The biggest difference between a native and non-native speaker of any language is that the non-native speaker is terrified of making usage errors and the native speaker doesn't care how many errors they make.
You're right but not always. For example russian speakers often DO care about these mistakes. I know the rules of talking and writing but it's often easier to say/write smth the wrong way or some words and expressions simply sound to me better when they are told incorrectly. I hate agrues in russian language SO MUCH because the opponent always tells you that you're wrong or stupid just because "you don't know your own language. go and learn it before talking to me". WHAT THE HELL
Until they have a high confidence and fluency in English, then they make the same mistakes native speakers do. Because oftentimes these "incorrect" forms are more appropriate for casual circumstances, and using the correct form implies more formality or snobbishness than intended, or that the speaker is non-native using textbook English.
I'm not native but over the years I've picked up on more colloquial English and you won't see me writing "though" or "through" anytime soon (I say "tho" & "thru" for less snobbiness). Recently I've also just gone with "aswell", "everytime", "everyday", "alright", because spelling them apart is maybe traditionally correct, but it hurts my eyes. Nobody needs prescriptive grammar. As long as everyone understands you without troubles and what you're saying makes some sense, go ahead. Except for "you're"/"your" (honestly just say "ur", easy fix) and "there"/"their"/"they're" ("ther" could maybe work), those annoy me a lot. Maybe one day English is ready for spelling "ought" as "aut". P.S., I totally say "doe" for "dough"
I can’t spell those right but I’ll never mess “their there and they’re” up idk how ppl mess that up they’re all so different they have nothing in common besides a little pronunciation
@@GoodWoIf Never. I did not read a 400 pages long 19th century book on the correct usage of shall and will for nothing! Seriously though (yes I really did read it, it's called The Irish Difficulty, if you're curious) I can't understand why people don't take pleasure in the constant refinement of their own speech. Be it their native tongue or a foreign one. It's a craft like any other, the same as --through practise and dedication-- learning, for instance, to make one's fingers dance dexterously through the keyboard, and as a consequence, playing beautifully and with virtuosity. And believe me I do understand the processes through which languages 'evolve' into different ones. Namely erosion, metaphor, analogy &c. In a sense, I am just hopeless. I do accept (cope with, rather) that this 'evolution' is natural, more or less inevitable, and not always pernicious (such as when it results in new morphology.) However, it's my view that, at least in Indo-European languages, the prevailing trend has been towards simplification. And that, as result (rather than despite!) of speakers of IE languages being *too* literate --some of us, anyway-- they are much less likely to reinterpret and grammatically bleach words. This results in a constant erosion with no new morphology to counteract it. Therefore, for the sake of upholding a widely understood standard, and also because, especially if there is a body, such as the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, which us Spanish speakers are blessed to have, it creates a situation where all the busywork of finding etymologies, more stylistically appropriate, and in generally, well wrought and thought out alternatives, is already done by eminences in the language (in our case, since the 1700s!). About the 'prestige' (or lack thereof) of certain dialects, I consider it to be largely well deserved.
I've been a language snob my whole life, but there's one important thing I always keep in mind: Language is what people speak, not what scholars say they should speak. The purpose of language is to facilitate communication. For example, when someone uses a double negative, it's true that they are saying the opposite of what they intend. However, if the listener understands the intended meaning - and they usually do - then communication is achieved. I can listen to an illiterate child and understand what he is trying to say even though his sentences are imprecise and poorly constructed. Communication is achieved. On the other hand, American lawmakers write lengthy, perfectly constructed, precisely worded laws that nobody can understand - not citizens, not judges, and usually not even the knuckleheads who vote them into law. Communication is not achieved.
Language is dictated by usage, ie it changes over time. Go back 500 years and you'd have a hard time understanding folk in England, even going from London to Birmingham would confuse a Londoner, and the Brummie that they may converse with. A good example is Kipper Tie= Cuppa Tea in the midlands as Noddy Hold will tell you.
When the law is unable to be understood, it is because of lack of precision in written language, or lack of forethought on the side of the lawmakers. That means it requires a combination of two things: better understanding of the area of the law (which is obtained by studying and learning from examples to understand what complications may arise with the way a law is written at the current moment, in order to learn how to improve it) and more precise language. If arbitration and abstruseness is allowed in legal writing, we'll have problems. There are various forms of communication. I work with children so I know fully well the value of speaking without grammatical perfection in order to communicate more clearly simple intentions. But when we're discussing more advanced things, clarity with as few uncertainties as possible should always be sought after. In other words: facilitating communication is not the ONLY purpose of language. It also has the purpose of specifying communication and making it more precise. Imagine natural science schools where the meaning of "atom" is unclear because hey, people just use it as a vague term to define "like really small things, dude".
Or, to put it in a more commonplace context: their, they're and there. These are three entirely different concepts, and without a doubt, people know what they mean and what the differences are; if someone writes "it's there chocolate" I'm pretty sure they still MEAN that the chocolate belongs to 'them', and not that it's a chocolate that has the attribute of being 'there'. Which is why many people failing to use these three words correctly (which is not the same as, say, colloquial or dialectal variation) will never result in the change of grammatical rules or word definition. Because all three concepts are necessary to be able to specify using language something in reality we are trying to describe as precisely as possible. The spelling and the sound of the words are definitely subject to change, but never the need to be able to differentiate between these very REAL concepts.
Of course being understood is important. But language is more than just being understood. Have you ever noticed some people "have a way with words," or are very interesting to talk to? Or you read a famous quotation that has a poignant meaning for you? The real problem in being understood is usually when you are a non-native speaker speaking to a native speaker. If you're understood, at whatever level, it's an accomplishment. Native speaker to native speaker is really a lot more than "being understood." It's also about being judged positively - or negatively, and it is often quite non-conscious but influences the interaction.
Add a tiny little comma and: "I find it ironic that literally, actually means figuratively now." Like, "I've actually died and gone to heaven!" And people have been saying "What the actual f**k" for a little while now too. Figuratively speaking, that is. :-D
I'm a native English speaker and college educated. Some of the mistakes you noted are really English in transition to a new standard, but some are definitely made by native speakers who are poorly educated or - let's face it, educated but a lot didn't sink in. When you speak or write, you convey more than just the obvious content of the communication. You convey your educational level, family background, sometimes your regional origin, occupational level and your general intelligence. We all make these types of personal assessment consciously or unconsciously, and they do have an impact on how you are perceived by others, positively or negatively. Like it or not, that's been substantiated by a great deal of social research, and it can subtly or otherwise impact how you're treated in a variety of different situations. I've noticed a general decline over many decades in the speaking and writing competency of many native English speakers in the United States up to the present time. So have many businesses and institutions of higher learning. I'm sure there are many reasons for this, but what concerns me is this: a level of competency in your native language is crucial for the ability to understand the modern world and make important decisions about your employment options and lifetime earnings, and the complex social, economic and political issues before us today. Language is thought, and democracy depends on an informed and thoughtful electorate. When your native language competency is blunted, so is your ability to deal with the world. That being said, having studied French for a number of years, I have a great deal of empathy for any non-native speakers of English learning the language. It can be a truly humbling and frustrating experience to feel like a 5-year old child instead of an adult when you attempt to communicate with a native speaker when you are new to learning their language.
As a person having learnt Italian, studying Russian and Spanish (and Latin, a bit), and a native Portuguese speaker and a person who speaks English at the level of a native speaker, I very much concord.
I get frustrated with native ENG speakers when I'll be speaking in perfect English. I consider Western USA speaks a creole of English, and British people are de-latinizing. I'm studying most romance languages and find them much more systematic and better due to inflected verbs and wished I had them. I have noticed apparently I speak fairly latin-based in vocabulary which makes it hard to understand for the less conservative dialects of English. For context a bit of hold overs like a'prefixing, double nouns, than a dose of just more helper verbs inbetween words show up. Including I swear Western USA and NORTHERN forget to use their articles constantly!!!
Thanks for covering these common mistakes. As a child, I was often mocked by my schoolmates for using correct grammar. (They called me Mr. Perfect English) As a result, I didn't fit in very well. Over time, I was vindicated and was consoled by achieving better test scores than many of my peers. Learning not to correct others has proved to be a valuable decision unless someone asks me to do so. I'm not always right, and I make mistakes from time to time. It's probably better to allow others the freedom to express themselves as they see fit. Living languages are dynamic and will change over time. So, even though I find considerable value in established norms, while living in glass houses, we should take care not to throw stones. :)
Agreed 100%. Correct yourself, but let others be free to make their mistakes unless they want you to correct them (or unless they make a really embarrassing mistake).
Damn! Your schoolmates are very dumb! United States should have educated more American to learn proper language! They think is American English is far superior than British English! This is crazy! They are the same language! People nowadays are dumb, I would rather talked to the animals and hiding in the forest all alone for eternity yeah! No exciting! But At least I don’t meet dumb people. I’m Canadian! i would Rather living in the Forest than the dumb English speakers! I hope anglophones world convinced everyone anglophone country to speak real English not street slangs or internet meme language. So anglophone governments are very dumb and they only concern is capitalism and Liberals even money! I hope real English become popular in the future! This is why preposterously what English become dead language! I swear Spanish and chinese would took over English in the future! I sincerely hope you read my comment!
Also probably your schoolmates jealous of you or the education system sucks! Or the dumb Americans think their English is far superior than British English. Remember, They are the same language just like Mexican Spanish to Castilian Spanish ( European Spanish) even Romanian and Moldavans as well Malay and Indonesian
A native English speaker here. In my experience, the object form of "who" ("whom") is increasing not used. I've even seen this occur in articles published by notable major media sources, such as NPR and The Economist. Given that trend, native English speakers might soon commonly ask "For *who* the bell tolls".
Since you're so concerned over what you deem correct language use, you shouda woulda coulda also used the adverb "increasingly" in lieu of the adjective/progressive 'increasing'. Just sayin'.
I will always remember lunch in Debrecen when a Croat (who was there to learn Hungarian) quizzed me on the use of "whom" in English. After explaining its correct use, I added if he wanted to sound like a native speaker he shouldn't use it :-(
***** You are misinformed. 'Who the bell tolls for' is not correct. You do not need my permission, however, to think that it is or to associate with people that agree with you.
Me speakee Englishee from birthplacee, missy. It seems you are climbing a high horse to talk to me yet you want to wallow in the low places. English has rules. You may choose to ignore them, but that is what you are doing. They remain rules. I have used 'whom' many times. I try to use it each time it is appropriate to do so. I was taught NOT 100 years ago that whom was the correct form for an objective case. i have never heard of a construction of 'who the bell tolls for' Note that in the parent comment above, the writer is also trying to make a funny when he speculated that English speakers might say, 'for who the bell tolls' . You may choose to surround yourself with non-standard English, but I would not want to join them. I fear this country (that's the US of A) is rapidly splitting into thugs and swells. I want to be among the swells. A good approach is to speak like one.
Idioms are indeed the hardest thing for learners of a new language. They are expressions that are "natural" and understandable to native speakers, but strange or even bizarre to those learning a new language.
Yes, I absolutely agree. While learning English idioms, I was so very confused. And now Russian idioms… oh my, they are on a level of their own… Also, just to brush up, thinking on one’s feet signifies thinking as things are happening, correct?
In Japanese, the correct form of ～る verbs such as 食べる（to eat) expressing ability is ～られる (食べられる = taberareru = edible, or [I] can eat it), but a couple of decades ago young people started saying ～れる, like 食べれる "tabereru". It was clearly wrong grammatically, sounded really weird to me, and like many I used to frown upon it when I heard someone say it. Now I say it myself all the time. It so happens that ～られる takes the same form in the passive voice (be eaten, etc.), so ~れるexpresses ability more distinctively. I would say it's an example of evolution that occurred in the Japanese language recently.
It's funny you mentioned bc I have been confused about that. I learned Japanese when I lived there for 15 yrs being half Japanese. I always thought that taberareru is the right form but I hardly even heard anyone say it, so I spoke it like everybody else did---tabereru. But it sounded weird to me. Thanks for the clarification. I am going back to Japan for retirement and it is going to be another battle to relearn the language!
This isn't so much of a grammar mistake as it is a colloquialism and shortening of a word for convenience sake. This form can also be used in very polite speech in Japanese.
Maybe is funny because many of non-natives like us have studied many years to know what's wrong and what's right just to find that many native speakers make mistakes with simple things like that
And I find it very funny that so many people can't be bothered to start a sentence with a capital letter and end it with a punctuation sign. No offense.
As a non-native speaker number 8 is very hard for me as well. In my first language German there are adjectives and adverbs, of course, but there is only a difference from grammatical point of view. The word is usually the same. For example: Dieser Tanz ist gut. = This (kind of) dance is good. Ich tanze gut. = I (can) dance well.
