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Speakers of non-English languages, what common mistakes do native speakers make that drive you crazy? (infosec.pub)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For example, English speakers commonly mix up your/you're or there/their/they're. I'm curious about similar mistakes in other languages.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Less. It's used eveywhere, although should only be used with uncountable nouns.

Less drama is prefered.

Fewer items left on the shopping list.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 9 months ago (4 children)

There's a certain level of irony in correcting people's language while not reading the original question properly yourself.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Muphry's law in action.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

:D unbeliebable. My bad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

yeah, fewer drama is prefered from them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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:

That English speakers are incapable of speaking other languages
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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

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.

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