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randint , (edited )
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

I’m a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese from Taiwan. Some people often mix up 在 (zài) and 再 (zài) in writing. It’s a bit hard to explain their definitions since they are merely function words (words that have little lexical meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence), so I’m just gonna copy and paste their definitions from an online dictionary:

在: to exist; to be alive / (of sb or sth) to be (located) at / (used before a verb to indicate an action in progress)
再: again; once more; re- / second; another / then (after sth, and not until then) / no matter how … (followed by an adjective or verb, and then (usually) 也 (yě) or 都 (dōu) for emphasis)

As you probably have noticed, their meanings don’t overlap at all. The only reason some people mix them up is because they are homophones.

Another typo some… let’s just say, less educated, people often make is 因該 (yīn’gāi). The correct word is 應該 (yīnggāi), meaning should; must. 因該 is never correct. You can think of 因該 as the Chinese version of the much dreaded “should of.” The reason is that the distinction of -in and -ing is slowly fading away in Taiwan (it is still very much thriving in other Chinese-speaking societies), and some people just type too sloppily to care.

By the way, I should mention that 在, 再, and 應該 are very basic words, probably one of the first 500 words a non-native speaker learns.

corsicanguppy ,

some people just type too sloppily to care

Ah, so America either borrowed or lent that bad habit.

CanadaPlus ,

It’s a human universal, I think. Some people just value looking smart less than the slight effort to do better.

racketlauncher831 ,

Ah, classical mistakes when they write instead of typing. At least when they type they can suggestions from the IME, hinting they might be making a mistake.

Those ‘similar’ words you mentioned all have different tone or vowel in Cantonese. Not at all close to each other. I bet they sound slightly different too in Banlamgu, if you happen to speak that.

randint ,
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

I don’t speak Bân-lâm-gú unfortunately. I just looked up those words, and they do sound slightly different!

  • 在: tsāi
  • 再: tsài
  • 應該: ing-kai
  • 因: in

(For Chinese learners reading this, please note that the tone markers in the romanization of Bân-lâm-gú (Southern Min, a group of languages including Hokkien, Taiwanese, etc.) is different from those used in Pinyin for Mandarin.)

I also looked up how these words are pronounced in Cantonese. They sure are really different! Mandarin really does have a lot more pairs of homophones and near-homophones compared to other dialects.

On a semi-related note, I think it’s really sad that the majority of Chinese dialects are slowly being replaced by Mandarin.

toastal ,

On a semi-related note, I think it’s really sad that the majority of Chinese dialects are slowly being replaced by Mandarin.

It really is. If not too disruptive, I always make a speaker clarify “which Chinese language” as I guess the propaganda + ignorance has worked leading many to believe there is just one language of China. …And it’s not just English treating it this way either.

Witchfire ,
@Witchfire@lemmy.world avatar

I’m Spanish, n and ñ are different letters. They are not substitutes. It is the difference between someone being 5 years old and someone having 5 anuses.

“Yo tengo 5 años / yo tengo 5 anos”

Looking at you, Will Shortz

Fosheze ,

I am guilty of doing that but only because my computer keyboard doesn’t have an ñ.

burak ,

Liar you just used it. Just admit you don’t like ñ’s dope haircut.

Fosheze ,

I’m not on my computer. My phone keyboard does all sorts of fun crazy things; some of them are even intentional.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world avatar

For people on Linux, hit [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[u] then type [0] [0] [f] [1]. That will enter an ñ when you hit the next key.

fubo ,

For people on Linux, enable the compose key in your keyboard settings and then type [Compose] [n] [~].

The compose-key method for entering accented letters is by far the easiest to use for any desktop OS … but it’s not enabled by default because you have to give up some modifier key to use it.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s completely off-topic but Compose is amazing. Specially as you can actually customise it for your usage, with a .XCompose file. For me it’s the only think that makes phonetic transcription flow, otherwise you got to shift layouts back and forth to write something like “[tɾɐ̃skɾi’sɜ̃ʊ̯] ⟨transcrição⟩”.

