Mine is people who separate words when they write. I’m Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct
Still, people write words the wrong way by separating them.
Examples:
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“Ananas ringer” means “the pineapple is calling” when written the wrong way. The correct way is “ananasringer” and it means “pineapple rings” (from a tin).
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“Prinsesse pult i vinkel” means “a princess fucked at an angle”. The correct way to write it is “prinsessepult i vinkel”, and it means “an angeled princess desk” (a desk for children, obviously)
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“Koke bøker” means “to cook books”. The correct way is “kokebøker” and means “cookbooks”
I see these kinds of mistakes everywhere!
(American) English: Inflammable vs flammable vs non-flammable.
Remember: invaluable is a synonym of priceless, but not of worthless.
So much of English just does not make sense. lol
tbf it’s referring to the verb “to value”, not the noun. long as you keep that in mind it makes perfect sense
Ambiguously used words like “biweekly”. Does it mean twice per week? Every other week? Business meeting calendar scheduling terminology is especially bad with this.
Odd phrases like you can chop the tree down. Then but then you proceed to chop that same tree up.
Parking in a driveway and driving in a parkway is also a good one.
After your alarm goes off… You turn it off.
Norwegian is more accurate. “Biweekly” means “annenhver uke” (every other week)
“Do you mind …” has been mis-answered for so long that yes means no. It’s hard to explain because written down, yes/no have different meanings, but when speaking to someone it depends on tone, context, and body language.
“Do you mind if I take that seat”
“No” “Yeah” depending on tone can both mean, “I’m fine with you taking that seat”. Most people will add on to make the intention clearer like, “Yeah, go ahead” but not always. Absolutely crazy.
Norwegian is easier. If you see a vacant seat, you don’t use it because sitting next to some one is what psychopaths do. You’re not a psychopath, are you?
In these situations, when people say “take that seat”, they usually mean it literally. As in take the seat with them and use it at the table they actually want to sit at.
It’s not so much a feature of English as it is a recurring bug in the way people use the language…
If you write “of” instead of “have” or “'ve” you need to be taken out back and beaten with a dictionary, preferably until you can apologize to your ancestors in person for the effort they wasted in passing down the English language to you.
Incidentally, when did people start saying “on accident”? It’s by accident! Has been for ages! Why this? Why now? I hate it.
With that out of the way… English isn’t a language, it’s five dialects in a trenchcoat mugging other languages in a dark alley for their loose grammar.
Edit: With regards to OP, “a cookbook” and “to cook the books” are similar phrases in English, too, but have, eh, wildly different meanings. XD
“of” in place of “have” certainly had to come from people mishearing/misunderstanding “ve.” There’s no other explanation.
The accident one is funny. I had to really think about when I’d use “on”, and it’s when I say something like: “he did it on accident.” Which is wrong when I think about it, but I know I’ve said this countless times. I can only guess it grew from “an accident” like “it was an accident.”
Even though "on"and “by” are the same length, “by” sounds like it takes too much effort to say. How weird.
Inconsistent sounds for the same spelling, as in: tough, cough, through, thorough, bough, dough.
All those stupid English place names: Cholmondeley, Leicester, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire.
Or how about all the words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations.
- Invalid - The data is invalid.
- Invalid - The old man is an invalid.
- Content - I’m content with my lot in life.
- Content - The website’s content is full of ads.
etc.
Old joke. You can tell a contractor from a chemist based on how they pronounce ‘unionized.’
I actually have a list somewhere of all these that I have come across and remembered to write down, sort of a game I play I guess. I haven’t tried to sit down and find all the possible examples of this (that’d be no fun), just stumble across them over time. Anyway the list is longer than you would expect, and now I have to add Invalid!
Yeah, there are tons of these.
Don’t forget Towcester! I find it very funny that there’s a town called Toaster.
German here, we have the exact same issue. It’s driving me crazy.
We are English speaking and as someone raising a kid it’s really difficult at their age to teach and explain all the words that are spelled the same but can sound different. She loves to learn so I try my best. I wrote a sentence down that she likes to show people and read to them just to start but always asks why it is the way it is.
“My daughter liked when I read her a book the other day so I make it a habit to read 1 book a day with her”
That’s the sentence she’s practicing. There is a lot more to get through though.
Along the same lines, through, thorough, throw, tough, thought, though. Just the slightest variation of spelling. English makes no sense.
Kids split words in American, too; or they join the words. We see examples like:
- Incase
- aswell
- shutdown (wrong as verb)
- backup(wrong as verb)
Or wrong splits:
- back up (wrong as noun)
- under stand
Or just plain dumb:
- emails
- till (instead of 'til)
I wish I could say it was better in English, but we’re being dragged down with them.
What’s wrong with emails?
Not OP, but I think I could answer.
Traditionally, mail is uncountable. One can count letters and packages, but not mail. Thus “I received three mails” is currently grammatically incorrect, while “I received three pieces of mail” or “I received three letters” or “I received three packages” would all currently be grammatically correct.