This is why I don't feel bad when making grammatical mistakes in other languages. Deep down, I know that I make fewer mistakes in those languages than I do in my native one.
As non native English speaker and a man who took classes of English I have to say I've never even heard about subjunctive mood. Sounds like something to fail people on English exams..
English speaker here. English is a mixed language. Some of the rules, doesnt make sense. A E I O U and sometimes Y??? Sometimes???? I before E except after C... uhhh... Except these 96 words A agreeing albeit Alzheimer's ancient atheism B beige Beijing being C caffeine concierge D deicide deify deign deindustrialize deity disagreeing dreeing dreidel E eigen- eight either F Fahrenheit feign feisty foreign foreseeing forfeit freight G geitost gesundheit H heifer height heinous heir heist herein I inveigle K kaleidoscope keister L lei leisure M madeira meiosis N neigh neighbor neighbour neither O obeisance onomatopoeia P peine poltergeist protein R reign reignite reimburse rein reindeer reindustrialize reinforce reinstall reinvest reisolate reissue S safeish scarabaeid schlockmeister science seeing seignorial seine seismic seize sensei sheik skein sleigh sleight sovereign species stein surfeit surveillance T their theism therein V veil vein W weigh weight weir weird wherein whereinto X xanthein Z zeitgeist zootheism
I don't think it's taught to children. I don't remember being taught it. Then again, I can't remember what the fuck participles are. I remember sitting in my 6th grade language arts class when we were learning it, but I can't remember what the hell the lecture was. Of course, it's a miracle I can remember anything at all from a 10-year-old memory.
Also, I think English kind of lends itself to frequent mistakes due to its bizarre spelling rules, numerous irregularities, and its nature in general as a Teutonic-Italic-Hellenic (et al) hybrid language.
A bit of an odd statement seeing as almost all modern languages take much from others. English is definitely an extreme case though, but at its core it’s Germanic with around 50% Romance language thrown in.
@@tfan2222it’s definitely not 50% romance, because given that it has 4% Hellenic and 22% Anglican (native), that means it’s more Romance than Germanic. Oh wait, it is more Romance than Germanic! (English should not be considered Germanic, it should be an exception or should be an acceptedly very far-off Latin language)
***** I realised that, Captain Obvious! That is the reason why I commented in the first place. If I took him seriously, I would have corrected him; which is something that I never did. All I said was that his comment was purposley ironic. The fact that you fail to see that I am contributing to the joke is a reason why you should take back your comment.
In Tagalog, a lot of people always uses "ng" instead of "nang" for appropriate moment. That's also true for "daw" and "raw" and "din" and "rin". And in written Tagalog, people would combine two different particles like "ka" and "na" would be "kana". It's also true for "kapa", "naba", and in some cases, "palang".
I often type "kana" and "palang" because they act like their own particles in my head. These types of phenomena are really interesting. Although I personally decided to start consciously distinguishing "ng" & "nang" and the r/d pairs because even in formal writing I used to confuse them.
I didn't really understand it until I learned German--legen and liegen correspond directly with the transitive verb being regular (regular-ish in English, as the spelling of laid is irregular though the pronunciation is the same as if it were the regular layed) and the intransitive one being irregular. But I still struggle with the past tense of lie being the same as the present tense of lay. Whyyyyyyyyyy????? If you were designing language with the goal of people getting it wrong, the is the dumb sh!! you would build into the language.
@ Crystal of Twin Star Enterprises You've earned my respect! A non-native speaker here. We non-native English speakers make mistakes in our mother tongue too. LOL. BTW, in our culture brilliant and wise people are always humble, and they appreciate any piece of knowledge and don't mind standing corrected.
I love this video! As both a native speaker of English and an Australian, I feel like your point at 3:58 attributes an unlikely turn of phrase to us. This wouldn't represent the way a typical Aussie would address the situation; they would say "he needs to go to the hospital".
Good one! LOL On a slightly more serious note: but... non-native speakers use that. We were taught how to use the past tense and past participle of basic irregular verbs when we were in school.
"He lay on the bed" sounds like something out of a classic novel, not like casual spoken English today. To my native ears, it sounds too formal. Using Laid instead of lain for the past tense of lie is probably the most common "mistake" even among highly educated native speakers because of how it sounds to most of our ears. . . Lol
The most common mistake in Turkish is the spelling of "Yanlış" and "Yalnız". "Yanlış(Mistake, Wrong)" comes from the verb "Yanılmak(to be wrong)" so the "n" comes before "l". "Yalnız(Lonely, Only, sometimes used to contrast like "but" or "however")" comes from the adjective "Yalın(Without any additions, bare, also is the name of the Nominative case in Turkish)" so the "l" comes before "n".
why would people leave comments without watching the video? I know they do that with politically themed videos for which they have a preconceived opinion.
By four or five minutes into the video, I was ready to pause it and compose an angry screed, which would have simply restated the conclusions and questions from the end of the video. My answer to the question asked is, that all of these issues are innovations not mistakes. Had I commented before hearing his conclusions I would have looked foolish.
I’m French and there’s a mistake pretty common in everyday language: confusion about the preposition "à". Prepositions are small words that connect two parts of a sentence. The most commonly used prepositions in French are à, chez, de, en, entre, jusque, hors, pour, sans, vers. The meaning of "à" varies depending on the sentence (in, to, at...). 1) Confusion between the homophones "a" (third person singular present tense of « avoir ») and "à" appears quite frequently in writing. You must write: « Il part à New York pour ses études » = "He moves to New York for his studies" « Il part à sept heures » = "He comes at seven o’clock » « Il a eu beaucoup de cadeaux » = "Il had/got a lot of presents" 2) To express possession/belonging, confusion between "à" and "de" are also frequent, both in writing and oral. -The preposition 'de' is used with a name or noun in place of the English ’s and s’: « La lettre de Guillaume » = "Guillaume’s letter" « La chambre de leurs parents » = "Their parents’ bedroom" -The preposition 'à' is used with the verb « être » in front of stressed pronouns in order to emphasize the ownership of the object: « À qui est ce livre ? » or «À qui appartient ce livre ? » = "Whose book is this?" or "Who this book belongs to?" « Il est/C’est à Marie » or « Il/Ça appartient à Marie » = "It’s Marie’s" or "It belongs to Marie" « Ce livre est à Marie » = "This book is Marie’s" « Le livre est à elle » = "The book is hers" « C’est un livre à elle » = "It’s a book of hers" « Ce livre est à lui/Guillaume», « Non, c’est à elle/Marie » = "This books is his/Guillaume’s" "No, it’s hers/Marie’s" So in familiar French, instead of hearing « C’est le livre de Marie », « Le livre de Marie est... », it’s common to hear « C’est le livre à Marie », « Le livre à Marie est... », which is grammatically incorrect. 3) Senseless combination between possessive determiner (my, your...) and possessive pronoun (mine, yours...) as an emphatic way is indiscriminately used, specially by young French speakers. « Ma chérie à moi » = ~My~ sweetheart ~of mine~ (an immature way for "MY sweetheart", "My sweetheart and only mine", "My very own sweetheart"...)
I once corrected a french guy his grammar when I was speaking to him in French (I'm Canadian) and I was baffled until I realized that grammatical errors occurring when native speakers speak the language is not an English exclusive thing (my French is not good at all, I can barely converse with it)
I had never got to the part of "à qui est ...." no wonder you confuse à with de sometimes! In Spanish it's always "de" for possession so I never thought French would have a distinction. Good to know.
Personally, I couldn't care less if someone used 'who' when they meant 'whom'. But when people use 'whom' when 'who' was appropriate grinds my gears, because they're only doing it to sound intelligent. Like "Whom was that at the door?" Bitch, please...saying 'whom' doesn't make you smart.
Where you use "they" and "he", you use "who;. where you use "them" and "him", you use "whom". For example - do you say "they for, he for and who for"? Or "For them, for him, and for whom"? I repeat - yes, it really is that simple...
Joan Hammond Yep, it's pretty simply actually. And I had to learn German to learn it. German actually has three versions of who: wer, wen, and wem. (Not counting wessen or whose...) Wer is who, and wen/wem is whom. And it's use is even simpler than who vs whom in English. Wer is nominative, or the subject. Wen is accusative, or the direct object. Wem is dative, or the indirect object. (I know, it doesn't sound easy, but you have to decline nouns in German, so knowing their part of speech is imperative.) It was only learning how and when to use those that I found myself using whom correctly.
Exactly! In English, the Dative and Ablative are the indirect objects of the verb, but the direct objects of the preposition, and so take the Accusative - or Objective - case. That's from learning Latin, not German!
"Lie" vs "lay," oddly enough, is also present in Danish ("ligge" vs "lægge"). We have another similar one: "sit" vs "put down" ("sidde" vs "sætte"). Many people, especially where I am from, just can't figure out what to use when.
As an English speaker in the mideastern US, a definitely do most of these things. I also frequently shorten "going to go" to "gonna go" or "gonn go," with the last one using more of a guttural sound and more rounded Oh vowels. There are other things that I frequently change, but that's one of the main ones.
Hello, I'm from the Philippines and many of us are afraid to make mistakes when we speak in english because we might get judged by our fellow Filipinos who are very particular in grammar. Indeed many Filipinos are grammar nazi that's why even though many of us want to practice english to become fluent but because of some people that will make fun of us because of our grammar mistakes it turns out our willingness and passion will disappear
Why do we call peopre from Canada "Canadians" instead of "Canadans"? Why do we say "Toothbrush" instead of "Teethbrush"? Why do we say "Chicken Nuggets/Wings/Sandwitch" instead of "Poultry Nuggets/Wings/Sandwitch"?
The giveaway for Canadians is not so much "eh" or "about" as it is the way they say the letter "O" as in dawlers...awbviously. I had you pegged from the start.
I would expect that some native speakers of all languages make mistakes. One mistake that annoys me is the misuse of apostrophes. For example, when talking about a period of time, many people write the 60's. This incorrectly makes it a possessive. The correct way to write it is the '60s, where the apostrophe indicates an abbreviation in which the 19 (or 18 or 17) is left out.
You are correct but then... This is English. Since the age of the internet which has made the world very small. Even Langfocus is outdated. English has evolved very quickly. Yes people still complain on the misuse of their, there and they're, (myself included) And they're correct, everyone should. But over how we spell decades? You're correct it is '70s or '80s etc but its now universally accepted to say 90's or 50's. Once something is universally accepted, it means that it has been assimilated and you should know the English language reputation of stealing/assimilating words. In fact some of the sayings he was criticising in this video where he was attacking some words.... that word would've been fine if you changed another word. Example: "I feel really badly about that" was slammed quite rightly because "badly" wasn't correct however, if 'feel' was changed to 'felt' then it would've been fine.
CrazyInWeston true in some cases but you have to remember English is not a forever evolving written language. it has (and always will have) set grammatical rules. it is not evolving.
@@benjames7932 Not true. One of the most referred to authorities on written style and grammar in American English is the Chicago Manual of Style. Over many years as a writer/editor, I saw rules change and, sometimes, change back. Now, periods and commas are always inside quotation marks. When I was in school in the '50s and '60s, that wasn't the case. And the protocols for end punctuation in quoted material are different in the UK.
@@CrazyInWeston I would say "devolved" is a better word. I have a mini stroke every time someone thinks every word that ends with an "s" needs an apostrophe. Especially college grads.
@@ulysses1904 You could say "devolved". However English swaps and changes over time. I'm not dismissing you, you can be quite and very correct to say that, but then a few years later it may/may not have reverted. Hence my use of the word "evolve".
As a teacher of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), I think that our association should award you a medal or something. Every time I point out one of these mistakes to my students, they complain that their favourite influencer speaks like that and s/he can't be wrong as s/he's a native speaker of English. This video will come in handy next time they play that card on me.
Well, from a linguist’s descriptive point of view, they’re right. Colloquial varieties of English aren’t objectively wrong, they’re just colloquial. The question is what kind of English those students should learn. If they just want to make friends, or if they want to use English with tourists like renting out surfboards or something, then sure, speak colloquial English. But for anything more formal or professional, it’s better that they know standard formal English. There are some things in this video, though, that are archaic even in standard formal English. I included them to make the video debatable.
@@Langfocus Those are precisely the issues we discuss in class when the opportunity arises but, instead of presenting the points myself and sending them off to ponder, I'll be using your video to initiate the discussion. The fun begins when we start drawing parallels between English and Greek. When my budding middle-schoolers realise that double negatives were unacceptable in Ancient Greek but are a requirement in Modern Greek, they immediately turn into bad-ass middle-schoolers. ;-)
It’s funny that the “lay” and “lie” confusion is also present in Danish and is commonly used incorrectly: Let’s lie on the bed = Lad os LIGGE på sengen Let’s lay the laundry on the bed = Lad os LÆGGE vasketøjet på sengen What makes it even more commonly misused is how close these two words sound. But I guess English and Danish sharing a common language ancestor is part of the reason.
