Mine is people who separate words when they write. I’m Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct
Still, people write words the wrong way by separating them.
Examples:
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“Ananas ringer” means “the pineapple is calling” when written the wrong way. The correct way is “ananasringer” and it means “pineapple rings” (from a tin).
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“Prinsesse pult i vinkel” means “a princess fucked at an angle”. The correct way to write it is “prinsessepult i vinkel”, and it means “an angeled princess desk” (a desk for children, obviously)
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“Koke bøker” means “to cook books”. The correct way is “kokebøker” and means “cookbooks”
I see these kinds of mistakes everywhere!
(American) English: Inflammable vs flammable vs non-flammable.
Inflammable and flammable don’t strictly mean the same thing.
Flammable can be set alight
Inflammable can set itself alight.
I’ve known the difference ever since I decided to look it up one day, but I’ve always felt the ‘in-’ prefix was the wrong choice (especially when labeling potentially dangerous substances). “In-” is more often used to qualify a word as “not”.
“Autoflammable” would have been my choice.
It’s prefix is in- because of “it can become inflamed”.
How about ignitable instead.
superbesplodey
I think “enflammable” was the intended meaning
Remember: invaluable is a synonym of priceless, but not of worthless.
tbf it’s referring to the verb “to value”, not the noun. long as you keep that in mind it makes perfect sense
So much of English just does not make sense. lol
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Ambiguously used words like “biweekly”. Does it mean twice per week? Every other week? Business meeting calendar scheduling terminology is especially bad with this.
Odd phrases like you can chop the tree down. Then but then you proceed to chop that same tree up.
Parking in a driveway and driving in a parkway is also a good one.
A driveway is where you drive to get the residence, vs the walkway. Parkways are landscaped with park-like greenery .
After your alarm goes off… You turn it off.
Norwegian is more accurate. “Biweekly” means “annenhver uke” (every other week)
It does here too. It’s not an unclear thing, just not used all the time so people don’t remember.
Biweekly is every other week, fortnightly.
Semiweekly is twice a week.
How numbers are pronounced.
In German the number 185 is pronounced as “hundred-five-and-eighty” (hundertfünfundachtzig), the digits are not spoken in order of their magnitude.
Not terrible, not great.be the change you want to see, all young germans should start saying numbers sensibly and call anyone who does it the old way a boomer
Please dont
Same thing for Dutch. For example, when we see 74 we pronounce it as four and seventy (vierenzeventig) and it makes no sense.
I guess it’s a Germanic language thing.
This is the same in Danish, but weirdly not in Swedish.
We say four-seventy for 74, and hundred-four-seventy for 174. But the swedes does it like the English. Don’t know about Norwegian though. Maybe OP can provide me with some new knowledge.
French: 80 is four twenties (“Quatre-vingt”)
Edit: not four tens, four twenties. I can’t count in any language, dammit!
And 90 - 99 are even worse, in that they are basically eighty-ten, eighty-eleven, etc.
Makes zero sense to my English speaking mind
Oh, it’s worse than that.
80 is basically four-twenties. 17, 18, and 19 are basically ten-seven, ten-eight, and ten-9. Which makes 97, 98, and 99 four-twenties-ten-seven, four-twenties-ten-eight, and four-twenties-ten-nine.
I remember reading that one of the Scandinavian languages had a specific (successful) governmental policy to change from German-like numbers to English-like ones. I don’t remember which of them it was.
It is true, at least here in Norway: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_nye_tellemåten (“The new way of counting”).
Our parliament deceided in 1949 that 21 should not be pronounced as “one-and-twenty”, but as “twenty-one”. It was because new phone numbers got introduced, and the new way gave a lot less errors when spoken to the “sentralbordamer” (switch operator ladies).
We need that here in Denmark.
It depens on age and/or dialect. My dialect is from the middle of Norway (trøndersk), and I say 74 as “fir’å søtti”. Other parts of Norway may say “søtti fire”. Luckily we do not do the weird danish numbers.
Early modern English has it so it tracks (four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie)
Also in the teens. Sixteen has the six before the ten
24 blackbirds baked in a pie?
It depends on how old you are here. If you say “fir’å søtti”, you are at least in your 70s. If you say “søttifire”, you are not 70 but younger.
And, to cause a bit more confusion, it also depends on your dialect, and if your dialect is the cause, your age isn’t. Easy.
Wait, a case where English is more logical? There must be some mistake!
“Hundre-og-åtti-fem”
It’s not so much a feature of English as it is a recurring bug in the way people use the language…
If you write “of” instead of “have” or “'ve” you need to be taken out back and beaten with a dictionary, preferably until you can apologize to your ancestors in person for the effort they wasted in passing down the English language to you.
Incidentally, when did people start saying “on accident”? It’s by accident! Has been for ages! Why this? Why now? I hate it.
