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Annoying mistakes in your native language | ||
Tags: Native Language | Error | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Calvino Diglot Groupie Sweden sammafllod.wordpress Joined 5776 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes  2 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Spanish, German | Message 33 of 151 01 July 2009 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, that makes me think of another one! I grind my teeth when people substitute the conjunction och ("and") for the infinitive marker att, like in: Jag gillar och läsa ("I like and read") Which should really be: Jag gillar att läsa ("I like to read") Thing is (of course there's a thing) that in rapid talk both words reduce to the same short [o], but how people can misanalyze this reduced form as a conjunction, when there is absolutely nothing to conjunct, well, that sure beats me. Sure, Swedish does have a certain wealth of weird constructions using the conjunction, like Jag går och fiskar ("I'm going fishing" or, word by word, "I go and fish") But in contrast to the above case, both verbs are here finite, and correspond in tense! Edited by Calvino on 01 July 2009 at 9:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arti Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6822 days ago 130 posts - 165 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French, Czech | Message 34 of 151 01 July 2009 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
I ve never heard such usage of или and если - this is not even Russian language, but calque from English, I guess these Russians live in English environment creating Runglish or somewhat. In Russia, people make only type of mistake - put the wrong stress, and yes, it irritates me quite a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rayos Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5645 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 35 of 151 02 July 2009 at 1:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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Not my native language, but sometimes Spanish people use the word "le" (indirect object) instead of "lo" (direct object). e.g.,
"Le mató" instead of "Lo mató" I think it's accepted in Spain, but I don't know if it would be in Latin America. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 5889 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 36 of 151 02 July 2009 at 1:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh man, there are many.
First, what really pisses me off is when people don't use question marks after their sentences. It makes them sound quite retarded when I read it. A big problem in the Norwegian language these days is the splitting of words, just like my fellow Scandinavian described on page 4. Not only does it sound and look silly, but it completely changes the meaning of the word/sentence in many cases. Correct: Ananasbiter i vann (bits of pineapple in water) Incorrect: Ananas biter i vann (pineapple bites in water) Correct: Røykfritt (no smoking) Incorrect: Røyk fritt (smoke freely) Correct: Leksepult (table for studying) Incorrect: Lekse pult (f***ed homework) Also, in the Norwegian language, what seems to be very difficult for many is that a few very similar spellings are pronounced noticably different, namely skj- (plus sj-) and kj- (plus k-). A lot of people pronounce all of these as skj-/sj-. I think we have to give up on this though, I even overheard my grandmother making that mistake a few days ago. Oh well, languages evolve. ;p 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6966 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 37 of 151 02 July 2009 at 5:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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The contemporary misinterpretation of the calque "to beg the question" from Latin "petito principii" can annoy me especially considering that I studied some Latin in high school and was taught something about Latin expressions in English be they calques or direct borrowings.
The original "petito principii" was understood as something like "to request the starting point of a premise" and described a logical fallacy akin to circular reasoning. An example of "begging the question" would be saying something like "I am very tired because I am exhausted." The statement should come across as strange if not illogical or meaningless since "very tired" and "exhausted" are acting as synonyms. The statement of "I am very tired" is being proven with the phrase "because I am exhausted". Nowadays, it's common for even well-educated native speakers of English to use "it begs the question" as a synonym of "it raises the question.." or "it makes one wonder...". It seems to be driven by the unquestioned acceptance of a questionable translation and a subsequent literal understanding of this translation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 5958 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 38 of 151 02 July 2009 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm fine with contractions of this ilk actually, since they still carry some vestige of the original word. Replacing the word completely, however, is a barrier to comprehension for speakers of dialects who do not share that same pronunciation of the misspelt word. 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 39 of 151 02 July 2009 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's my point. Because the "full" word isn't part of the everyday language, a lot of people just don't know what it is, and when asked to speak in "full words" just end up expanding the contraction. The full words are dead -- nowadays, the contraction is the word. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachbund Octoglot Newbie Denmark Joined 5442 days ago 15 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German, Spanish, French, Dutch Studies: Italian, Latin, Arabic (classical), Russian | Message 40 of 151 02 July 2009 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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More pet peeves in Swedish:
The use of the subject form "han" where "honom" would be correct. "Jag såg han" - not unusual, but can drive me nuts The joking but erroneous use of plural past tense verb forms, that disappeared from the language in the 1940s. Typically misused in the singular: "Han sågo", "jag blevo" Pet peeve in Danish: The fact that so many Danes have no feel for the difference in writing between the infinitive and the present tense form, because they are homonyms in the spoken language. "Det er vigtigt at forklarer at...", and so forth In the spoken language, the incessant repetition of "hvad hedder det" ("what is it called?") as a meaningless kind of "uuuhhhhh" to fill out pauses in one's speech flow. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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