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Annoying mistakes in your native language | ||
Tags: Native Language | Error | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| jae Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5474 days ago 206 posts - 239 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Latin Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French | Message 17 of 151 01 July 2009 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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1) When people split their infinitives.
2) When people don't use the subjunctive...or use it incorrectly. 3) When people misspell words they should know, or use the wrong word...such as two, too, and to, and their, there, and they're. If people would think about it more, they would not make little mistakes like these. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5479 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 151 01 July 2009 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And the reverse is equally grating: "Goodbye from Suzie & I" My fear with this one is that the speaker is actually trying hard to apply a rule they learned to deal with your example, and mis-apply it here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 5958 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 19 of 151 01 July 2009 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Vulgar Latin inscriptions (such as the graffiti from Pompeii) tend to reveal grammatical and phonological features that were already commonplace while the Classical language was little different from the colloquial, such as elision of vowels giving "scriptumst" for scriptum est which can be identified in poetry. The current "standard" of Latin orthography was quite different from even the time of Augustus, whose inscriptions made use of -os for the 2nd declension singular nominative for words like equos. Personally, I'd view inscriptions made during the time when Proto-Romance dialects were spoken as mistakes made by foreign learners. They might certainly be of use in philological study but in the same way the larger English-speaking world doesn't use "ain't" I'd rather not model my speech on a Spaniard or a Gaul. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5821 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 20 of 151 01 July 2009 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
A) it is impossible to split the infinitive. "to" is not part of the infinitive. B) This "rule" was invented by Latin scholars in English private schools in the 18th century. The prevalence of split infinitives in areas not ruled by posh English schools (eg the USA) supports the literary record in proving it to in fact be good, proper English.
I prithee be silent on this, for I yet be not sure the subjective be still alive today.
A bad workman may blame his tools, but a bad toolmaker will always blame the workman. English as it stands is a bad tool. Edited by Cainntear on 01 July 2009 at 5:27pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| discoball Tetraglot Newbie Portugal englishscissors.word Joined 5985 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: French | Message 21 of 151 01 July 2009 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I understand that everyone makes mistakes, but there are words which simply do not work. "Por causa que" is simply wrong, it's "por causa DE" and it drives me nuts. It's mostly these small issues with how most people in my generation seem to speak, even if they are supposedly attending school. Some slang annoys me incredibly, the new spelling agreement (the UK doesn't spell stuff the American or Australian way just because of the number of speakers, so why should Portugal change their spelling to the Brazilian way?) and certain pseudo-accents. This is why hip-hop music is bad for your brain.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6082 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 22 of 151 01 July 2009 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As I understand it, the split infinitive rule arose because you cannot do it in Latin, so it was reasoned that you should not do it in English either. The fact that English and Latin have largely different grammars was ignored, because Latin grammar was taken as the model.
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 5860 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 23 of 151 01 July 2009 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"I'm doing good"....
arrrghhhhhh... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| spykel Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5637 days ago 40 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Scottish Gaelic | Message 24 of 151 01 July 2009 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My biggest pet peeve in English is when people use seen instead of saw as the preterite form of see. The nasality of
seen makes it really stand out as incorrect, but similar confusion exists with drank/drunk, sang/sung, etc. Simplified spellings, like thru and nite instead of through and night, also bother me, especially in professional documents and news articles. As for the subjunctive, I try to use it correctly, but it's such a minor and subtle part of Engish grammar that I usually cut other people some slack for ignoring/misusing/being unaware of it. (In response to a previous post, yes, it is still used extensively, but it depends a lot on the person). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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