Here’s mine, if anyone is interested.

Evkob ,
@Evkob@lemmy.ca avatar

Based solely off this comment, I just wanna say you seem like such a cool person. Anyone who has a custom file on their OS to facilitate using IPA characters is good people in my book.

randint ,
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

I never knew that there was such a key! Thank you! It’s really useful.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world avatar

ñ…woah! I just tried it by switching the [Menu] key to a compose key. That’s so much easier. Thanks for sharing 🙂

geoma ,

or configure your keyboard as English international, dead tildes. You can use ~ with an n to produce an ñ. At least in gnu/Linux that’s easy to do

corsicanguppy ,

At least in gnu/Linux

I only use Linux. Because Stallman doesn’t need to ride coattails to be a somebody.

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

How are you not using GNU stack with your Linux kernel?

governorkeagan ,

I didn’t know about that. I’ll have to give it a try, I hate trying to write Portuguese on my PC because I can’t use the accents

ytg ,

Use double n, that’s the archaic way of spelling that (tilde derives from n on top of another n)

Lupus108 ,

On windows, hold ‘alt’ and then type the numbers 1 6 4 for lower case and 1 6 5 for upper case ñ.

That’s their places in the ASCII table, you can do that with any special characters, look up their place in the ASCII table, press alt and the respecting number, release alt and voila.

TheGreenGolem ,

SO many people don’t know the ALT+Number combo nowadays it’s surprising. I learnt about it in 4th grade in elementary school in 1999.

Phen ,

Be happy that it doesn’t: brazilian keyboards added an extra key for “ç” right in the middle of the keyboard and it’s pretty useful, until the day you have to use any other keyboard and realize that if you configure it to use the brazilian layout, you’re not losing the “ç”, you lose the comma, or question mark, or exclamation mark or something much more annoying to be left without.

Now you either learn to type again with another keyboard layout, or spend the rest of your life using only cheap keyboards made in brazil that have the “right amount” of keys.

Maram ,

Loose and lose. I just don’t get it. I can understand when the words sound the same, like with the yours and the theirs but Loose and Lose don’t sound the same. Like reading loose out loud in those sentences just sounds stupid.

deo ,

I think it’s because English isn’t super consistent with the spelling of vowel sounds. Consider also “choose” (rhymes with “lose”) and “chose” (which doesn’t rhyme with either).

I guess really the vowel sound in loose/lose is basically the same; the difference is whether or not the “s” makes a “s” sound or a “z” sound… It is admittely odd that the presence or absence of an extra “o” would affect the sound of an adjacent constant (especially when we have a perfectly good “z” character available).

Which reminds me of my pet peeve: when people use “breath” or “cloth” instead of “breathe” or “clothe”.

nixcamic ,

There’s no phonetic reason, the double oo and single o make the exact same sound in most dialects and there’s no reason the s should sound like a z in lose.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

In portuguese, there’s a lot of people who insist on using “mais” (plus, more) instead of “mas” (but). How you speak it ends up being nearly identical, so that’s the reason, much like the there/their/they’re in english.

ExLisper ,

I don’t care and usually let people speak the way they like but when my girlfriend says ‘voy a subir arriba’ I always tell her that you can’t ‘subir abajo’ just to annoy her.

huf ,

native speakers cannot by definition make systematic errors. they cannot make “common mistakes”. if a thing is common, that’s the correct way to say it. so what do you mean? spelling mistakes? (spelling is a separate thing from language)

Scrollone ,

I don’t agree.

For example, in English it’s a common mistake to write “it’s” instead of “its”. Example: “The car is missing its mirror”. I’ve seen countless of times people writing, incorrectly, “the car is missing it’s mirror”.

