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
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.
@@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 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.
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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 UA-cam 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.
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.
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!
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'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)
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.
***** 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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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 used to be a real stickler for "literally', but I've chilled out on it. It's worth remembering that most of the figurative words you would use instead of "literally" started out meaning the same thing as literally. For example, "truly", "seriously", "really", even "very" comes from the latin root for "truth" (as in, "verify", or "veritas"). And it's also not like "literally" is the only word with its particular usage. We also have "genuinely", "actually", "precisely", "actually", etc. "Literally" just isn't the special linguistic flower that I once thought it was. Sidenote, were all those quotes necessary? They were obnoxious to type on my phone. 🤔
I think it's kind of obvious when literally is being used for emphasis, and when it's being used literally. If you're ever unsure, just ask. Lol! Do you mean that for emphasis, or in the traditional meaning? How hard is that? 😉
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
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
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 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.
It only affects the 3rd person form of verbs, and screws with "to be" a bit. The fun part is that there are two separate subjunctives you'd need to know: the un-conjugated form: "It's vital that he be vaccinated". But there's also a conjugated form: "I wish that he were vaccinated." Engrish me doods
CJ Burkey Please tell me what grammar book taught you that ( presuming it’s not a personal observation ) ! That is HOT stuff that I knew not off even though it was staring me in the face. I bought Otto Jesperson’s Essentials because it seemed to be the Real One, but there must be better ! I even bought a Grammaire Explicative de la langue anglaise...do tell !!
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".
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.
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.
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.
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."
I am German, 23 years old, have started learning english with 10 years and almost every day i consume english media. To this day, i have never known, that the english language has a subjuntive mood, similar to spanish or french.
lennartgro The subjunctive in English isn’t as complicated as it is in Romance languages though. You can get away with not using the subjunctive in English. Most English speakers wouldn’t realize if I incorrectly said “if I drive would your mom get mad,” instead of correctly saying “if I drove would your mom get bad.” If you tried to construct the same sentence in Italian or Spanish without using the subjunctive native speakers would notice it immediately.
Maybe reading more fiction will have you come across the subjunctive more often. It also very much depends on the writer of the texts you read being a native English speaker or not. Still, if it were a more common phenomenon you would've noticed, I suppose.
These days, fewer and fewer people use it, because the problem is that the subjunctive forms are so similar to the past tense forms (and are the same for so many words, including almost the entire class of weak verbs) that a lot of people just aren't aware of the distinction anymore. That said, there is still a distinction for all the irregular and helper verbs as well as most of the strong verbs, which covers a great majority of situations in which you would use subjunctive. So it's still useful, especially for written communication because it expresses intent clearly, something which in spoken language you could infer from stress patterns or facial expressions.
I never learned that at school, too. That's a pity because knowing of the subjunctive mood you see that German and English conditional sentences are very alike.
@@ericolens3 thanks for the comprehensive response! I love the spanish language too, and I think it's interesting how its use of subjunctive is almost like an art in some cases, to convey tact or reservation :)
@@ericolens3 "If I was rich,..." Is now accepted as correct. English grammar is constantly changing as it doesn't have a governing body like the RAE in Spanish.
@@craigds3745 "If I was rich" is accepted as correct only by ignorant people. An exception would be when the speaker does not remember whether he or she was ever rich: "If I was rich, what happened to all the money you say I had?" Correct: "Would it spoil some vast eternal plan, if I were a wealthy man?" - from the song "If I were a Rich Man" from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof."
The English language was invented around the year 500 for the punchline to "A Saxon, a Norman, and a Dane walk into a taberna". (Don't ask for the punchline itself, that's been lost to the ages.)
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".
Same thing happened to "egregious". It used to mean "remarkable" in a good way. It still does in romance languages. I don't think "literally" will get its original meaning back.
The most common mistakes that I notice are: confusing subject & object pronouns ("These belong to Mary and I."), and, in writing confusing "its" and "it's."
True, confusiong "it's" and "its" is the most common mistake. I read it everywhere. I think they make it on purpose, it's too exhausting write the apostrophe 😓
I know this official rule, but delibrately write "it's" for possesive because "it" replaces another word and it makes sense. The cat's tongue It's tongue
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.
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.
Hypercorrection. "Between you and I", "He gave it to she and I" - increasingly common these days. Should be "between you and me", "He gave it to her and me". Prepositions take the objective case. It's "hypercorrection" because we know that "Him and me went to the store" is wrong and should be "He and I went..." but get confused when this follows a preposition.
This one drives me nuts and makes people sound like toddlers. It's so easy to test it too. Just removing one of the people from the sentence makes it clear which pronoun is necessary.
I've got a C1 and never noticed the subjunctive tense, anyway I believe that even the educated people prefer to use directly the indicative one for any context, or at least my english teacher... Can you create a video of galician and portuguese, pls? Thanks in advance!
As a native speaker of another language, I notice that we make a lot of grammatical mistakes in our spoken language as well. - Maybe you could talk about my native language, Yoruba (it is native to west Africa, in southwestern Nigeria & southern Benin)
Dr. A. Elemayo I think that the reference is related to "would have" when people erroneously write "would of" instead of "would've." I've seen it incorrectly written as "would of."