Thanks for this great info, Osten. By the way, it has been said that there are countless Danish people who speak very good English. I take it for granted that Danes of this type do not have trouble using the past tense and past participle of 'lay' and both senses of 'lie' (i.e. laid-laid, lied-lied & lay-lain).
@@zulfiqarkhan8167 It’s hard to say as I grew up speaking Danish and English due to my father being Australian - But in general I would say that even though the Danes have a very high level of English these kind of grammatical issues would only be relevant for the very proficient part of the population (maybe 25%). The rest of the population would not bother or be aware of this and would most likely use the wrong verb.
I can't stand when you bully those people who do that It's so easy to make mistakes while typing on the phone I will spell stuff without correcying myself I wonce wans a boy my name was chaf and I had funnb has child I once was a boy my name was chad and I had fun as a child Do you see how easy it is to mess up
@Evryatis I mean most people who mess it up probably know the proper way to say it they just dont. theres debates on this all the time, for example i missed the apostrophe like in 3 words in this sentence alone.
I am not your sexy Nørwegiæn You shouldn’t be okay with writing improperly just because people sometimes bully people about their improper English. It’s called proof reading and I’m not sure why people don’t do it because it only takes a second of your day. If you type an email to your boss the way you just did, I think you’re destined to lose points with them. So it’s not about bullying, it’s about appearing not stupid in times that matter, and everything else like CZcams comments are practice for those times. I promise you if it comes down to just you and one other person for a job position, the one who writes better is getting that job. There’s no arguing with that.
Oh, and I love double negation. In English it is infused with a certain degree of pathos or irony when used by an educated person, but in Spanish and Russian it is as normal as can be. Double negation will be the new standard English. But I won’t live long enough to see its demise and lament it:)
Educated speakers can purposefully "drop down" for effect, because it increases their range of expression as you describe,s but they know the difference. Unfortunately too many people today aren't even aware the "drop down" is their normal mode of speech. Of course Americans think everything the majority does is automatically "right," when democracy is really about political equality and the rule of law, and never about anything else.
Bobito Accidentally on purpose, you have literally made two grammatical errors & one semantic misuse of a term: "..never make *any* of *the* mistakes he talked about..." Semantic misuse of "*literally*".
Hey DHHQ...*metaphorically :D "Figuratively is also an adjective, but its meaning is quite different from literally. Figuratively is defined as based on or making use of figures of speech; metaphorical. So while literally means free from any metaphor or allegory, figurative deals specifically with these kinds of figures of speech."
I love your videos ! Thanks so much for all the joy you bring to all who love languages and linguistics! What a treasure trove your channel is. I'm sure you know and it's probably been pointed out already in the comments , but the Oxford English Dictionary included the definition of "metaphorically" for the term "literally" as correct English usage a few years ago.
“Stative verbs” My blood ran cold and goosebumps covered my back as I remembered the amount of time I spent reading and then attempting to understand Vendler’s classification of verbs…
Blowfishes You Tube If it's going to make sense, it's got to be "I couldn't.... The other one means "You care a great deal and so could careless. 'I couldn't" means I don't care at all so I can't care less than nothing. Trouble is that people speak in cliché and don't LISTEN to themselves. I don't doubt that it is being used instead but you can't use the fact the it's getting used wrongly and regularly when it just doesn't make sense. If lots of people were insisting that 1+4 = 6 it wouldn't make them right.
These mistakes are the reason why the language changes over centuries. Nothing to be afraid of, just the natural evolution of how people express themselves.
Langfocus you are the best English native speaker that sounds like a foreigner loooolll Anyway I am Italian, and we also make mistakes in our own language it is pretty normal... When I chat with English native speakers they sometimes make mistakes too but I have always thought that I was wrong And what it's weirder that I tend to copy them... Copy that!
Actually that's one that I find quite difficult. Constantly look it up when writing, but half the time I really can't decide which is correct. Oh, and I'm well educated...
In my accent, they sound the same (uh-fect) and their meanings are fairly similar so when writing, I often forget which is which and have to look it up. I hear that ESL speakers generally don’t mix up such words once they learn them. I wonder if you pronounce them the same or different. If you pronounce them the same, like I do, how do you keep from mixing them up when writing?
Excellent, as always, Paul. Regarding "literally"--Webster's says that using "literally" hyperbolically dates back to at least 1796. We may have lost the battle on that one.
Jamien I didn’t though...not sure what you’re talking about. He said that people have been exaggerating “literally” for centuries and I’m saying we should stop, so if anything you’re agreeing with me...🤔 1796 wasn’t “500 years ago” either
@@Mattropolis97 You're saying that you're smart because you don't "hyperbolise literally" and I said that adhering to some dumb rule doesn't make you more intelligent. I directly replied to what you said. Furthermore: I "hyperbolise literally" all the time, and AMAZINGLY I also study linguistics. Including etymology. So shove it, you elitist ass. I did not miss anything. You're the one that apparently can't read.
Jamien LOL 😂 No sir, I never said I’m smart. If I don’t know how to read then you seem to know how to read what isn’t there. Classic example of someone looking for a reason to be offended. My first post was a joke ffs. Once again, all I said was that hyperbolizing “literally” makes one sound less intelligent and people who do it tend to lose credibility in most intelligent conversations. I did not say that people who don’t do it ARE smart. That’s a hellishly stupid assumption to make. “It’s not black so it must be white”. People are stupid for all sorts of reasons. I have a couple more for you specifically: 1.) Who’s the “elitist”? The one who’s claiming to be above the use of words 500 years ago (which according to the op, was the same as it is now), (also 1796 was not 500 years ago) or the guy calling himself a jackass linguist? 🤔 2.) “Hyperbolise” is not a word. Your smartphone could’ve told you that. I guess ignoring the red line furthers you’re elitism? 🤷🏻♂️ (half joking here. I know it’s nit picky) PS. If we’re saying what we studied then I’m a linguist because I learned 4 foreign languages to an advanced level. In general I could care less about etymology or the history of English because I find communicating with more people to be more useful, rewarding, and eye opening.
The one that always gets me is breath vs. breathe Breath is a noun: “He took my breath away” Breathe is a verb: “The dragons breathe fire” Mostly I see people use breath (noun) when they mean breathe (verb)
It is SO refreshing to hear you highlight all these errors. They can be heard all over the various media genres and in daily life. As a teacher I am ashamed to say I hear and see other teachers make these errors frequently!
thats because these arent mistakes. languages are living, and these 'errors' are not errors, they are simply not considered formal and 'correct' english. mind you, this 'correct' english is only considered correct because of two reasons: 1) it was considered correct in the past, and although the spoken language has evolved and changed over the time, what we consider 'correct' has not. and 2) this form of the language was used specifically by higher class people who had the power to decide what was 'correct'. for example english dialects such as AAVE have many grammatical elements which is considered incorrect simply because its not part of the 'more correct' higher class dialects. a sentence such as 'he be working' is only considered incorrect because upper class people decided it wasnt correct. hopefully you see the inherent classism, racism, and stupidity within the concept of stating these as errors. thats not to say that the standard form of english doesnt have use or anything. understanding it and writing in it for more formal situations is important for making yourself understood clearly and without ambiguity. it also makes it actually possible to teach english to non native speakers. however, it is both incorrect and problematic to refer to many of these 'errors' as something wrong and to be ashamed about. there is a reason why the majority of linguists are descriptivists not prescriptivists. (sorry if this came off as hostile i simply feel very strongly about this and cant bring myself to stay silent when seeing people call these forms of english 'wrong' when they are very much not) (as for my use of the written language i dont bother capitalizing and using apostrophes intentionally. i find it unneeded if not in a formal setting and so i dont bother. also, the reason why i use single quotes instead of double quotes is simply because i prefer the way it looks.)
Fantastic video! Thank you, Paul! I am a French teacher (native English speaker) who is passionate about expression, syntax, etc. in language. Over the years, I have shared (dare I say 'harped on') points with my students of all these topics (save 'literally') since I recognize as you do that it is used for 'making one's point' to an extreme. Loved your address, presentation and the excellent examples you provided.
Regarding the question, as a non native speaker this video was pretty clarifying in the sense that there were occasions where I was being corrected by native speakers for saying "If I were" or writing "would've," which confused me a lot lol
Yes but in 100 years or 200 years the rules of grammar would've changed. Today we use fewer apostrophes than 200 years ago. It is for good reason that apostrophe rhymes with catastrophe because grammar experts can not agree with each other on its use.
I am native French Canadian from province of Quebec and I discovered your channel yesterday and I love it! Sorry if you find mistakes in this post but I always try my best because I don't speak English fluently ❤
how about you discuss your fellow Canadian's ABSOLUTE BUTCHERING of the definition of the word "IRONIC" as i like to say, "99% of the time, it's COINCIDENCE and not IRONY"
Whow Mister J5-0, wuss good? Never thought youd be here; i follow your videos sir. And the little baby that breaks into tears the one time you wuss up in colorado and girl officer came to ya while chatting with your friend. lololol. Youre merciless sir 😂😂😂😂
I've spoken English for over 50 years and it never occurred to me that well is the adverb of good and, as a totally different word, also an adjective meaning healthy. I was there thinking you can never teach me anything about English. Wrong! Thank you!
You didn´t learn anything. It´s all typical English grammatical post-rationalization nonsense. "Well" is not an adjective meaning "healthy" since it can not be used as such in general. A well diet? A well conversation? A well relationship? The "stative/dynamic verb"-theory is just a theory. Not "English grammar". In example: You can use both adverbs and adjectives for some verbs whether they are interpreted as "stative" or not: She sings well (verb + adverb) She sings better than I do (verb + adjective) She drives well (verb + adverb) She drives fast (verb + adjective)
The one that used to get me was the people at work who were so proud of their degrees & would confuse 'then' & 'than' in their emails. They would pronounce them distinctly differently in conversation, but couldn't seem to distinguish them in writing.
This response "Shakespeare did it" which so often comes up in discussions of grammar errors bugs me. 1) Shakespeare was a poet. A lot of things fly in poetry that wouldn't in ordinary speech or formal writing, like switching the verb and object around: "Beowulf the dragon slew." 2) Most of the writing we have from Shakespeare is dialogue in his plays. He wrote the dialogue to be realistic (to a certain extent at least) and to suit the characters' personalities, not to conform to grammar rules. For example, the constable Dogberry is a comedic character who constantly makes verbal mistakes, accidentally saying the opposite of what he means. 3) Shakespeare wrote hundreds of years ago, and the language has changed. For example, in his time double negatives were perfectly acceptable, even in formal writing. Now they're avoided by all educated English-speakers. We don't go around saying things like "thou liest" either. If you want to show that a usage isn't ungrammatical, give examples of it appearing in contemporary, well-edited formal writing (for example, articles in the Wall Street Journal), not the dialogue of fictional characters in the writings of a Renaissance poet.
Wow, I’m a native English speaker and I just learned that subjunctive mood is a thing in English. The funny thing is that I’ve also been speaking French for most of my life, and I have been aware of French’s ‘subjonctif’ which is pretty much the same thing as in English, yet I never knew about it in English. So there is a concept in my second language that I am more familiar with than the equivalent concept in my first language.
A few of these definitely seem to be prescriptivist tbh In particular; double negatives, adjective vs. adverbial confusion, subjunctive thing, and the singular/plural thing, and looking at other languages where that is either correct, or don't have a distinction, makes them seem more innovations than anything
Me too! I really hated the subjunctive when learning french and spanish, but I would've never known it existed in english if it weren't for this video.
Powerdriller Power The subjunctive in Spanish is still used extensively in some situations. Since there's only positive imperative for second person, it's used like that ("Vayamos", "No hagas eso"). It's also used in past if constructions ("Si hubiera sabido antes..."). I agree that simple "que" + subjunctive is less used, and where it can be replaced by indicative, it's pretty much dead. ("No sé si sabe" instead of "No sé si sepa"). Also, future subjunctive is truly dead. Most people have never even heard of it.
In casual french the subjunctive is still used as well. like in the sentence with "pour que" like "il me faut 30 euros pour que je puisse m'acheter un nouveau portable" but as you said, you can avoid these kind of structures and use just a simpler grammatical tense.
I asked my father (a retired U. of T. linguist) about evolving grammar, and he asked me what the difference is between I and me. I said one is the subject, and the other, the object. He said no. One comes before the verb and the other comes after. That's modern grammar, and the reason why no native speaker ever says, "It's I."
