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Common English Mistakes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4514 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 61 09 August 2012 at 7:43am | IP Logged | ||
My emphasis added. If you do not like adverbial disjuncts, that is adverbs which modify the whole sentence, I humbly recommend you do not use them. Edited by Hertz on 09 August 2012 at 7:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 42 of 61 09 August 2012 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll probably regret entering this debate (which I see is around 2 years old), but one
error relating to verbs (I'm not sure if it is technically a conjugation error) that I see increasingly among English people (to make it clear: I mean the native inhabitants of England, not Britain or the British Isles) is the misuse of the simple past and the past participle in strong or irregular verbs. Now I have to be a little careful here, because I think it is quite likely that our Celtic neighbours may have slightly different usages, and so what I consider wrong, they might not do so. I saw an example on here quite recently where I would have written it differently. This is why I am keen to stress that I am talking about the usage in the English of present-day England. By the way, we often still use the verb "to ring" meaning to telephone someone (rather than "to call"), so you will sometimes hear "he has rang" (instead of "he has rung"). It always jars in my ear, but obviously not in theirs. One could easily find other examples. It tends to be younger people who make these mistakes (as I see them), but not always. In fact, as far back as I can remember, people got confused between "hung" and "hanged". I think some people will argue that "hanged" is only used in the context of people being executed by rope on the gallows, but I'm not quite convinced about that. For example the colloquial expression "well I'll be hanged", or "I'm hanged if I'll do that". Well, maybe that's a special case, and I don't feel strongly either way. Clearly in the phrase "well-hung", "hung" is a past-participle (or a pp being used as an adjective), so probably both are valid pps. There are other examples of more than one pp being valid, according to the Concise OED. This is clearly an area where languages change and evolve, and I believe the tendency is for verbs to become more regular, so perhaps in 50 years we will say: "I ring" "I ringed" "I have ringed". FWIW, going back to a previous sub-topic, I usually write "spelled", but I think I pronounce it "spelt". On learned vs learnt, there is also the adjective "learnéd", e.g. "a learnéd man". And if someone says to me "I'm good", I wonder if he's talking about his physical condition, or whether he is making a moral judgement on himself, and if the latter, then the (unspoken) response is "hmmm, I think I'd rather be the judge of that, thank you very much...". :-) One particularly American usage (which I don't think has yet caught on over here) of "I'm good", I think I first noticed on "The Sopranos". Tony comes to see someone, sits down, and the person he's visiting says "D'you wanna Coke or sumtin?" and Tony (with a wave of the hand) replies: "I'm good" (I think we can safely say it's not a moral self-judgement in Tony's case). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 43 of 61 09 August 2012 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||
In other Germanic languages, at least in German and Norwegian, "to hang" is one of those nasty verbs that come in pairs, a transitive verb and an intransitive verb. It is weak if it is transitive and strong if it is intransitive. I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case in English some centuries back as well. Weak verb: German: Sie hängte das Bild an die Wand. Norwegian Bokmål: Hun hengte opp bildet på veggen. (She hang the picture on the wall.) Strong verb: German: Das Bild hing an der Wand. Norwegian Bokmål: Bildet hang på veggen. (The picture hang on the wall.) By the way, it is not unusual for native speakers to mix those pairs up. Edited by tractor on 09 August 2012 at 6:32pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 44 of 61 09 August 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Which of the following sentences is correct?
You are in charge here, not them. You are in charge here, not they. The first one sounds natural to me but I recently watched a period drama set in upper-class England in the early 20th century and the second sentence (or something very similar) was used. Has usage changed over the years? German does something like this, not putting pronouns into the accusative case when using the verb "to be" Ich sehe ihn - I see him Es ist er - It's him Edited by beano on 09 August 2012 at 9:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 45 of 61 10 August 2012 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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In many languages, using the regular 1st person pronoun is correct - Russian, Dutch,
German all require it. But in English it's confusing (and in French you'd use moi, not je). I think the form "them" and "him" are more common nowadays and I'd accept them as being correct. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 46 of 61 10 August 2012 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Why should the pronouns be in the accusative? "Sein" (to be) doesn't take the accusative. It's the copula verb and not a transitive verb like "sehen" (to see). There's always the nominative case after the copula (except in Slavic languages). Only English uses object pronouns as subject (maybe inspired by French disjunctive pronouns?). Edited by Josquin on 10 August 2012 at 5:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 47 of 61 10 August 2012 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | ||
It is difficult for English speakers to grasp this business of not putting pronouns into the accusative case when working with sein, because we automatically do this in our own language. We learn that "er" is he and "ihn" is him (we'll leave ihm alone for now). Er ist hier - he is here Er sieht ihn - he sees him So far, so good, but... Sie ist kleiner als er - she is smaller than him (er standing for him) Es muss er sein - it must be him Die sind gross, wie wir - they are tall, like us. This is tricky for learners because our brain screams "uns" A linguist is able to take a step back and view the overall case picture, but most people learn by example, linking to their own language as they go along. It took me years to figure out all this stuff because I didn't learn in a rigid grammatical fashion. I also had problems with den. I knew that a der word changed to den when used with another verb. Ich fahre den Zug - I'm driving the train. But this rule doesn't apply to sein. Wo ist der Zug - where is the train I got that, but until fairly recently I would say things like wann kommt den Zug? I just assumed that der Word + non-sein verb = den. Now I realise that it has to be der Zug because the train isn't being acted upon by the verb (it isn't being come, so to speak). Likewise you say wann kommt er, when is he coming, not him coming. This will be glaringly obvious to genuine linguists, but I'm not one of them. Edited by beano on 10 August 2012 at 9:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 48 of 61 11 August 2012 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, thanks for your response, beano. Sometimes I forget that things which are crystal clear to me may be hard to grasp for another person. I cannot imagine how hard the whole case business must be for someone whose native language doesn't have cases.
It's much easier for a German to learn English than for an Englishman to learn German, I guess. But we also struggle with things like "He is taller than me." A German would automatically assume it's "I" and not "me". We have to learn all those quirks, too. I think a basical knowledge of grammatical terms like "subject", "object", etc. might be useful to you, if you don't know them yet. It helps getting the "big picture" of a language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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