With that out of the way… English isn’t a language, it’s five dialects in a trenchcoat mugging other languages in a dark alley for their loose grammar.
Edit: With regards to OP, “a cookbook” and “to cook the books” are similar phrases in English, too, but have, eh, wildly different meanings. XD
“of” in place of “have” certainly had to come from people mishearing/misunderstanding “ve.” There’s no other explanation.
The accident one is funny. I had to really think about when I’d use “on”, and it’s when I say something like: “he did it on accident.” Which is wrong when I think about it, but I know I’ve said this countless times. I can only guess it grew from “an accident” like “it was an accident.”
Even though "on"and “by” are the same length, “by” sounds like it takes too much effort to say. How weird.
Prepositions are so arbitrary. So it’s really stupid to be so angry about “on accident”. But I can’t help it.
The past tense of lead is led, which is pronounced like lead but is not pronounced like lead.
Don’t get me started on read, read, and red…
That second example is… Wow.
These are all real examples. Here’s a picture of someone posting that they want to give away a princess desk
Last sentence, “godt brukt”, means “well used”
Princess fucked at and angle. Well Used.
I mean… It still fits?
Depending on exactly how well used, I suspect quite a lot fits.
In French they fucking have the same word for “no more” and “more”, and only differs in pronounciation of the last letter:
“J’ai plus de pommes” pronounced as “j’ai plu de pommes” means “I have no more apples” (nobody says the “ne” particle)
“J’ai plus de pommes (que toi)” pronounced as “j’ai plus de pommes (que toi)” means “I have more apples (than you)”
Which is even worse because usually last letter is not pronounced, so that makes it an exception to the rule
Simply emphasise the last letter more.
But the last letter is silent.
Yep.
Oh, same problem as flammable and inflammable.
Mon Dieu!!! Zut alors!!! Quelle merde!!!
So does that mean you can’t tell them apart in writing? Or in writing would that “ne particle” you mention be there?
It depends, sometimes «ne» appears, sometimes people just skip the last letter, so they write «plu» or «pu» to mean «no more»
Now try “I have more apples in my car” and “I don’t have more apples on my car”.
Sounds like the people who try to keep french pure and proper should focus more on the ‘ne’.
The four cases. Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Akkusative with their accompanying articles. It makes learning German as a second language a nightmare and even native speakers struggle with it a lot.
Ah man, I think cases are great! I learned Russian in college, which has six cases, and they can be used to express so much with so little. English used to have them, you can see remnants in the apostrophe ‘s’ when denoting possession, and I’m bummed they went away.
I’ll give it to you that they’re a pain in the ass to learn, but once you get the hang of them I think they’re super neat!
Edit: they also allow for variable sentence structure which can be super fun and, again, express a lot of meaning just through text (at least in Russian, not sure if that’s the case in German).
Ha! We got 7 cases. The poor expats struggle learning Czech is real. I know only a few that speak on a decent level. Great respect for them.
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Then don’t even try squirrel.
My native English speaker partner always makes fun of how I pronounce squirrel!
“Lærerinne” in norwegian, but only if you’re extremely old. Gendered language to is not that much used any more. “Teacher” is used for both male and female
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If the R is giving you trouble, you might try starting with a CH like in “Buch.”
Start with “Brot” but add an extra vowel, so it’s like Bo-chot. Try to reduce the air flow to almost zero when you say the CH. You should end up with an R sound.
You could do a trilled R too if that’s easier. People will understand you fine. The vowels are way more important to get right.
My language is diglossic - it has a written form and a spoken form that are very different to each other. It’s quite difficult to understand the written form if you’ve only grown up speaking and listening to the language, as the written form is essentially the language as spoken in the 1600s.
To compare it to English, it would be like saying “Where are you?” to someone over the phone, but then having to send them “Wherefore art thou?” as a text.
What is this mysterious language?
Informal English
Sims anlikeli to me
“wherefore” means “why” not “where”.
She wasn’t asking him “where are you?” but rather “why did it have to be you?”
Ah I see, thanks for the correction! (It also kind of demonstrates the problems I have with my own language :P)
Great example. Wherefore doesn’t mean where. Lol
**Don’t mean this snarky. Do find it funny tho.
“Whither” (to where) might be a closer fit than “wherefore” (why)
skill issue
Not my native language, but the one I speak the most is (American) English.
So many homophones-words that sound the same but are different in meaning or spelling such as knight/night, altar/alter, ail/ale, isle/aisle/I’ll.
Also homographs-words with same spelling but different meaning and/or pronunciation like minute, bass, capital, wind, moped.
So confusing for people trying to learn English and also for people that actually speak it
I can’t speak for all native English speakers, but in my experience we’re very accepting of imperfect grammar from non-native speakers because we know how crazy this language is.