It’s still a mistake even if native speaker do it, and it’s pretty common.

huf ,

that’s a spelling mistake, which is an entirely different kettle of fish

robot_dog_with_gun ,

“ATM machine” is an error and hard descriptivism does not save you

huf ,

lol no. why would it be an error? if that’s how people say it, that’s what it’s called.

robot_dog_with_gun ,

what does the M stand for?

huf ,

why do you think that matters? what actually matters is how people use language. admittedly, this also involves studying people like you who have weird ideas about language.

if you just listen to people, you’ll find that they use this phrase to talk about atm machines. that’s all that is required. it doesnt matter if you think the name for a thing was derived through a process you personally dont like. it’s still a name for a thing that is in common use and understood by people.

oh, also, do you think the “river avon” is also wrong? why or why not?

sndrtj ,

That English natives have so much trouble distinguishing effect from affect keeps surprising me.

As for Dutch, the dt-issue is presented as if it is this hugely complicated set of rules. While in reality it is dead simple. Third person in the present time is ALWAYS conjugated as stem+t for regular verbs, except in ONE case: when the stem already ends in t. Dt isn’t special, it’s just the rule applied to all stems.

Stovetop ,

I think the main issue with that one is that they’ve become homophones in a lot of regional accents, a secondary part of it is that they are semi-related concepts, and the third part of it is that there are also technically noun and verb versions of each.

X affects Y, X has an effect on Y.

The affected happiness effect effected a positive affect.

mayonaise_met ,

My school taught this whole convoluted system that was meant to help students with multiple tenses, but I just learned to apply the “ik loop” mnemonic which is so effortless (to native speakers at least.)

Sometimes I have to think once or twice about soft ketchup/'t Kofschip for the past participle, but that’s about it.

rbhfd ,

I think the main errors happen with “voltooide deelwoorden” (past participle). Then you need mnemonic devices like “'t kofschip” to know whether it’s t or d (or determine it using what you would say in the past time of the verb). It doesn’t help that e.g., “gebeurt” and “gebeurd” both are correct depending on the tense used.

Also the fact that the t drops when the verb is inversed in the 2nd person singular present tense, and not e.g., past tense (“Je wordt” but “Word je”) is a weird rule.

It’s not thát complicated and if you pay attention, you should be able to get it all right. That’s why I think such mistakes are more a sign of carelessness and not of stupidity.

sndrtj ,

The second person during a question is still no special rule for dt. It’s still very regular. For all regular verbs it’s just stem (without the +t).

Examples:

Praten -> stem = praat -> praat jij? Worden -> stem = word -> word jij? Surfen -> stem = surf -> surf jij?

No irregularity for stems ending in d.

rbhfd ,

It’s an easy rule, yes. It’s also an easy one to overlook if you’re not paying attention.

“Word je blij?”, but also “wordt je moeder blij?”.

It’s not like people don’t understand the rule. No native Dutch speaker would say “Loopt jij?”

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Third person in the present time is ALWAYS conjugated as stem+t for regular verbs

It gets more complicated in the second person though, with the inversion exception.

sndrtj ,

But again, there is no special exception for dt. Again it’s the regular rule applied: second person conjugation in questions is just the stem for regular verbs.

okiloki ,

I really hate when native English speakers use could of or would of. It makes no sense and sounds completely wrong, yet some people claim it’s just a minor mistake.

cheesymoonshadow ,
@cheesymoonshadow@lemmings.world avatar

“Lay down” when they mean “lie down.” Also “could care less.”

The_Cunt_of_Monte_Cristo ,
@The_Cunt_of_Monte_Cristo@lemmy.world avatar

In Turkish de/da can be a suffix or a conjunction or of course a part of a word. If de/da is used as a conjunction you have to write them separately. If it’s not written correctly it can be confusing for those who are reading the sentence.

Example 1:

“Bende gittim” instead of “ben de gittim.” (I’ve gone too). “Ben de gittim” is the correct sentence. De means too in this example.