It seems logical that email should follow the same rules of grammar. Thus “I received three emails” should be incorrect, while “I received three pieces of email” or “I received three messages” would all be grammatically correct.
But English grammar is not consistent. Email is a new word and the folks that use it have decided that it is countable.
I don’t mind this, but it seems OP does.
Till is actually a word that predates until.
Many assume that till is an abbreviated form of until. Actually, it is a distinctive word that existed in English at least a century before until, both as a preposition meaning “to” and a conjunction meaning “until.” It has seen continuous use in English since the 12th century and is a perfectly legitimate synonym of until.
Thankyou! I can not stand it either.
“Alot” kills me.
What’s even worse than “Alot” is “Allot” when they mean “a lot”.
The past tense of lead is led, which is pronounced like lead but is not pronounced like lead.
Don’t get me started on read, read, and red…
My language is diglossic - it has a written form and a spoken form that are very different to each other. It’s quite difficult to understand the written form if you’ve only grown up speaking and listening to the language, as the written form is essentially the language as spoken in the 1600s.
To compare it to English, it would be like saying “Where are you?” to someone over the phone, but then having to send them “Wherefore art thou?” as a text.
What is this mysterious language?
Great example. Wherefore doesn’t mean where. Lol
**Don’t mean this snarky. Do find it funny tho.
“Whither” (to where) might be a closer fit than “wherefore” (why)
skill issue
“wherefore” means “why” not “where”.
She wasn’t asking him “where are you?” but rather “why did it have to be you?”
Not my native language, but the one I speak the most is (American) English.
So many homophones-words that sound the same but are different in meaning or spelling such as knight/night, altar/alter, ail/ale, isle/aisle/I’ll.
Also homographs-words with same spelling but different meaning and/or pronunciation like minute, bass, capital, wind, moped.
So confusing for people trying to learn English and also for people that actually speak it
Capital is always pronounced the same, but the similar word capitol is a homophone in most accents.
I can’t speak for all native English speakers, but in my experience we’re very accepting of imperfect grammar from non-native speakers because we know how crazy this language is.
Tanks!
English person: “What’s your name?”
Norwegian person: “Knut”
English person: “Nnuut?”
Norwegian person: “Kno 😢”
https://youtu.be/j53z6RfFb7U?t=28
I hain’t a helk, I’m a g-nu!
All and ale are pronounced differently.
In Dutch, the proper way to say it’s e.g., 8h30 is “half nine”.
Makes it extra confusing when they say the same in (British) English for 9h30. So short for half past nine.
You wouldn’t pronounce €8.50 as “half nine Euro”.
Even worse: the correct way of saying 8h40 is “10 past half nine”.
10 past half nine
My brain kicked on and asked me if I wanted a migraine trying to read that.
8h30 = halv ni
9h30 = halv ti
€8,50 = åtte euro og 50 eurocent (we do not use Euro in Norway)
8h40 = ti over halv ni
So in German we have these weird symbols: äßöü one of them is even in my name. In my opinion they are not necessary and cause more trouble that they are worth.
UTF 8 has alleviated some of the pain. However I still regularly find documents encoded in old character encodings and I have to manually fix all these accents.
I also have one of them in my name. In the past in school a SYS-Admin entered my name with an ö instead of the alternate form oe. All was fine. I was about 13yo, so I had no idea about backups and didn’t care. I stored all my files on their NAS. One day they had drive failures and could recover all data except from students with accents in their name. I don’t know what shitty software they used but I am still annoyed at this.
We also have das,dass which I always get wrong while writing texts.
There are some good things. The time forms can be pretty fun to use.
All in all German is a 6/10 for me could be better could be worse.
Hello my fellow Sören.
Dönt jöke äböüt his näme!
Maybe this helps? https://www.das-dass.de/
Hahah thanks. I can do it if think about and I know the rules. It just doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to make a conscious effort to get it right.
In general I think Spanish is a well formed language without (or at least not much) crazy shit.
But I still don’t know why we have the same fucking word for weather and time. While using the same word for different meanings is ok, these two are ridiculously common concepts used a lot and it’s not hard to get into situations where it’s hard to know which is which. Absolutely stupid.
As a Spaniard with kids living in UK, it’s very hard to teach them the gender of words that should not really need to have a gender. Why does “car” need to be masculine?!
It’s easier if you don’t think it as actual gender, and just as grammar. You have “el televisor” (masculine) and “la tele” o “la tv” (femenine), both meaning “the tv”. It’s more about how the word ends than anything.
Still, it’s something that if someone gets it wrong, it sounds off but everyone still understands. No one is going to care for a foreigner saying that wrong. There’s no really a confusion to be had there.
But time/weather can lead to actual misunderstandings.
it’s less of a Spanish thing and more of a cultural slang thing that is really not more of an issue than any other slang in any language can create, which is to say, rather minor.
That’s why in Italian it’s feminine.
There, problem solved!
😄
Cant you just use “clima” for weather?
Same as in French … Completely dumb
I speak Spanish and being 100% honest about it i love it, the only shitty thing is the fact that the dialects vary a lot (also i kinda hate the tilde).
coño!
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