Tanks!
Homographs are just cruel. As a native english speaker, it’s like… bullying for someone trying to learn the language. Read vs. Read - evil.
It can be pretty confounding, the words that look the same but are pronounced differently. Through, though, thorough, tough, trough.
There are no rules, you just have to learn it. And it could be confusing if you mix them up. Through and throw, for example.
English has never had a spelling reform, but you can see the “real” spelling in informal language sometimes. Through = thru (in texts and chats). Tough = tuff (in slang and brand names).
“I threw the trough thoroughly through the thoroughfare” was a sentence my english teacher had us say and write. Good times!
English person: “What’s your name?”
Norwegian person: “Knut”
English person: “Nnuut?”
Norwegian person: “Kno 😢”
Capital is always pronounced the same, but the similar word capitol is a homophone in most accents.
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Hebrew. I hate how everything is gendered. You cant communicate with a person without assuming his/her gender. You cant ask “how are you?” or “what is your name?” without using the other person’s gender. Its worse than spanish/italian. We have genders for verbs, our “you” is gendered, heck, NUMBERS have genders (two girls, two boys - you use a different word for two).
Have you ever spoken to a person and werent sure about their gender? In hebrew you would be screwed.
Portuguese is essentially the same.
But voce, tu, and numbers arent gendered though.
você, tu
These pronouns adress the other person directly but the moment I have to ask or say something connected to said person I have to start using gendered words
And numbers can be gendered.
Two girls, two boys.
Duas raparigas, dois rapazes.
And things only get weirder from this point forward. It is possible to have a somewhat genderless conversation but it requires a good degree of effort and it is not a common form of speech.
You can kind of get around the gendered stuff sometimes.
‘How are you’ can be מה נשמע
What’s your name can be איך השם
The word “colonel”
Colonel Kernel
And “lieutenant” in AE and “lieutenant” in BE
“Do you mind …” has been mis-answered for so long that yes means no. It’s hard to explain because written down, yes/no have different meanings, but when speaking to someone it depends on tone, context, and body language.
“Do you mind if I take that seat”
“No” “Yeah” depending on tone can both mean, “I’m fine with you taking that seat”. Most people will add on to make the intention clearer like, “Yeah, go ahead” but not always. Absolutely crazy.
Norwegian is easier. If you see a vacant seat, you don’t use it because sitting next to some one is what psychopaths do. You’re not a psychopath, are you?
In these situations, when people say “take that seat”, they usually mean it literally. As in take the seat with them and use it at the table they actually want to sit at.
The problem is that “do you mind if” is really just an indirect way of saying “may I.” People often tend to reply to the actual meaning rather than the literal meaning.
The thing I hate about English is that it pretends to have formal rules for sentence structure and grammar, and they are all basically optional to some degree, but plenty of English speakers get really grumpy when people break them. English isn’t like French where there is a literal governing body who is in charge of setting the formal rules for the language - English is a cluster fuck of borrowed words and structures mashed together in a barely coherent mess, stop acting like “should’a” is a violation of section 16.4 subsection 4
It’s mostly a bunch of feeling over what sounds right. Like big red rubber ball sounds infinitely better than rubber red big ball.
I draw the line at “on accident” though.
I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. “On accident”, fuck me. “I could care less”, too.
We got a governing body that decides what is correct or not when it comes to our two written languages, bokmål and nynorsk. They do not control speach and what is “correct” to say. I recent years the younger generations (I’m millenial, so not young any more 😢) have began merging two sounds, the sj- /∫/ og kj-sounds /ç/ with only the sj-sound. They can’t even hear the diference. This results in funny situations for us who can hear and pronounce the different sounds when used in words.
Kjede, pronounced with /ç/ at the start, means chain (can be used to describe various types of chains).
Sjede, pronounced with /∫/ at the start, means vagina.
The younger generation pronounced both words with /∫/ at the start. This makes the word “kjedekollisjon” not mean “chain collision” any more, but “vagina collision”. “Halskjede” with a /∫/, suddenly means “neck vagina”, not “necklace”. And so on. Language is fun.
I think it’s precisely because there is no governing body for English and all the rules are colloquial, developed through usage, that people do get grumpy! They are the only ones who can create and enforce the rules! Each English speaker feels personally responsible and compelled to correct use they perceive is in violation of the rules the way they want them to be. If they don’t do it right then and there, no one else can.
English having no consistent spelling, grammar or pronunciation.
Same as the norwegian “hjerne” and “gjerne”. They are pronouced the same, but the first is “brain” the secon is “yes, please”
“Hjort” and “gjort”. Also pronounced the same, but the first one is “deer” and the second is “have done that”.
Easy
Spelling and pronunciation were actually standardized and spelling technically still is. The problem is that the standardization is from a previous version of English with different pronunciation.