Your father actually is wrong. The distinction between subject and object forms, does not depend on the placement in the sentence but on the function. Many people understand this incorrectly. In Norway many people will say the equivalent of: "Shall you and me go to the shop"? They think that the objective form shall be used since it comes later in the sentence, but this is wrong and it is only wrong, because the use of the correct case form only depends on the function in the sentence. Therefore the only correct grammar is: "Shall you and I go to the shop".
Decimate is an interesting word. Originally it meant to *remove* 1/10 (hence the deci- prefix), but now it tends to be used to literally destroy something, or at most only _leave_ 1/10. Just be glad when you numbered off in Roman times you were one of the first 9: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, *X*
I literally can't believe you didn't include incorrect usage of "I and "me". The old mistake was saying something like "Mary and me went to the store". That mistake was corrected so much that we now have the other extreme being used commonly: "John gave the ball to Mary and I". I hear this on the news all the time and I cringe.
Whats correct then? "Mary and I went to the store?" Or simply "Mary went to the store with me"? In spanish we have another problem, its when people say "I and marie", since you are suposed to name yourself last
Of all the mistakes mentioned, I think the last one is the worst, reason being there is not a replacement for the word literally to mean what literally used to mean, so now each time you say something in the literal sense you have to explain that you indeed mean it literally and not just exaggerating. Continuing with the example used, if you happen to know a girl who has thousands of pairs of shoes (maybe due to a collection or something) and you tell someone else that she literally has thousands of pairs of shoes they'll think she has far less than what you actually wish to portray.
Using literally like that isn't even an actual mistake, because "literally" is a generic intensifier, just like "really" and "truly". For replacements, I recommend "without hyperbole," "without exaggeration," or as you demonstrated "actually."
Disregard any "sounds like a robot" comments. I always though that your diction was excellent and especially appropriate for a channel based on language. It's also most helpful for those who want to learn English. Well-done.
Soda and pop are both correct and are spoken based on where you live. Although the English version "Fizzy Drink" is a fun one and is a bit more descriptive. If you're an American, then Z is pronounced Zee. This isn't a mistake. Although, saying Zee anywhere isn't really a mistake in the same way that saying rubbish instead of trash is fine.
Well, there are more of us in the USA than in England and what's left of its shattered empire combined. I think we overrule you on what English is. ^_~ More and more, your people start to pronounce their words like we do. Soon you'll call football soccer and a holiday a vacation. Muhahaha.
One evolution of speech that has risen over the last two decades is the corporate (and self important) use of the word “myself”. “If you have any questions, address them to John or myself.” I’m sorry, “myself” is a self operation. I can’t do anything to yourself. I can do something to myself, but only you can do something for yourself.
You didn't mention confusing "myself" and "me"! 😁 And yes, native speakers of other languages I'm familiar with, make analogous mistakes in their own languages too.
Well in my native language Bulgarian, the a lot people(mostly teenagers) are talking in a way that is far apart from the written form! For example, here's a sentence means ''Can I tell you something?'' Literaly form : Može li da ti kaža nešto? Spoken form : Moa li ti kaa nešto? It's something like that! :D
The question is a bit philosophical: Is the purpose of language to _communicate_, or is the purpose of language to be applied grammar? I'd say that grammar takes a backseat to clear communication. No harm, no foul.
Joan Hammond Ideally. Yet in casual speech we tend towards certain mistakes because we know even if grammatically wrong the person we're talking to will understand us. Perhaps even understand better than if spoken grammatically correct.
I bought a book about dinosaurs. As a writer I love the idea of subverting proper grammatical structure and syntax for the purposes of artistic license but there are exceptions. Non-native English speakers, and those English speakers who don't have a very good grasp of it, would do best to stick to "proper" structure. I say this as someone who has to deal with trying to teach native and non-native English speakers how to express themselves with written English. Usually, speaking English is the easy part. You'd be surprised at how many native English speakers write exactly how they speak and we all know how "bad" spoken English has gotten.
one common mistake I am constantly noticing when listening to native English speakers is "you and I" and "you and me"/"me and you" being mixed up. that happens almost every time anyone tries to use either of these, and I even heard multiple people first use the correct one, but then wrongly correcting themselves with the wrong one. like you hear someone say "you and I went to the mall yesterday", only to then correct themselves and say "you and me went to the mall yesterday"... It shouldn't annoy me as much as it does 🤣
What I really dislike about the misuse of "literally" is that it seems English keeps turning words of that meaning into intensifiers, like "really" and "truly," why do we keep throwing away these precious words just so we can make more meaningless intensifiers?
"He lied on the floor" IS grammatically correct when referring to a member of Congress or Parliament. }:-)
I literally laughed out loud!
President Clinton got in trouble with a lie about a lay! 😜
@@ecsciguy79 I metaphorically pissed my pants, laughing :D
Michael Jordan
Love it Man....Just love it!
Crafty.
😁😁😁
The biggest difference between a native and non-native speaker of any language is that the non-native speaker is terrified of making usage errors and the native speaker doesn't care how many errors they make.
Agreed.
You aren't worried too much until you writte something on internet :v
You're right but not always. For example russian speakers often DO care about these mistakes. I know the rules of talking and writing but it's often easier to say/write smth the wrong way or some words and expressions simply sound to me better when they are told incorrectly.
I hate agrues in russian language SO MUCH because the opponent always tells you that you're wrong or stupid just because "you don't know your own language. go and learn it before talking to me". WHAT THE HELL
Until they have a high confidence and fluency in English, then they make the same mistakes native speakers do. Because oftentimes these "incorrect" forms are more appropriate for casual circumstances, and using the correct form implies more formality or snobbishness than intended, or that the speaker is non-native using textbook English.
I'm not native but over the years I've picked up on more colloquial English and you won't see me writing "though" or "through" anytime soon (I say "tho" & "thru" for less snobbiness).
Recently I've also just gone with "aswell", "everytime", "everyday", "alright", because spelling them apart is maybe traditionally correct, but it hurts my eyes.
Nobody needs prescriptive grammar. As long as everyone understands you without troubles and what you're saying makes some sense, go ahead. Except for "you're"/"your" (honestly just say "ur", easy fix) and "there"/"their"/"they're" ("ther" could maybe work), those annoy me a lot.
Maybe one day English is ready for spelling "ought" as "aut".
P.S., I totally say "doe" for "dough"
This is writing only, but it drives me up the wall when people write "loose" when they mean "lose".
does it make you loose your mind?
@@chilicrab0830 😭😭
I can’t spell those right but I’ll never mess “their there and they’re” up idk how ppl mess that up they’re all so different they have nothing in common besides a little pronunciation
@@just1frosty516 ,
I google stuff all the time, especially on my cell phone
Spelling errors are very common. It's especially bad when a tattoo is involved.
Unfortunately, once you learn to recognise such mistakes you are doomed to endure eternal irritation. You will hear them everywhere.
Salvation comes from learning to be a descriptivist instead.
@@GoodWoIf Never. I did not read a 400 pages long 19th century book on the correct usage of shall and will for nothing!
Seriously though (yes I really did read it, it's called The Irish Difficulty, if you're curious) I can't understand why people don't take pleasure in the constant refinement of their own speech. Be it their native tongue or a foreign one. It's a craft like any other, the same as --through practise and dedication-- learning, for instance, to make one's fingers dance dexterously through the keyboard, and as a consequence, playing beautifully and with virtuosity.
And believe me I do understand the processes through which languages 'evolve' into different ones. Namely erosion, metaphor, analogy &c. In a sense, I am just hopeless. I do accept (cope with, rather) that this 'evolution' is natural, more or less inevitable, and not always pernicious (such as when it results in new morphology.)
However, it's my view that, at least in Indo-European languages, the prevailing trend has been towards simplification. And that, as result (rather than despite!) of speakers of IE languages being *too* literate --some of us, anyway-- they are much less likely to reinterpret and grammatically bleach words. This results in a constant erosion with no new morphology to counteract it.
Therefore, for the sake of upholding a widely understood standard, and also because, especially if there is a body, such as the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, which us Spanish speakers are blessed to have, it creates a situation where all the busywork of finding etymologies, more stylistically appropriate, and in generally, well wrought and thought out alternatives, is already done by eminences in the language (in our case, since the 1700s!).
About the 'prestige' (or lack thereof) of certain dialects, I consider it to be largely well deserved.
I called that "cursed by knowledge".
@@GoodWoIf Exactly; unless people are emotionally invested in finding fault with others, in which case prescriptivism is just perfect.
at that point im certain they arent grammatical errors but become real accents lmao
I've been a language snob my whole life, but there's one important thing I always keep in mind: Language is what people speak, not what scholars say they should speak.
The purpose of language is to facilitate communication. For example, when someone uses a double negative, it's true that they are saying the opposite of what they intend. However, if the listener understands the intended meaning - and they usually do - then communication is achieved.
I can listen to an illiterate child and understand what he is trying to say even though his sentences are imprecise and poorly constructed. Communication is achieved. On the other hand, American lawmakers write lengthy, perfectly constructed, precisely worded laws that nobody can understand - not citizens, not judges, and usually not even the knuckleheads who vote them into law. Communication is not achieved.
Language is dictated by usage, ie it changes over time. Go back 500 years and you'd have a hard time understanding folk in England, even going from London to Birmingham would confuse a Londoner, and the Brummie that they may converse with. A good example is Kipper Tie= Cuppa Tea in the midlands as Noddy Hold will tell you.
When the law is unable to be understood, it is because of lack of precision in written language, or lack of forethought on the side of the lawmakers. That means it requires a combination of two things: better understanding of the area of the law (which is obtained by studying and learning from examples to understand what complications may arise with the way a law is written at the current moment, in order to learn how to improve it) and more precise language. If arbitration and abstruseness is allowed in legal writing, we'll have problems.
There are various forms of communication. I work with children so I know fully well the value of speaking without grammatical perfection in order to communicate more clearly simple intentions. But when we're discussing more advanced things, clarity with as few uncertainties as possible should always be sought after.
In other words: facilitating communication is not the ONLY purpose of language. It also has the purpose of specifying communication and making it more precise. Imagine natural science schools where the meaning of "atom" is unclear because hey, people just use it as a vague term to define "like really small things, dude".
Or, to put it in a more commonplace context: their, they're and there. These are three entirely different concepts, and without a doubt, people know what they mean and what the differences are; if someone writes "it's there chocolate" I'm pretty sure they still MEAN that the chocolate belongs to 'them', and not that it's a chocolate that has the attribute of being 'there'.
Which is why many people failing to use these three words correctly (which is not the same as, say, colloquial or dialectal variation) will never result in the change of grammatical rules or word definition. Because all three concepts are necessary to be able to specify using language something in reality we are trying to describe as precisely as possible. The spelling and the sound of the words are definitely subject to change, but never the need to be able to differentiate between these very REAL concepts.
"Scholars" aka linguists don't correct usage or determine what's proper. People on the internet do
Enny Nathaniel Jole
Way to entirely ignore every argument I made and in fact make no point whatsoever. I'm impressed.
The quadruple negative is even cooler than the double one:
"I'm sitting over here on Parchman farm,
Ain't never done no man no harm."
I ain't got one, and I hain't never gonna git one, neither! Yep, some people actually use hain't .
The triple negative "I ain't never seen nothing like that" is the absolute worst I've ever encountered
I haven't never heard no-one not use that
"Absolute worst" is a double superlative and probably wrong.
Man, I've seen some shit... but I ain't never seen no shit like this!
Being understood is the ultimate goal, regardless of mistakes.
Very true.
Of course being understood is important. But language is more than just being understood. Have you ever noticed some people "have a way with words," or are very interesting to talk to? Or you read a famous quotation that has a poignant meaning for you? The real problem in being understood is usually when you are a non-native speaker speaking to a native speaker. If you're understood, at whatever level, it's an accomplishment. Native speaker to native speaker is really a lot more than "being understood." It's also about being judged positively - or negatively, and it is often quite non-conscious but influences the interaction.
@@jaystone4816And this is why we have English lessons for English speakers.
Irregardless 😊
@@tmblighty917I came here for this comment. Thank you 🙏🏻
I find it ironic that literally actually means figuratively now.
Ironic but interesting. It enhances the beauty of the English Language actually.
@@ahmadzulfiqaridris3681 literally
Add a tiny little comma and: "I find it ironic that literally, actually means figuratively now." Like, "I've actually died and gone to heaven!" And people have been saying "What the actual f**k" for a little while now too. Figuratively speaking, that is. :-D
No it doesn't
Me personally I dont use literally unless it is exactly how it's described in reality
English can be hard sometimes.
It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though...
Nice expression, whoever made that up.
You forgot bough, slough, cough, and hiccough haha
I was reading (though)s all the way! :D
tru tuff turra tots doh. fixed!
Had to read that three times.
