] [0] [f] [1]. That will enter an ñ when you hit the next key.
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.
On windows, hold ‘alt’ and then type the numbers 1 6 4 for lower case and 1 6 5 for upper case ñ.
That’s their places in the ASCII table, you can do that with any special characters, look up their place in the ASCII table, press alt and the respecting number, release alt and voila.
Be happy that it doesn’t: brazilian keyboards added an extra key for “ç” right in the middle of the keyboard and it’s pretty useful, until the day you have to use any other keyboard and realize that if you configure it to use the brazilian layout, you’re not losing the “ç”, you lose the comma, or question mark, or exclamation mark or something much more annoying to be left without.
Now you either learn to type again with another keyboard layout, or spend the rest of your life using only cheap keyboards made in brazil that have the “right amount” of keys.
In Spanish, we have these words:
hay (there is) ahí (over there) ay (ouch)
And it’s infuriating when people can’t pick the right one in writing.
Portuguese also shows something similar, but the words being confused are different: há (there is) vs. a (the) vs. à (to the).
The one that @flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz mentioned is practically identical though - haver (there be, have) vs. a ver (to see).
Less. It’s used eveywhere, although should only be used with uncountable nouns.
Less drama is prefered.
Fewer items left on the shopping list.
There’s a certain level of irony in correcting people’s language while not reading the original question properly yourself.
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.
Maybe syntactically, but I feel like reading it that way is probably a violation of pragmatics. In other words, it’s highly unlikely that’s in the spirit of the question.
This is made even clearer if you read the text of OP, which specifies “other” (non-English) languages.
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 least is not equal to the 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 grammar in the sentence talking about grammar and spelling :D
I’m actually with you - building out our plural system would be a satisfying direction for English to go. Unfortunately, I don’t see “at fewest” catching on. Maybe I’ll try it out a few.
If you look at non-standard dialects of English, it seems like the most natural thing is for the aspect system to grow out as the language evolves further (and unfortunately lose some of it’s symmetries).
In German people tend to increase “only” (das einzige). As in, they say something is the “onliest” (das einzigste). It’s usually a good indicator of someone’s education.
In many regions it is common to do comparisons with “as” (wie). As in “My dog is bigger as yours” instead of “My dog is bigger than yours”. The most infuriating thing about this is that most people doing that mistake don’t even acknowledge that it is one. At least people who say “onliest” can be convinced that it is wrong.
Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive. Like in “Anna’s food is good”. In German that should be written as “Annas Essen ist gut”. But due to many people making the same mistake (I guess also because we’re used to it from English sentences) it has been allowed to use an apostrophe. So in that case I’m just a grumpy old guy.
In Dutch it’s also common to use als (as) instead of dan (than). Technically it’s wrong though.
This gets really confusing if you’re from Limburg. In Limburgish, “daan” (the cognate to Dutch “dan”) only exists as the time indicator. With comparisons the correct Limburgish is to use “es” for differences (e.g. “Jan is groeter es Maria”, “John is bigger than Mary”), and “wie” for equivalents (e.g “Jan is eve aajd wie Maria”, “John is as old as Mary”). Now “es” is cognate to Dutch “als”, but using it in Dutch as in Limburgish is wrong. So yeah this gets confusing.
In many regions it is common to do comparisons with “as” (wie). As in “My dog is bigger as yours” instead of “My dog is bigger than yours”.
I’m (re-)learning Yiddish at the moment, and “as (wie)” is a common construction; it’s interesting to see which words and sentence formats are common (between German and Yiddish), and which aren’t. I wonder if that’s where this usage comes from.
Nice, very interesting find.
Also, I’ve never been called a Grammar Nazi more elegantly.
There are many examples of incorrectly placed apostrophes in German here:
http://www.deppenapostroph.info/
Another mistake in the German language is the incorrect separation of compound words. An extreme example would be Brotaufstrich (spread/parfait) as Brot auf Strich (bread on line).
Additional examples in German are here:
http://www.deppenleerzeichen.info/
In Dutch, the only (one) is “de enige”. People often use “de enigste”, which actually means the cutest. Enig -> enigste.
“Ik ben als enigste over” “Ja, schattig ben je zeker”
"“Ich bin der Einzigste, der noch übrig ist” “Ja, du bist wirklich süß”
“I’m the only one left.” “Yeah, cute you sure are”
Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive.
Even technically I’d consider it an error - the genitive/“possessive” apostrophe in English highlights that you’re dealing with a clitic, attached to the end of the noun phrase; e.g. the dog**'s** food` → the dog and the cat**'s** food. In German however it doesn’t behave like a clitic, it’s a plain declension; e.g. das Futter des Hundes → das Futter des Hundes und der Katze - you’re switching words, not moving them.
I wonder if that’s because most people nowadays use von+Dative instead.
Not a native speaker, so I could be wrong about this:
I’ve seen a construction using proper nouns (eg. Annas Haus) where an “s” indicates possession, but no apostrophe. This doesn’t seem to apply to non-proper nouns (das Haus der Frau) and is different from normal genitive construction that adds an “s” to masc/neut noun genders (das Haus des Mannes)