Example 2:

O da iyi (It is good too). “Da” means “too” in this sentence. Oda iyi (The room is good). “Oda” means “the room”. Odada iyi (It is good in the room). 2nd “da” means “in”. Oda da iyi. (The room is good too). 2nd “da” means too. Odada da iyi. ( It is good in the room too). 2nd “da” means “in”, 3rd “da” means “too”.

Zerush ,
@Zerush@lemmy.ml avatar

In Spanish to English translation with Google and others, need often to be corrected manually.

Scrollone ,

I’m Italian and I can’t stand people using “piuttosto che” (which means “rather than”) with the meaning of “or”.

Correct:

Piuttosto che fare un errore, stai zitto.

Rather than making a mistake, keep quiet.

Wrong:

Posso mangiare dell’insalata piuttosto che dei pomodori.

I can eat a salad [“rather than” with the meaning of “or”] tomatoes.

Phen ,

In Portuguese, verbs have a ton of variations. They are written in a different way if you’re talking about yourself, or the listener, or a third party, then additional differences for the plural of those variations. Plus several other things.

And people often write very poorly, using i instead of e is pretty common. Skipping question marks too. Sometimes you’ll get a text from someone saying just “consegui” (meaning “I’ve managed to do it”) when the person actually wanted to say “consegue?” (“can you do it?”)

InEnduringGrowStrong ,
@InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works avatar

I know you’re asking for such errors in other languages, but I find it interesting that some of the common english errors are more frequent with native english speakers than with learners of english as a second language.

A good example of that is using “of” instead of “have”.
Should of… of what?? It makes no sense to me how someone could confuse the two.

Having learned english as a second language, I learned to read and write it before learning to speak it.
On the other hand, I’d expect native speakers to have learned spoken english before learning written english.
I think this difference changes which errors someone is likely to make.
Native speakers confuse of/have more because they heard it long before writing it.
People who learned it later are less likely to make that mistake, although they’re more likely for some others.

TL;DR: Native speakers are more likely to make mistakes that are homonyms. Of/have, your/you’re, etc.

As for the spirit of your question, I’ll go with french.

Almost every noun in french is gendered.
Objects, body parts, concepts, ideas, pretty much anything and everything is gendered.
It’s also super obvious whenever someone doesn’t use the correct gender for anything.
It’s also hard to explain to anyone.
There might be a logic behind it, but I don’t know how to summarize any of it.
I just know it, but couldn’t tell you why.

Some of those make no fucking sense either.
It has mostly nothing to do with women or men or gebder roles and identity, it just is.
“Jam” is a feminine noun, yet “butter” is masculine.
“Bread” is masculine, but a “loaf” is feminine.
The noun for each and every season are masculine nouns, but the word “season” itself is a feminine noun.
Also, a “vagina” is a masculine noun, because reasons? Weird.
Various different words for “testicles” vary between masculine and feminine.

It’s all super obvious to anyone who speaks french, but I never managed to explain it to any speaker of a non-gendered language like english without breaking their minds.

PaupersSerenade ,
@PaupersSerenade@sh.itjust.works avatar

Regarding should have and should ‘of’; I’ve always understood it to be should’ve, which when spoken tends to keep a short vowel sound in the middle of the contraction that makes it phonetically sound like ‘of’. Bit of a bone-apple-tea.

InEnduringGrowStrong ,
@InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yea it’s not even pronounced the same.
I just noticed native speakers confuse those more.
Meanwhile non-native speakers make other kinds of errors more.

abysmalpoptart ,

I disagree, “should’ve” and “should of” sound virtually identical when spoken (at least in some regions, can’t speak for all pronunciations). I can imagine why a non english native speaker would have trouble with this, though I’m not disagreeing with it being a common issue amongst native speakers as well.

MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown ,

Should I continue to persist after I have cut this olive in twain, and one of the portions thereof in twain again, then I’ll live, I’ll have half an olive, and I’ll’ve halved half an olive.

abysmalpoptart ,

This is how I’ve always understood it as well. The two spellings are homophones so it’s a pretty easy mistake to make.

Paragone ,

I’ve been told that to start a fight in Francophones, just demand to know whether grapefruit ( pamplemousse, iirc ), is male or female…

: P

The book “The Alphabet Versus The Goddess” by Leonard Shlain, makes the point that women’s-rights simply don’t progress as quickly, in countries which have gendered languages…

So, Anglo cultures pushed women’s-rights, whereas Latin cultures … won’t, don’t, drag their heels, etc…

That book is now a couple ?decades? old?

It’s still true.

Conditioning an entire population’s System-1 ( Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast & Slow”, the System-1 is the default-instinct & the trained-now-automatic-expertise system, it also is the system that is both addiction & prejudice ) into gendering everything, automatically, may well prevent equal-validity from ever having place…

Mind you, I now want to see which Nordic/Scandi languages are gendered, & which Middle-East languages are gendered, to see if that holds in those parts of the world, not just in the Americas…

… digging …

…m.wikipedia.org/…/Gender_in_Danish_and_Swedish

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender

( that isn’t a quick read… may come back to it some day… )

Bingo!

“The grammatical gender of nouns is one of two: a noun may be masculine or it may be feminine, and there is no neutral option. Moreover, masculinity is the default grammatical gender in Arabic and a word does not have to have anything special in order to reflect this. Femininity, on the other hand, is not default and a noun would have to have something special to reflect this gender in Arabic.”

from

www.learnarabiconline.com/gender/

So, there is ZERO hope of equal-validity in Arabic culture, because the language programs Arabic people’s System-1 into 2 exclusive validity-categories, with male being inherently more-valid, by established language-habit.

What about Hebrew?

timesofisrael.com/in-an-increasingly-nonbinary-wo…

No wonder women can’t get equal-validity in Jewish culture…

( I read a Jewess’s writing ~ Nobody EVERY celebrated the birth of a Jewish girl: only boys are celebrated ~ … which explains the damage in the stereotypical “Jewish mother”, a woman whose validity has been contempted by all in her culture, until the damage is her most defining feature… )

So, it looks like equal-rights/equal-validity for women is … baseless, in some/many cultures…

Interesting, but depressing.

: \

Zagorath ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

So, there is ZERO hope of equal-validity in Arabic culture, because the language programs Arabic people’s System-1 into 2 exclusive validity-categories, with male being inherently more-valid, by established language-habit.

That sounds like some Strong Sapir-Whorf thinking. And the Strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is pretty roundly rejected by most linguists.

InEnduringGrowStrong ,
@InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works avatar

So, Anglo cultures pushed women’s-rights, whereas Latin cultures … won’t, don’t, drag their heels, etc…

That’s mostly bullshit imo.

Grammar itself doesn’t necessarily hold back progress with gender identities and equality.
Languages evolve.
French can have gender neutral pronouns, which can make sense for referring to people of various gender identities.
Meanwhile, a gender neutral “table” is a bit moot. While a table is a feminine noun, such an object has no identity, its “gender” has nothing with social constructs, with gender roles or identities, not with women in general. A noun isn’t feminine or masculine because of its characteristics, but because of its phonetics and in some cases, plain old habit.
Synonyms can have different grammatical genders.

I’m quite certain that women are better off living in France or in French Canada than most places in the anglo US, not that it’s a high bar on the subject of women rights.

BenVimes ,

Having learned French as a second language, I can say that the gendered noun thing wasn’t the most difficult aspect, but it was the most consistently annoying. There are signifiers that makes the gender of some nouns very obvious, but then there are just as many others where it feels arbitrary or even contradictory to the established trends.

Gabu ,

Portuguese as first language here. Improper use of commas drives me fucking mental, and is very common.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

In German people tend to increase “only” (das einzige). As in, they say something is the “onliest” (das einzigste). It’s usually a good indicator of someone’s education.