1900s valley girl: um
80s valley girl: like um
2010s valley girl: um like literally
LOL... same with " Really " ! (giggles)
Some may call this junk me I call them treasure well um like literally it’s kinda so hard not to use fillers
That literally made me laugh out loud.
I hate fillers. I've worked hard to purge my speech of fillers, because that's how much I despise them. Especially "like."
Yes!
I'm a native English speaker and college educated. Some of the mistakes you noted are really English in transition to a new standard, but some are definitely made by native speakers who are poorly educated or - let's face it, educated but a lot didn't sink in. When you speak or write, you convey more than just the obvious content of the communication. You convey your educational level, family background, sometimes your regional origin, occupational level and your general intelligence. We all make these types of personal assessment consciously or unconsciously, and they do have an impact on how you are perceived by others, positively or negatively. Like it or not, that's been substantiated by a great deal of social research, and it can subtly or otherwise impact how you're treated in a variety of different situations.
I've noticed a general decline over many decades in the speaking and writing competency of many native English speakers in the United States up to the present time. So have many businesses and institutions of higher learning. I'm sure there are many reasons for this, but what concerns me is this: a level of competency in your native language is crucial for the ability to understand the modern world and make important decisions about your employment options and lifetime earnings, and the complex social, economic and political issues before us today. Language is thought, and democracy depends on an informed and thoughtful electorate. When your native language competency is blunted, so is your ability to deal with the world.
That being said, having studied French for a number of years, I have a great deal of empathy for any non-native speakers of English learning the language. It can be a truly humbling and frustrating experience to feel like a 5-year old child instead of an adult when you attempt to communicate with a native speaker when you are new to learning their language.
As a person having learnt Italian, studying Russian and Spanish (and Latin, a bit), and a native Portuguese speaker and a person who speaks English at the level of a native speaker, I very much concord.
I get frustrated with native ENG speakers when I'll be speaking in perfect English. I consider Western USA speaks a creole of English, and British people are de-latinizing. I'm studying most romance languages and find them much more systematic and better due to inflected verbs and wished I had them. I have noticed apparently I speak fairly latin-based in vocabulary which makes it hard to understand for the less conservative dialects of English. For context a bit of hold overs like a'prefixing, double nouns, than a dose of just more helper verbs inbetween words show up. Including I swear Western USA and NORTHERN forget to use their articles constantly!!!
Wow, well said. It will be interesting to see how American English continues to degrade in the coming decades.
Thanks for covering these common mistakes.
As a child, I was often mocked by my schoolmates for using correct grammar. (They called me Mr. Perfect English) As a result, I didn't fit in very well. Over time, I was vindicated and was consoled by achieving better test scores than many of my peers.
Learning not to correct others has proved to be a valuable decision unless someone asks me to do so. I'm not always right, and I make mistakes from time to time. It's probably better to allow others the freedom to express themselves as they see fit.
Living languages are dynamic and will change over time. So, even though I find considerable value in established norms, while living in glass houses, we should take care not to throw stones. :)
Agreed 100%. Correct yourself, but let others be free to make their mistakes unless they want you to correct them (or unless they make a really embarrassing mistake).
beautiful
Amen!
Damn! Your schoolmates are very dumb! United States should have educated more American to learn proper language! They think is American English is far superior than British English! This is crazy! They are the same language! People nowadays are dumb, I would rather talked to the animals and hiding in the forest all alone for eternity yeah! No exciting! But At least I don’t meet dumb people. I’m Canadian! i would Rather living in the Forest than the dumb English speakers! I hope anglophones world convinced everyone anglophone country to speak real English not street slangs or internet meme language. So anglophone governments are very dumb and they only concern is capitalism and Liberals even money! I hope real English become popular in the future! This is why preposterously what English become dead language! I swear Spanish and chinese would took over English in the future! I sincerely hope you read my comment!
Also probably your schoolmates jealous of you or the education system sucks! Or the dumb Americans think their English is far superior than British English. Remember, They are the same language just like Mexican Spanish to Castilian Spanish ( European Spanish) even Romanian and Moldavans as well Malay and Indonesian
"Would of" instead of "would have" shits me to tears.
Yeah, it's annoying af
Fortunately, it's not as common as there/their/there're (the latter being more or less inexistant in native English speakers).
Antoine Chauvet In my generation in Australia, I'd say more people get it wrong than right.
It annoys me even more when people emphasise the "of" in speech, (i.e. instead of "wood-hav" or "wood-əv", they say "wood-ov").
Literally.
A native English speaker here. In my experience, the object form of "who" ("whom") is increasing not used. I've even seen this occur in articles published by notable major media sources, such as NPR and The Economist. Given that trend, native English speakers might soon commonly ask "For *who* the bell tolls".
Since you're so concerned over what you deem correct language use, you shouda woulda coulda also used the adverb "increasingly" in lieu of the adjective/progressive 'increasing'. Just sayin'.
I will always remember lunch in Debrecen when a Croat (who was there to learn Hungarian) quizzed me on the use of "whom" in English. After explaining its correct use, I added if he wanted to sound like a native speaker he shouldn't use it :-(
The phrase is 'for whom the bells toll' with 'whom' being correct. I suspect you are trying to make a funny, but I do not get it. haha
***** You are misinformed. 'Who the bell tolls for' is not correct. You do not need my permission, however, to think that it is or to associate with people that agree with you.
Me speakee Englishee from birthplacee, missy. It seems you are climbing a high horse to talk to me yet you want to wallow in the low places. English has rules. You may choose to ignore them, but that is what you are doing. They remain rules. I have used 'whom' many times. I try to use it each time it is appropriate to do so.
I was taught NOT 100 years ago that whom was the correct form for an objective case. i have never heard of a construction of 'who the bell tolls for' Note that in the parent comment above, the writer is also trying to make a funny when he speculated that English speakers might say, 'for who the bell tolls' .
You may choose to surround yourself with non-standard English, but I would not want to join them. I fear this country (that's the US of A) is rapidly splitting into thugs and swells. I want to be among the swells. A good approach is to speak like one.
"Thinking on their feet." Idioms most be the hardest thing for learners to understand in any language.
Most or must? ☝️
Idioms are indeed the hardest thing for learners of a new language. They are expressions that are "natural" and understandable to native speakers, but strange or even bizarre to those learning a new language.
Yes, I absolutely agree. While learning English idioms, I was so very confused. And now Russian idioms… oh my, they are on a level of their own… Also, just to brush up, thinking on one’s feet signifies thinking as things are happening, correct?
@@nkbm3120 Sort of, it means thinking spontaneously, in the moment
In Japanese, the correct form of ～る verbs such as 食べる（to eat) expressing ability is ～られる (食べられる = taberareru = edible, or [I] can eat it), but a couple of decades ago young people started saying ～れる, like 食べれる "tabereru". It was clearly wrong grammatically, sounded really weird to me, and like many I used to frown upon it when I heard someone say it. Now I say it myself all the time. It so happens that ～られる takes the same form in the passive voice (be eaten, etc.), so ~れるexpresses ability more distinctively. I would say it's an example of evolution that occurred in the Japanese language recently.
I prefer shorter words LOL
It's funny you mentioned bc I have been confused about that. I learned Japanese when I lived there for 15 yrs being half Japanese. I always thought that taberareru is the right form but I hardly even heard anyone say it, so I spoke it like everybody else did---tabereru. But it sounded weird to me. Thanks for the clarification. I am going back to Japan for retirement and it is going to be another battle to relearn the language!
This isn't so much of a grammar mistake as it is a colloquialism and shortening of a word for convenience sake. This form can also be used in very polite speech in Japanese.
@@pluviophile1988 good info. Thank you.
As a japanese learner I find it confusing between two rareru, also saseru , saserareru and sareru :(
My favorite is “human bean”. I saw that one yesterday.
Unless He ment " human bean..er" hispanic lol
😂😂😂😂😂
a real human bean. & a real hero
"Lisa loves you too, as a person... as a human bean."
-Johnny
LoL I LITERALLY died laughing
As non-native speaker I always found funny that people have trouble with they`re, their and there.
Maybe is funny because many of non-natives like us have studied many years to know what's wrong and what's right just to find that many native speakers make mistakes with simple things like that
With native speakers, the sound preceeded the grammer.
And I find it very funny that so many people can't be bothered to start a sentence with a capital letter and end it with a punctuation sign. No offense.
WhiteScorpio2 I suppose that CZcams comments are VERY informal English.
Makes sense.
As a non-native speaker number 8 is very hard for me as well. In my first language German there are adjectives and adverbs, of course, but there is only a difference from grammatical point of view. The word is usually the same. For example:
Dieser Tanz ist gut. = This (kind of) dance is good.
Ich tanze gut. = I (can) dance well.
This is why I don't feel bad when making grammatical mistakes in other languages. Deep down, I know that I make fewer mistakes in those languages than I do in my native one.
🙄
People are more forgiving when non-native speakers make mistakes. They don't expect you to be perfect.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to improve though, in all of them!
I of bean speaking english four almost 18 years now. I are do excellent.
Ну, конечно... : )
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
This will mess up translators.
Lmao
As non native English speaker and a man who took classes of English I have to say I've never even heard about subjunctive mood. Sounds like something to fail people on English exams..
I totally agree with you 👍
I didn't understand his example with go/goes but it is strange not to hear about subjunctive mood because it is in every English textbook.
English speaker here.
English is a mixed language. Some of the rules, doesnt make sense.
A E I O U and sometimes Y??? Sometimes????
I before E except after C... uhhh... Except these 96 words
A
agreeing
albeit
Alzheimer's
ancient
atheism
B
beige
Beijing
being
C
caffeine
concierge
D
deicide
deify
deign
deindustrialize
deity
disagreeing
dreeing
dreidel
E
eigen-
eight
either
F
Fahrenheit
feign
feisty
foreign
foreseeing
forfeit
freight
G
geitost
gesundheit
H
heifer
height
heinous
heir
heist
herein
I
inveigle
K
kaleidoscope
keister
L
lei
leisure
M
madeira
meiosis
N
neigh
neighbor
neighbour
neither
O
obeisance
onomatopoeia
P
peine
poltergeist
protein
R
reign
reignite
reimburse
rein
reindeer
reindustrialize
reinforce
reinstall
reinvest
reisolate
reissue
S
safeish
scarabaeid
schlockmeister
science
seeing
seignorial
seine
seismic
seize
sensei
sheik
skein
sleigh
sleight
sovereign
species
stein
surfeit
surveillance
T
their
theism
therein
V
veil
vein
W
weigh
weight
weir
weird
wherein
whereinto
X
xanthein
Z
zeitgeist
zootheism
I don't think it's taught to children. I don't remember being taught it. Then again, I can't remember what the fuck participles are. I remember sitting in my 6th grade language arts class when we were learning it, but I can't remember what the hell the lecture was. Of course, it's a miracle I can remember anything at all from a 10-year-old memory.
xGrandArcher That's quite complicated, and you're right that subjunctive mood makes people to fail exams.
"Honey, I shrunk the kids." [BUZZER] "Honey, I *_shrank_* the kids."
GLAD SOMEONE ELSE REALISES THAT.
Get thee to Merriam-Webster, where both are accepted.
lol i say shrunked
What?
Lol
Also, I think English kind of lends itself to frequent mistakes due to its bizarre spelling rules, numerous irregularities, and its nature in general as a Teutonic-Italic-Hellenic (et al) hybrid language.
what's Teutonic?
I looked it up :)
About your first assertion: know eat dozen 'ot.
A bit of an odd statement seeing as almost all modern languages take much from others. English is definitely an extreme case though, but at its core it’s Germanic with around 50% Romance language thrown in.
@@tfan2222it’s definitely not 50% romance, because given that it has 4% Hellenic and 22% Anglican (native), that means it’s more Romance than Germanic. Oh wait, it is more Romance than Germanic! (English should not be considered Germanic, it should be an exception or should be an acceptedly very far-off Latin language)
I ain't gave no money to nobody.
Love triple negatives
That sounds really badass.....
My brain has replanted its whole existence.
Where are you from 😂
Nonstandard English moment nonstandard English moment
What ain't
I don't never make those mistakes, literally.
god damnit , you done so bad.
The irony of your statement! It's as if you just made an obvious mistake on purpose, isn't it?!
*you're
+Christian Shelton Uhhh...That was the point.
***** I realised that, Captain Obvious! That is the reason why I commented in the first place. If I took him seriously, I would have corrected him; which is something that I never did. All I said was that his comment was purposley ironic. The fact that you fail to see that I am contributing to the joke is a reason why you should take back your comment.
Well done, Paul. I am now retired after teaching EFL for over 40 years and I'm very impressed with your videos. They are an excellent resource,
In Tagalog, a lot of people always uses "ng" instead of "nang" for appropriate moment. That's also true for "daw" and "raw" and "din" and "rin".
