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
[](from 낫다) be/become better - 낳아
[](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!
(C) 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.
- 나아
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.
Confusing between
hay‐ayis at least understandable (forgetting the letter). Confusing betweenhay-ahíis what makes my blood boil.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).
I think this is common to most languages: English speakers lecturing native speakers about how they're grammatically incorrect based on some rule printed in an entry-level language textbook.
I once saw a white dude confidently assert to a Japanese person that 全然 could not be used in the positive and only in the negative. Dude wouldn't even back down after the Japanese speaker got out their phone and showed him a famous 12th century (or something) poem that used 全然 in the affirmative. That's like trying to correct someone's grammar and then getting shut down by Shakespeare.
Due to Linguistics I spend more time trying to analyse the feature than judging it.
That said, two things that grind my gears, when it comes to Portuguese:
- Usage of the gerund for the future tense; e.g. *estaremos enviando (roughly, "we will send") instead of "vamos enviar" or "enviaremos". My issue here is not grammatical, but that this construction usually marks lack of commitment.
- "Cuspido e escarrado" (spat and coughed up) to highlight the striking resemblance between two things or people. When the saying is supposed to be "esculpido em Carrara" (sculpted in Carrara).
Wait, the resemblance thing is also used in other languages: "spitting image" in English, for example, and "copia sputata" in Italian. I'm actually wondering for the first time where it comes from, so maybe there's a reason for the Portuguese saying to be related to spit
I think that there is some semantic association between spitting and copying, that all three languages are using. (I wonder how modern it is; photocopy machines spitting copies come to my mind.)
However in Portuguese it might be also because most people don't know the reference of the original saying (the marble sculptures of that Tuscan city), so they parse it as a phonetically similar saying. And in quick speech they do sound similar, e.g. for me:
- esculpido em Carrara - [(e)skʊ(w).'pi.dẽ.kɐ̥.'hä.ɾɐ]
- [cópia] cuspida e escarrada - [kʊs.'pi.des.kɐ̥.'hä.dɐ]
From a quick search that didn't provide anything really insightful, it seems that at least in Italian the term has been used since the XIV century, so it's not photocopy related
Yeah, if copia sputata is so old there's no way that it's from those machines.
Digging further on the expression it seems to be old in English too, attested in 1689. And the only explanation that I've seen to account to Italian and English both having it is religious in nature - while not biblical it seems common the idea that God spat into the clay to create Adam.
Speaking on Italian: people (often native speakers) messing with the apostrophe bug me a bit, it's a good example for this thread. Specially un' followed by a masculine word; e.g. *un'altro for un altro. It tilts the autocompletion inside my brain, expecting a word and getting another in place. I'm not native speaker though so this likely plays a role.
Oh trust me, it happens a lot even between native speakers, and it irks me too haha
Good points overall! I'd add that in my opinion "estaremos enviando" is closer to "we will be sending", which also better conveys the odd, misplaced telemarketer politeness vibes it carries.
we will be sending
This. I was struggling to convey the aspect, but you got it right IMO. And, pragmatically, it's more like "we might be sending", with that might highlighting that it probably won't.
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.
In Swedish people often confuse de/dem(they/them kind of) and I honestly don't know exactly when to differentiate. You often learn to replace the word with another like vi/oss(we/us) to see if the sentence still sounds good and then you know the form you should use
And even worse, using personal pronouns exclusively in subject form, e.g. "till han" ("to he") instead of in object form where suitable, e.g. "till honom" ("to him").
I'm Italian and I can't stand people using "piuttosto che" (which means "rather than") with the meaning of "or".
Correct:
Piuttosto che fare un errore, stai zitto.
Rather than making a mistake, keep quiet.
Wrong:
Posso mangiare dell'insalata piuttosto che dei pomodori.
I can eat a salad ["rather than" with the meaning of "or"] tomatoes.
Doesn't drive me crazy, but in Polish some people don't know when to use "u" or "ó", "sz" or "rz", etc. Ex. "usemka" and "pszejście" instead of "ósemka" and "przejście".
In Portuguese, verbs have a ton of variations. They are written in a different way if you're talking about yourself, or the listener, or a third party, then additional differences for the plural of those variations. Plus several other things.
And people often write very poorly, using i instead of e is pretty common. Skipping question marks too. Sometimes you'll get a text from someone saying just "consegui" (meaning "I've managed to do it") when the person actually wanted to say "consegue?" ("can you do it?")
In Spanish to English translation with Google and others, need often to be corrected manually.
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)
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.
"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.
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?