In many regions it is common to do comparisons with “as” (wie). As in “My dog is bigger as yours” instead of “My dog is bigger than yours”. The most infuriating thing about this is that most people doing that mistake don’t even acknowledge that it is one. At least people who say “onliest” can be convinced that it is wrong.

Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive. Like in “Anna’s food is good”. In German that should be written as “Annas Essen ist gut”. But due to many people making the same mistake (I guess also because we’re used to it from English sentences) it has been allowed to use an apostrophe. So in that case I’m just a grumpy old guy.

DirigibleProtein ,

In many regions it is common to do comparisons with “as” (wie). As in “My dog is bigger as yours” instead of “My dog is bigger than yours”.

I’m (re-)learning Yiddish at the moment, and “as (wie)” is a common construction; it’s interesting to see which words and sentence formats are common (between German and Yiddish), and which aren’t. I wonder if that’s where this usage comes from.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

Nice, very interesting find.

Also, I’ve never been called a Grammar Nazi more elegantly.

DirigibleProtein ,

I never meant to say or imply that you were and I apologise most humbly if it came through that way. I just thought that it was interesting.

xilliah ,

In Dutch it’s also common to use als (as) instead of dan (than). Technically it’s wrong though.

sndrtj ,

This gets really confusing if you’re from Limburg. In Limburgish, “daan” (the cognate to Dutch “dan”) only exists as the time indicator. With comparisons the correct Limburgish is to use “es” for differences (e.g. “Jan is groeter es Maria”, “John is bigger than Mary”), and “wie” for equivalents (e.g “Jan is eve aajd wie Maria”, “John is as old as Mary”). Now “es” is cognate to Dutch “als”, but using it in Dutch as in Limburgish is wrong. So yeah this gets confusing.

ElmarsonTheThird ,

I opened the thread to see if someone already posted this. Glad I’m not the onliest german to be annoyed by this.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@lemmy.ml avatar

Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive.

Even technically I’d consider it an error - the genitive/“possessive” apostrophe in English highlights that you’re dealing with a clitic, attached to the end of the noun phrase; e.g. the dog**'s** food` → the dog and the cat**'s** food. In German however it doesn’t behave like a clitic, it’s a plain declension; e.g. das Futter des Hundes → das Futter des Hundes und der Katze - you’re switching words, not moving them.

I wonder if that’s because most people nowadays use von+Dative instead.

tvarog_smetana ,

Not a native speaker, so I could be wrong about this:

I’ve seen a construction using proper nouns (eg. Annas Haus) where an “s” indicates possession, but no apostrophe. This doesn’t seem to apply to non-proper nouns (das Haus der Frau) and is different from normal genitive construction that adds an “s” to masc/neut noun genders (das Haus des Mannes)

hakunawazo ,

There are many examples of incorrectly placed apostrophes in German here:
www.deppenapostroph.info

Another mistake in the German language is the incorrect separation of compound words. An extreme example would be Brotaufstrich (spread/parfait) as Brot auf Strich (bread on line).

Additional examples in German are here:
www.deppenleerzeichen.info

NichtElias ,
@NichtElias@sh.itjust.works avatar

Another incorrect seperation of Brotaufstrich: Bro Taufstrich (bro baptismal line)

BruceTwarzen ,

Oh god before i read your comment i thought i have nothing to add. Then i realised that i know people who say things like: als wie. Mein hund ist grösser als wie deiner.

mayonaise_met , (edited )

In Dutch, the only (one) is “de enige”. People often use “de enigste”, which actually means the cutest. Enig -> enigste.

“Ik ben als enigste over” “Ja, schattig ben je zeker”

"“Ich bin der Einzigste, der noch übrig ist” “Ja, du bist wirklich süß”

“I’m the only one left.” “Yeah, cute you sure are”

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