And in written Tagalog, people would combine two different particles like "ka" and "na" would be "kana". It's also true for "kapa", "naba", and in some cases, "palang".
I often type "kana" and "palang" because they act like their own particles in my head. These types of phenomena are really interesting.
Although I personally decided to start consciously distinguishing "ng" & "nang" and the r/d pairs because even in formal writing I used to confuse them.
Thank you for clarifying "lay" and "lie". I am a native speaker (American) and have always had difficulty with this one.
It was so informative!! I had always been confused by it too.
Crystal of Twin Star Enterprises -- So nice to see a mannerly reply and that we North Americans are open to learning something! Hugs from Canada.
I didn't really understand it until I learned German--legen and liegen correspond directly with the transitive verb being regular (regular-ish in English, as the spelling of laid is irregular though the pronunciation is the same as if it were the regular layed) and the intransitive one being irregular. But I still struggle with the past tense of lie being the same as the present tense of lay. Whyyyyyyyyyy????? If you were designing language with the goal of people getting it wrong, the is the dumb sh!! you would build into the language.
@ Crystal of Twin Star Enterprises You've earned my respect! A non-native speaker here. We non-native English speakers make mistakes in our mother tongue too. LOL. BTW, in our culture brilliant and wise people are always humble, and they appreciate any piece of knowledge and don't mind standing corrected.
I had some minor problems with this when I was at middle school when I studied English as a second language 😆
Me fail English? That's unpossible.
Ralph from the simpsons?
Funnily enough, "unpossible" used to be absolutely correct in Elizabethan England...
I are the bestest at a englishings
I is a bestest on a english language, That are right
You need for get English of your proper
Like I
I love this video!
As both a native speaker of English and an Australian, I feel like your point at 3:58 attributes an unlikely turn of phrase to us.
This wouldn't represent the way a typical Aussie would address the situation; they would say "he needs to go to the hospital".
Absolutely true
I never knew “ lain” was even a word. Damn.
It's a Canadian word, American don't use that.
Good one! LOL
On a slightly more serious note: but... non-native speakers use that.
We were taught how to use the past tense and past participle of basic irregular verbs when we were in school.
"He lay on the bed" sounds like something out of a classic novel, not like casual spoken English today. To my native ears, it sounds too formal. Using Laid instead of lain for the past tense of lie is probably the most common "mistake" even among highly educated native speakers because of how it sounds to most of our ears. . . Lol
@@seanleith5312 It’s not a “Canadian word”. I’m American and I’ve heard it used, read it in books, and used it in speech.
@@ahmadzulfiqaridris3681 well, the only thing about English i picked up is that tenses are impossible to comprehend
You forgot about the confusion with the homophones "to" and "too." Those are equally as infuriating to see.
Yeah, I always see 'That's to far' or 'There are too of them'. I also hate then vs than being mixed up.
Those two homophones?
2homophonic4me
Yeah those to mistakes are made way two many times. It makes me want too die.
We'll put ya in you're grave, even if your still coffin, wearin a twotoo.
You sound foreign-ish because you have great diction.
Speakers tend to speak faster rather than clearly.
No, this is not true. He is NOT native english. He is a foreign english speaker. He does not have received pronunciation.
He lacks poetry; with short, clipped tones. He does not allow any syllables to overlap as in correct, native (rp) English.
He does pronounce the Canadian "out/about/house" - since he IS Canadian.
@@mandowarrior123 received pronounciation is not native. It is literally in the name. It is taught aka received pronounciation, not native to anyone.
@@mandowarrior123
He's Canadian, lol
Here in the UK there's a trend of mixing "our" and "are". As in " are house". Truly does my head in!
The most common mistake in Turkish is the spelling of "Yanlış" and "Yalnız". "Yanlış(Mistake, Wrong)" comes from the verb "Yanılmak(to be wrong)" so the "n" comes before "l". "Yalnız(Lonely, Only, sometimes used to contrast like "but" or "however")" comes from the adjective "Yalın(Without any additions, bare, also is the name of the Nominative case in Turkish)" so the "l" comes before "n".
Had no idea the turcos do that stuff
The three flags on display at the beginning imply that native speakers from the United Kingdom do not make mistakes. This is, of course, correct.
Finally, somebody got it! 😄
I wish it was. Were. Wait. What?
Well some people in the UK do these mistakes lol the cockneys does them but not the snobs of course
Cornishmonkey
Especially, when they are mistakes imported ready-made from the USA.
Xmas greetings to Kernow!
Paul meant people from UK don't speak English. LOL
this video should be titled "watch this before writing comments"
why would people leave comments without watching the video? I know they do that with politically themed videos for which they have a preconceived opinion.
SnowBoarder SLC Because it's 2018 and people love to troll...
searcherer "This video should have been titled:"* 'Watch This Before Writing a Comment.'*
By four or five minutes into the video, I was ready to pause it and compose an angry screed, which would have simply restated the conclusions and questions from the end of the video. My answer to the question asked is, that all of these issues are innovations not mistakes. Had I commented before hearing his conclusions I would have looked foolish.
That's a lot coming from a guy who doesn't capitalize his sentences.
Misusing "literally" (literalmente) is common in Portuguese too.
I appreciate how brisk your videos are. No fluffy padding like so many other channels have wasting our time.
Thanks! I always prepare a script and try to keep it tight.
I’m French and there’s a mistake pretty common in everyday language: confusion about the preposition "à". Prepositions are small words that connect two parts of a sentence. The most commonly used prepositions in French are à, chez, de, en, entre, jusque, hors, pour, sans, vers. The meaning of "à" varies depending on the sentence (in, to, at...).
1) Confusion between the homophones "a" (third person singular present tense of « avoir ») and "à" appears quite frequently in writing. You must write:
« Il part à New York pour ses études » = "He moves to New York for his studies"
« Il part à sept heures » = "He comes at seven o’clock »
« Il a eu beaucoup de cadeaux » = "Il had/got a lot of presents"
2) To express possession/belonging, confusion between "à" and "de" are also frequent, both in writing and oral.
-The preposition 'de' is used with a name or noun in place of the English ’s and s’:
« La lettre de Guillaume » = "Guillaume’s letter"
« La chambre de leurs parents » = "Their parents’ bedroom"
-The preposition 'à' is used with the verb « être » in front of stressed pronouns in order to emphasize the ownership of the object:
« À qui est ce livre ? » or «À qui appartient ce livre ? » = "Whose book is this?" or "Who this book belongs to?"
« Il est/C’est à Marie » or « Il/Ça appartient à Marie » = "It’s Marie’s" or "It belongs to Marie"
« Ce livre est à Marie » = "This book is Marie’s"
« Le livre est à elle » = "The book is hers"
« C’est un livre à elle » = "It’s a book of hers"
« Ce livre est à lui/Guillaume», « Non, c’est à elle/Marie » = "This books is his/Guillaume’s" "No, it’s hers/Marie’s"
So in familiar French, instead of hearing « C’est le livre de Marie », « Le livre de Marie est... », it’s common to hear « C’est le livre à Marie », « Le livre à Marie est... », which is grammatically incorrect.
3) Senseless combination between possessive determiner (my, your...) and possessive pronoun (mine, yours...) as an emphatic way is indiscriminately used, specially by young French speakers.
« Ma chérie à moi » = ~My~ sweetheart ~of mine~ (an immature way for "MY sweetheart", "My sweetheart and only mine", "My very own sweetheart"...)
Just saying, this is one reason why French has been challenging to me.
Don't forget "à" vs "dans" vs "en".
I once corrected a french guy his grammar when I was speaking to him in French (I'm Canadian) and I was baffled until I realized that grammatical errors occurring when native speakers speak the language is not an English exclusive thing (my French is not good at all, I can barely converse with it)
I had never got to the part of "à qui est ...." no wonder you confuse à with de sometimes! In Spanish it's always "de" for possession so I never thought French would have a distinction. Good to know.
À qui est ce livre == To whom is this book == To whom does this book belong.
The subjunctive mood in English is dying out, which is a shame, because I think it's useful. You were spot on about these being very, very common.
Notice that he didn't even mention "who" vs. "whom." I think that one's a lost cause, only used in the most formal of writing if at all.
Personally, I couldn't care less if someone used 'who' when they meant 'whom'. But when people use 'whom' when 'who' was appropriate grinds my gears, because they're only doing it to sound intelligent. Like "Whom was that at the door?" Bitch, please...saying 'whom' doesn't make you smart.
Where you use "they" and "he", you use "who;. where you use "them" and "him", you use "whom". For example - do you say "they for, he for and who for"? Or "For them, for him, and for whom"? I repeat - yes, it really is that simple...
Joan Hammond Yep, it's pretty simply actually. And I had to learn German to learn it. German actually has three versions of who: wer, wen, and wem. (Not counting wessen or whose...) Wer is who, and wen/wem is whom. And it's use is even simpler than who vs whom in English. Wer is nominative, or the subject. Wen is accusative, or the direct object. Wem is dative, or the indirect object. (I know, it doesn't sound easy, but you have to decline nouns in German, so knowing their part of speech is imperative.) It was only learning how and when to use those that I found myself using whom correctly.
Exactly! In English, the Dative and Ablative are the indirect objects of the verb, but the direct objects of the preposition, and so take the Accusative - or Objective - case. That's from learning Latin, not German!
"Lie" vs "lay," oddly enough, is also present in Danish ("ligge" vs "lægge"). We have another similar one: "sit" vs "put down" ("sidde" vs "sætte"). Many people, especially where I am from, just can't figure out what to use when.
"Ligge" and "legge", and "sitte" and "sette" in Norwegian.
As an English speaker in the mideastern US, a definitely do most of these things. I also frequently shorten "going to go" to "gonna go" or "gonn go," with the last one using more of a guttural sound and more rounded Oh vowels.
There are other things that I frequently change, but that's one of the main ones.
Putting apostrophes in the wrong words, like plurals.
That's one of my top pet peeves! I cannot believe how widespread that idiocy is!!! 🙈
Or the opposite... completely omitting punctuation (for people who grew up in the age of text messaging)
Cant I put apostrophe's in plural's?
@@AugustoFeyh It's not correct English grammar.
@@daragildea7434 Oh, I know. I was just kidding. Sorry for not being clear.
I speak 2 languages. Bad English and Texan.
Daniel 'Dain' Earnest tiger 1 or king tiger ? 🤣
StuG 3 for life!
vinncent Lefebvre
Daniel 'Dain' Earnest The jagdpanther was not that bad !
Daniel 'Dain' Earnest
*morphs into Texas*
WhATs tHe diFFeRenCe?
Hello, I'm from the Philippines and many of us are afraid to make mistakes when we speak in english because we might get judged by our fellow Filipinos who are very particular in grammar. Indeed many Filipinos are grammar nazi that's why even though many of us want to practice english to become fluent but because of some people that will make fun of us because of our grammar mistakes it turns out our willingness and passion will disappear
We use literally he same way in French
Are you sure you're from the United States've America?
No, I'm very unsure of that, because I'm from Canada.
And I say that with a smile :)
Literally has been used hyperbolically for a long time, Mark Twain, for example, used the word Literally to mean figuratively in Tom Sawyer
Why do we call peopre from Canada "Canadians" instead of "Canadans"?
Why do we say "Toothbrush" instead of "Teethbrush"?
Why do we say "Chicken Nuggets/Wings/Sandwitch" instead of "Poultry Nuggets/Wings/Sandwitch"?
The giveaway for Canadians is not so much "eh" or "about" as it is the way they say the letter "O" as in dawlers...awbviously. I had you pegged from the start.
I would expect that some native speakers of all languages make mistakes. One mistake that annoys me is the misuse of apostrophes. For example, when talking about a period of time, many people write the 60's. This incorrectly makes it a possessive. The correct way to write it is the '60s, where the apostrophe indicates an abbreviation in which the 19 (or 18 or 17) is left out.
You are correct but then... This is English. Since the age of the internet which has made the world very small. Even Langfocus is outdated. English has evolved very quickly. Yes people still complain on the misuse of their, there and they're, (myself included) And they're correct, everyone should. But over how we spell decades? You're correct it is '70s or '80s etc but its now universally accepted to say 90's or 50's. Once something is universally accepted, it means that it has been assimilated and you should know the English language reputation of stealing/assimilating words.
In fact some of the sayings he was criticising in this video where he was attacking some words.... that word would've been fine if you changed another word. Example: "I feel really badly about that" was slammed quite rightly because "badly" wasn't correct however, if 'feel' was changed to 'felt' then it would've been fine.
CrazyInWeston true in some cases but you have to remember English is not a forever evolving written language. it has (and always will have) set grammatical rules. it is not evolving.
@@benjames7932 Not true. One of the most referred to authorities on written style and grammar in American English is the Chicago Manual of Style. Over many years as a writer/editor, I saw rules change and, sometimes, change back. Now, periods and commas are always inside quotation marks. When I was in school in the '50s and '60s, that wasn't the case. And the protocols for end punctuation in quoted material are different in the UK.
@@CrazyInWeston I would say "devolved" is a better word. I have a mini stroke every time someone thinks every word that ends with an "s" needs an apostrophe. Especially college grads.
@@ulysses1904 You could say "devolved". However English swaps and changes over time. I'm not dismissing you, you can be quite and very correct to say that, but then a few years later it may/may not have reverted. Hence my use of the word "evolve".
As a teacher of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), I think that our association should award you a medal or something. Every time I point out one of these mistakes to my students, they complain that their favourite influencer speaks like that and s/he can't be wrong as s/he's a native speaker of English. This video will come in handy next time they play that card on me.
Well, from a linguist’s descriptive point of view, they’re right. Colloquial varieties of English aren’t objectively wrong, they’re just colloquial. The question is what kind of English those students should learn. If they just want to make friends, or if they want to use English with tourists like renting out surfboards or something, then sure, speak colloquial English. But for anything more formal or professional, it’s better that they know standard formal English.
There are some things in this video, though, that are archaic even in standard formal English. I included them to make the video debatable.
@@Langfocus Those are precisely the issues we discuss in class when the opportunity arises but, instead of presenting the points myself and sending them off to ponder, I'll be using your video to initiate the discussion. The fun begins when we start drawing parallels between English and Greek. When my budding middle-schoolers realise that double negatives were unacceptable in Ancient Greek but are a requirement in Modern Greek, they immediately turn into bad-ass middle-schoolers. ;-)
It’s funny that the “lay” and “lie” confusion is also present in Danish and is commonly used incorrectly:
Let’s lie on the bed = Lad os LIGGE på sengen
Let’s lay the laundry on the bed = Lad os LÆGGE vasketøjet på sengen
What makes it even more commonly misused is how close these two words sound. But I guess English and Danish sharing a common language ancestor is part of the reason.
Thanks for this great info, Osten. By the way, it has been said that there are countless Danish people who speak very good English. I take it for granted that Danes of this type do not have trouble using the past tense and past participle of 'lay' and both senses of 'lie' (i.e. laid-laid, lied-lied & lay-lain).
@@zulfiqarkhan8167 It’s hard to say as I grew up speaking Danish and English due to my father being Australian - But in general I would say that even though the Danes have a very high level of English these kind of grammatical issues would only be relevant for the very proficient part of the population (maybe 25%). The rest of the population would not bother or be aware of this and would most likely use the wrong verb.
I don't know if I've improved my listening skills or you just speak amazingly clear, literally. Thank you.
That's true. You speak very clearly.
I have got the impression the program is presented in Portuguese. He is fully clear for me.
I can’t stand when people mix up “you’re” and “your”, or “there”, “their”, and “they’re”, or “effect” and “affect”, or “then” and “than”.
I can't stand when you bully those people who do that
It's so easy to make mistakes while typing on the phone
I will spell stuff without correcying myself
I wonce wans a boy my name was chaf and I had funnb has child
I once was a boy my name was chad and I had fun as a child
Do you see how easy it is to mess up
@Evryatis I mean most people who mess it up probably know the proper way to say it they just dont. theres debates on this all the time, for example i missed the apostrophe like in 3 words in this sentence alone.
Sit down then
I am not your sexy Nørwegiæn You shouldn’t be okay with writing improperly just because people sometimes bully people about their improper English.
It’s called proof reading and I’m not sure why people don’t do it because it only takes a second of your day. If you type an email to your boss the way you just did, I think you’re destined to lose points with them. So it’s not about bullying, it’s about appearing not stupid in times that matter, and everything else like CZcams comments are practice for those times.
I promise you if it comes down to just you and one other person for a job position, the one who writes better is getting that job. There’s no arguing with that.
Yeah their so anoying
I learnt French orally, so, I learnt it with French mistakes, makes me more of a native speaker!
Dont even get chu
Learned
@@giggles2302 No, in British English it's learnt!
If you learnt French by ear, then it was AURALLY. Orally is by speaking.
@@rahb1 Yep!
Oh, and I love double negation. In English it is infused with a certain degree of pathos or irony when used by an educated person, but in Spanish and Russian it is as normal as can be. Double negation will be the new standard English. But I won’t live long enough to see its demise and lament it:)
Educated speakers can purposefully "drop down" for effect, because it increases their range of expression as you describe,s but they know the difference. Unfortunately too many people today aren't even aware the "drop down" is their normal mode of speech. Of course Americans think everything the majority does is automatically "right," when democracy is really about political equality and the rule of law, and never about anything else.
I literally never make none of them mistakes what he talked about in that video
i see what u did there LOL
Bobito Lol I see what you did
*in that _there_ video
dimbulb
Bobito Accidentally on purpose, you have literally made two grammatical errors & one semantic misuse of a term:
"..never make *any* of *the* mistakes he talked about..."
Semantic misuse of "*literally*".
Me two.
Misuse of the word literally makes me FIGURATIVELY insane
Hey DHHQ...*metaphorically :D
"Figuratively is also an adjective, but its meaning is quite different from literally. Figuratively is defined as based on or making use of figures of speech; metaphorical. So while literally means free from any metaphor or allegory, figurative deals specifically with these kinds of figures of speech."
Actually
Im not sure you can misuse the word literally when writing given that literally means as written.
Meanings change. Accept it or not, words will change, you cant do anything about it.
Get help
I love your videos ! Thanks so much for all the joy you bring to all who love languages and linguistics! What a treasure trove your channel is.
I'm sure you know and it's probably been pointed out already in the comments , but the Oxford English Dictionary included the definition of "metaphorically" for the term "literally" as correct English usage a few years ago.
“Stative verbs”
My blood ran cold and goosebumps covered my back as I remembered the amount of time I spent reading and then attempting to understand Vendler’s classification of verbs…
Hi (sorry for my bad English)
And you grammar.
We all grammar when we verb our nouns.
+Ziyad England*
+
pisse3000 dude you should apologise for your bad English too 😂
"I could care less" being used instead of "I couldn't care less".
That's my favorite.
"Then why don't you?"
i couldn't care fewer
lol in Britain we say "I couldn't care less."
Blowfishes You Tube
If it's going to make sense, it's got to be "I couldn't....
The other one means "You care a great deal and so could careless.
'I couldn't" means I don't care at all so I can't care less than nothing.
Trouble is that people speak in cliché and don't LISTEN to themselves.
I don't doubt that it is being used instead but you can't use the fact the it's getting used wrongly and regularly when it just doesn't make sense.
If lots of people were insisting that 1+4 = 6 it wouldn't make them right.
These mistakes are the reason why the language changes over centuries. Nothing to be afraid of, just the natural evolution of how people express themselves.
Langfocus you are the best English native speaker that sounds like a foreigner loooolll
Anyway I am Italian, and we also make mistakes in our own language it is pretty normal...
When I chat with English native speakers they sometimes make mistakes too but I have always thought that I was wrong
And what it's weirder that I tend to copy them...
Copy that!
English is my second language (my first language was Filipino), and I still don't understand how native speakers can confuse "effect" and "affect".
Actually that's one that I find quite difficult. Constantly look it up when writing, but half the time I really can't decide which is correct. Oh, and I'm well educated...
In my accent, they sound the same (uh-fect) and their meanings are fairly similar so when writing, I often forget which is which and have to look it up.
I hear that ESL speakers generally don’t mix up such words once they learn them. I wonder if you pronounce them the same or different. If you pronounce them the same, like I do, how do you keep from mixing them up when writing?
The accentation difference between noun and verb is a problem too: áffect/afféct...
AFF-fekt (noun) uh-FEKT (verb);
efféct...
eh-FEKT (noun and verb)
Microsoft spell check doesn't recognise 'affect'. Because American's use hyperbole so much the word 'impact' has largely replaced the word 'affect'.
It's perfectly simple. They are stupid.
Excellent, as always, Paul. Regarding "literally"--Webster's says that using "literally" hyperbolically dates back to at least 1796. We may have lost the battle on that one.
It’s ok, people who hyperbolize “literally” aren’t smart enough to know history so they won’t know to use that as an argument lol
@@Mattropolis97 Insisting on using words the same way that some idiot five hundred years ago did doesn't make you smart.
Jamien I didn’t though...not sure what you’re talking about. He said that people have been exaggerating “literally” for centuries and I’m saying we should stop, so if anything you’re agreeing with me...🤔
1796 wasn’t “500 years ago” either
@@Mattropolis97 You're saying that you're smart because you don't "hyperbolise literally" and I said that adhering to some dumb rule doesn't make you more intelligent. I directly replied to what you said.
Furthermore: I "hyperbolise literally" all the time, and AMAZINGLY I also study linguistics. Including etymology. So shove it, you elitist ass.
I did not miss anything. You're the one that apparently can't read.
Jamien LOL 😂 No sir, I never said I’m smart. If I don’t know how to read then you seem to know how to read what isn’t there. Classic example of someone looking for a reason to be offended. My first post was a joke ffs.
Once again, all I said was that hyperbolizing “literally” makes one sound less intelligent and people who do it tend to lose credibility in most intelligent conversations. I did not say that people who don’t do it ARE smart. That’s a hellishly stupid assumption to make. “It’s not black so it must be white”. People are stupid for all sorts of reasons. I have a couple more for you specifically:
1.) Who’s the “elitist”? The one who’s claiming to be above the use of words 500 years ago (which according to the op, was the same as it is now), (also 1796 was not 500 years ago) or the guy calling himself a jackass linguist? 🤔
2.) “Hyperbolise” is not a word. Your smartphone could’ve told you that. I guess ignoring the red line furthers you’re elitism? 🤷🏻♂️ (half joking here. I know it’s nit picky)
PS. If we’re saying what we studied then I’m a linguist because I learned 4 foreign languages to an advanced level. In general I could care less about etymology or the history of English because I find communicating with more people to be more useful, rewarding, and eye opening.
The one that always gets me is breath vs. breathe
Breath is a noun: “He took my breath away”
Breathe is a verb: “The dragons breathe fire”
Mostly I see people use breath (noun) when they mean breathe (verb)
But the pronunciation for those two words are different
@@drob517ah yes, I didn’t specify but I meant in written form. I read a fair amount of indie authors and it’s something I see quite often.
It is SO refreshing to hear you highlight all these errors. They can be heard all over the various media genres and in daily life. As a teacher I am ashamed to say I hear and see other teachers make these errors frequently!
thats because these arent mistakes. languages are living, and these 'errors' are not errors, they are simply not considered formal and 'correct' english.
mind you, this 'correct' english is only considered correct because of two reasons:
1) it was considered correct in the past, and although the spoken language has evolved and changed over the time, what we consider 'correct' has not.
and
2) this form of the language was used specifically by higher class people who had the power to decide what was 'correct'.
for example english dialects such as AAVE have many grammatical elements which is considered incorrect simply because its not part of the 'more correct' higher class dialects. a sentence such as 'he be working' is only considered incorrect because upper class people decided it wasnt correct.
hopefully you see the inherent classism, racism, and stupidity within the concept of stating these as errors.
thats not to say that the standard form of english doesnt have use or anything. understanding it and writing in it for more formal situations is important for making yourself understood clearly and without ambiguity. it also makes it actually possible to teach english to non native speakers. however, it is both incorrect and problematic to refer to many of these 'errors' as something wrong and to be ashamed about.
there is a reason why the majority of linguists are descriptivists not prescriptivists.
(sorry if this came off as hostile i simply feel very strongly about this and cant bring myself to stay silent when seeing people call these forms of english 'wrong' when they are very much not)
(as for my use of the written language i dont bother capitalizing and using apostrophes intentionally. i find it unneeded if not in a formal setting and so i dont bother. also, the reason why i use single quotes instead of double quotes is simply because i prefer the way it looks.)
@@ovecka17
"Proper grammar and orthography is racist and oppresses black people."
We know.
As a non-native speaker of English, these mistakes make my skin crawl. Literally.
Oh god, I think you need urgent medical attention!
JO Co literally!
True. I never make these mistakes, except with 'lied', once, instead of 'lay' but my American girl made the same error so I did not notice.
Fantastic video! Thank you, Paul! I am a French teacher (native English speaker) who is passionate about expression, syntax, etc. in language. Over the years, I have shared (dare I say 'harped on') points with my students of all these topics (save 'literally') since I recognize as you do that it is used for 'making one's point' to an extreme. Loved your address, presentation and the excellent examples you provided.
Those types of mistakes become contagious.
Regarding the question, as a non native speaker this video was pretty clarifying in the sense that there were occasions where I was being corrected by native speakers for saying "If I were" or writing "would've," which confused me a lot lol
Did I just enjoy learning English grammer?
Grammar
yeah
Orthography nazi :P
More orthography left of centre no particular political affiliation.
Yes but in 100 years or 200 years the rules of grammar would've changed. Today we use fewer apostrophes than 200 years ago. It is for good reason that apostrophe rhymes with catastrophe because grammar experts can not agree with each other on its use.
We don't need no education.
It's "we don't need no edumication." Get it right =P =D
All in all we're just another brick in the wall.
Me no needs school.
we dont need no mitigation.
Rudie, you should listen Pink Floyd
I am native French Canadian from province of Quebec and I discovered your channel yesterday and I love it! Sorry if you find mistakes in this post but I always try my best because I don't speak English fluently ❤
how about you discuss your fellow Canadian's ABSOLUTE BUTCHERING of the definition of the word "IRONIC" as i like to say, "99% of the time, it's COINCIDENCE and not IRONY"
lol
srsly, F her 🤣🤣🤣
No it’s not.
Are you talking about just one fellow Canadian?
Whow Mister J5-0, wuss good? Never thought youd be here; i follow your videos sir. And the little baby that breaks into tears the one time you wuss up in colorado and girl officer came to ya while chatting with your friend. lololol.
Youre merciless sir
😂😂😂😂
I've spoken English for over 50 years and it never occurred to me that well is the adverb of good and, as a totally different word, also an adjective meaning healthy. I was there thinking you can never teach me anything about English. Wrong! Thank you!
You didn´t learn anything. It´s all typical English grammatical post-rationalization nonsense. "Well" is not an adjective meaning "healthy" since it can not be used as such in general. A well diet? A well conversation? A well relationship?
The "stative/dynamic verb"-theory is just a theory. Not "English grammar". In example: You can use both adverbs and adjectives for some verbs whether they are interpreted as "stative" or not:
She sings well (verb + adverb)
She sings better than I do (verb + adjective)
She drives well (verb + adverb)
She drives fast (verb + adjective)
The one that used to get me was the people at work who were so proud of their degrees & would confuse 'then' & 'than' in their emails. They would pronounce them distinctly differently in conversation, but couldn't seem to distinguish them in writing.
Dan Beatty isn't it the same pronunciation?
The "e" in 'then' is pronounced as it is in 'hen.' The "a" in 'than' is pronounced as it is in 'van.'
The one that gets me is "use to" vs "used to".
I wish my teacher had shown this to us in English class
I've also noticed native speakers making the comparative form of an adjective by using both "-er" ending and "more", like "more later".
"Literally" has been used in the figurative sense for literally centuries. Shakespeare used it in that manner.
@@MaltShake99 it's an intensifier
My problem with it isn't grammatical accuracy, I just think figurative use of "literally" is the verbal equivalent of edgy backwards-chair-sitting.
This response "Shakespeare did it" which so often comes up in discussions of grammar errors bugs me.
1) Shakespeare was a poet. A lot of things fly in poetry that wouldn't in ordinary speech or formal writing, like switching the verb and object around: "Beowulf the dragon slew."
2) Most of the writing we have from Shakespeare is dialogue in his plays. He wrote the dialogue to be realistic (to a certain extent at least) and to suit the characters' personalities, not to conform to grammar rules. For example, the constable Dogberry is a comedic character who constantly makes verbal mistakes, accidentally saying the opposite of what he means.
3) Shakespeare wrote hundreds of years ago, and the language has changed. For example, in his time double negatives were perfectly acceptable, even in formal writing. Now they're avoided by all educated English-speakers. We don't go around saying things like "thou liest" either.
If you want to show that a usage isn't ungrammatical, give examples of it appearing in contemporary, well-edited formal writing (for example, articles in the Wall Street Journal), not the dialogue of fictional characters in the writings of a Renaissance poet.
Shakespeare was an uneducated country bumpkin. You can't use him as a example of what good english should be.
In french, "littéralement" (which means "litteraly") is misused in the same way that in english.
en español también
In Spanish we use "literalmente" like that as well. Maybe it shouldn't be considered a mistake after all.
same for literalmente in Spanish.
Also with catalan "literalment" (btw, colloquialy pronounced "lliteralment")
@@ericolens3 where are you from ?
Wow, I’m a native English speaker and I just learned that subjunctive mood is a thing in English. The funny thing is that I’ve also been speaking French for most of my life, and I have been aware of French’s ‘subjonctif’ which is pretty much the same thing as in English, yet I never knew about it in English. So there is a concept in my second language that I am more familiar with than the equivalent concept in my first language.
A few of these definitely seem to be prescriptivist tbh
In particular; double negatives, adjective vs. adverbial confusion, subjunctive thing, and the singular/plural thing, and looking at other languages where that is either correct, or don't have a distinction, makes them seem more innovations than anything
I fought the schwa and the schwa won.
ahahaha good one tho
I learned about the subjunctive when i was learning spanish. It was a bit shocking to know it existed in english
Me too! I really hated the subjunctive when learning french and spanish, but I would've never known it existed in english if it weren't for this video.
I absolutely _love_ the subjunctive mood. (No sarcasm either). It just rolls off my tongue, and it sounds great.
That's just my opinion, of course.
Powerdriller Power The subjunctive in Spanish is still used extensively in some situations. Since there's only positive imperative for second person, it's used like that ("Vayamos", "No hagas eso"). It's also used in past if constructions ("Si hubiera sabido antes..."). I agree that simple "que" + subjunctive is less used, and where it can be replaced by indicative, it's pretty much dead. ("No sé si sabe" instead of "No sé si sepa").
Also, future subjunctive is truly dead. Most people have never even heard of it.
I've studied English subjunctive, but I never thought that you didn't know it. Haha I speak better than you your own language. Haha
In casual french the subjunctive is still used as well. like in the sentence with "pour que" like "il me faut 30 euros pour que je puisse m'acheter un nouveau portable"
but as you said, you can avoid these kind of structures and use just a simpler grammatical tense.
I asked my father (a retired U. of T. linguist) about evolving grammar, and he asked me what the difference is between I and me. I said one is the subject, and the other, the object. He said no. One comes before the verb and the other comes after. That's modern grammar, and the reason why no native speaker ever says, "It's I."
Your father actually is wrong. The distinction between subject and object forms, does not depend on the placement in the sentence but on the function. Many people understand this incorrectly. In Norway many people will say the equivalent of: "Shall you and me go to the shop"? They think that the objective form shall be used since it comes later in the sentence, but this is wrong and it is only wrong, because the use of the correct case form only depends on the function in the sentence. Therefore the only correct grammar is: "Shall you and I go to the shop".
Decimate is an interesting word. Originally it meant to *remove* 1/10 (hence the deci- prefix), but now it tends to be used to literally destroy something, or at most only _leave_ 1/10.
Just be glad when you numbered off in Roman times you were one of the first 9: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, *X*
I always used the word decimate in the original sense of "de-cematerie" (de-materialize) or "de-cematerie" (to the cemetary).
I literally can't believe you didn't include incorrect usage of "I and "me".
The old mistake was saying something like "Mary and me went to the store".
That mistake was corrected so much that we now have the other extreme being used commonly: "John gave the ball to Mary and I".
I hear this on the news all the time and I cringe.
or "Mary and myself"
The "NEWS" seems to have one purpose, dumbing down the population to keep the ruling class from being overthrown.
Whats correct then? "Mary and I went to the store?" Or simply "Mary went to the store with me"?
In spanish we have another problem, its when people say "I and marie", since you are suposed to name yourself last
@@soyderiverdeliverybeaver8941 both are correct.You can also say Me and Mary went to the shop.and To the shop,me and Mary went,
@@tweetiepie551 no, it would be Mary and I went to the shop
Of all the mistakes mentioned, I think the last one is the worst, reason being there is not a replacement for the word literally to mean what literally used to mean, so now each time you say something in the literal sense you have to explain that you indeed mean it literally and not just exaggerating. Continuing with the example used, if you happen to know a girl who has thousands of pairs of shoes (maybe due to a collection or something) and you tell someone else that she literally has thousands of pairs of shoes they'll think she has far less than what you actually wish to portray.
Using literally like that isn't even an actual mistake, because "literally" is a generic intensifier, just like "really" and "truly". For replacements, I recommend "without hyperbole," "without exaggeration," or as you demonstrated "actually."
More casual replacements can be "no lie" "real/true shit" "true story" or my favorite "on the serious tip".
littlebigphil "she actually/without-hyperbole/without-exaggeration has thousands of pairs of shoes" doesn't have the same ring to it.
hectorbeast all of these are being abused just as "literally".
"Figuratively" can be used in this case. An example would be: "She figuratively has thousands of shoes."
The lie-lay-laid-lain distinction is something I'm pretty sure that most English speakers don't understand at all
Disregard any "sounds like a robot" comments. I always though that your diction was excellent and especially appropriate for a channel based on language. It's also most helpful for those who want to learn English. Well-done.
Other mistakes include saying Soda instead of Pop and pronouncing Z as Zee instead of as Zed.
Back to hell with you, heathen! Pop is for the pure!
Soda and pop are both correct and are spoken based on where you live. Although the English version "Fizzy Drink" is a fun one and is a bit more descriptive.
If you're an American, then Z is pronounced Zee. This isn't a mistake. Although, saying Zee anywhere isn't really a mistake in the same way that saying rubbish instead of trash is fine.
Americans don't speak English. So what's new?
Brits saying:
Couple are
Band are
Instead of:
Couple is...couples are
Band is .... bands are
Well, there are more of us in the USA than in England and what's left of its shattered empire combined. I think we overrule you on what English is. ^_~
More and more, your people start to pronounce their words like we do. Soon you'll call football soccer and a holiday a vacation. Muhahaha.
I eat so much cookies that I consider them uncountable
Haha, me too.
That should probably be "I eat so much cookie".
*so many, not so much
Many
Patricia Bristow-Johnson that's the point of his comment
One evolution of speech that has risen over the last two decades is the corporate (and self important) use of the word “myself”.
“If you have any questions, address them to John or myself.”
I’m sorry, “myself” is a self operation. I can’t do anything to yourself. I can do something to myself, but only you can do something for yourself.
You didn't mention confusing "myself" and "me"! 😁 And yes, native speakers of other languages I'm familiar with, make analogous mistakes in their own languages too.
In my native language (Czech), I make mistakes almost in every sentence due to its grammatical complexity.
I would not boast of it ;-) (Tím bych se nechlubil)
finlay morrison
Shut the fa## up ( misspelled on purpose )
Or you don't pay attention in school. (Nebo nedáváš pozor ve Škole)
same in Georgian
Well in my native language Bulgarian, the a lot people(mostly teenagers) are talking in a way that is far apart from the written form!
For example, here's a sentence means ''Can I tell you something?''
Literaly form : Može li da ti kaža nešto?
Spoken form : Moa li ti kaa nešto?
It's something like that! :D
The question is a bit philosophical: Is the purpose of language to _communicate_, or is the purpose of language to be applied grammar? I'd say that grammar takes a backseat to clear communication. No harm, no foul.
The whole object of grammar and syntax is to prevent misunderstanding, you twit! Bad grammar can lead to ambiguity, i.e. bad communication...
Joan Hammond Ideally. Yet in casual speech we tend towards certain mistakes because we know even if grammatically wrong the person we're talking to will understand us. Perhaps even understand better than if spoken grammatically correct.
The problem is a lot of these mistakes cause communication to be less effective. There is harm. There is foul.
You mean "grammatically correctLY"! Adverb, not adjective...
I bought a book about dinosaurs.
As a writer I love the idea of subverting proper grammatical structure and syntax for the purposes of artistic license but there are exceptions. Non-native English speakers, and those English speakers who don't have a very good grasp of it, would do best to stick to "proper" structure. I say this as someone who has to deal with trying to teach native and non-native English speakers how to express themselves with written English. Usually, speaking English is the easy part.
You'd be surprised at how many native English speakers write exactly how they speak and we all know how "bad" spoken English has gotten.
one common mistake I am constantly noticing when listening to native English speakers is "you and I" and "you and me"/"me and you" being mixed up.
that happens almost every time anyone tries to use either of these, and I even heard multiple people first use the correct one, but then wrongly correcting themselves with the wrong one.
like you hear someone say "you and I went to the mall yesterday", only to then correct themselves and say "you and me went to the mall yesterday"... It shouldn't annoy me as much as it does 🤣
What I really dislike about the misuse of "literally" is that it seems English keeps turning words of that meaning into intensifiers, like "really" and "truly," why do we keep throwing away these precious words just so we can make more meaningless intensifiers?
Actually all such terms were intensifiers from the day they were constructed. It´s just that you simply didn´t get it.