"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.
Languages are living breathing things. These "mistakes", as well as others, are how languages evolve over time from one to another. While a strong motivation for change in English throughout history has been military as one nation conquers another, much of English has changed from Old English to Modern English as a result of the simplification of word forms and grammar, which I'm sure started out as "mistakes" the common people made in speaking the language.
Michael - and what about Middle English? What you write suggests little or no knowledge of the development of the language. Ever read Chaucer? Now there's an example of Middle English...
I am well versed in the development of the English language. Middle English is a mile post on the road, an important one, and to some e tent illustrates my point as a transition. Languages change and Middle English shows that change as English evolves. Much of that change is due to borrowing from Latin and French, but some of it no doubt is due to the types of mistakes Paul speaks of becoming a regular part of the language.
Michael Milliman I think you're just trying to cover up your inability to speak or write properly, so you can feel better about yourself. There's a good reason why people choose to follow basic rules and etiquette when speaking and/or writing. Unfortunately, the English language has been bastardized over the last century.
John Stuart have you ever studied some pieces of linguistics ? you would have found that things are a little more complicated than just "don't try to excuse your mistakes". modern English is just Indo-European with a lot of mistakes.
I wish you had mentioned the hyper-correction that often happens when people say "[so and so] and I" instead of "[so and so] and me". They would never say "That's between we" but they will say "that's between John and I". It drives me nuts.
This started with teachers correcting kids who would say things like "Me and Bill are going fishing later". This is a compound subject, so the pronoun should be "I" (and placed after Bill). But then people started using subjective pronouns in compound objects - over correction. Stuff like "Join John and I for dinner" Simple test is to take out all but the pronoun and see if it sounds right.
@@PanglossDr Join John and Jane for dinner. Join me for dinner = Join John, Jane and me for dinner. John had dinner. I had dinner = John and I had dinner.
Theoretically the present subjunctive (and of course passé composé) would be incorrect here: il voulait que tu le fasse. I believe this should be “fisse”.
@Ethan Hobigant Roche No, there is actually a preterit subjunctive form that is seldom encountered any more. It is still in force in Spanish and Italian, so French speakers complain of difficulty with that. I never learned it, so I'm not sure of my example, but I think for parler it's "parlasse" etc. Is it fusse, eusse for etre and avoir (sorry, I don't have accents)?
@@charlesiragui2473 In other Romance languages, the past subjunctive is still normally used, e.,g. Portuguese: Ele queria que tu o fizesses Spanish: Él quería que tú lo hicieses/ hicieras Italian: Lui voleva che que tu lo facessi Catalan: Ell volia que tu ho fessis French: Il voulait que tu le fisses (past)/ fasses (pres)
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 🤣
Mike Summers-Smith. Why is it that when people encounter others who are more particular about accuracy than they are themselves, they (the others) become pedants. Is it maybe that the complainants hate being reminded of their (There, They're) own poor edukashun? Might that be to assuage their (they're, there) own conscience at their ( they're, there) inadequacies by belittling the implied importance What do you say to pedant-accusers & moaners? Get some in.... EDUKASHUN that is!
No we aren't annoyed by pedants for correcting mistakes. Its quite helpful. But their corrections are intrusive to an otherwise smooth going conversation. it interrupts people for stupid grammatical mistakes that no one else noticed and/or don't care. Everyone understood it but the pedant feel the need to interrupt everything else that is going on and put the person on the spotlight. There's a time and place for everything and a pedant does not care.
This one has become ubiquitous these days, especially in internet posts, and often,( and I mean often), confuses me to the extent that I have to re-read the posts to understand the true meaning of the text.
1 second ago Nowadays, if you have an opinion or are debating someone online and you accidentally type 'your' instead of 'you're' then a troll will automatically 'win' the debate by saying 'you're*'. Because you are totally discredited from that point on.
Are you into linguistics? Dude, you should totally start a linguistics series, in which you explain different grammatical concepts that do and don't exist in the English language. It'd be such an interesting thing to watch and it would probably be helpful for language learners.
I can give you one. Obama is the nth president of the United States? What nth president of the United States is Obama? Ordinal interrogative is a very common feature in Filipino/Tagalog. We use it in everyday conversation. Well you can say the same thing in Japanese (第何番目の大統領) but a native Japanese speaker has told me they wouldn't really ask such question. I asked an American to phrase the question properly and he came up with "How many presidents were there before Obama?" as an approximation.
My grandmother would say "Dassn't". "You dassn't talk back to me." "Don't you dare talk back to me." I think that she heard it in a movie Western, and she liked it.
Your videos are as accurate as they are entertaining. While some comments here and there can be trying, I'm rather impressed at how motivated your audience is to be part of the conversation. That means they are really paying attention-- a UA-cam anomaly perhaps?
it's more likely due to the fact that you would rarely ever need to use the past participle of "lie." I know the word "lain" but I have never needed to say something that required the use of the word.
Chain maille has been also used since 1822, because of a fiction writer, but it's still wrong. After all, maille (from the Latin word macula or "net") has always been armour made of links. Just because something has been done the wrong way for a few hundred years does not make it right. Just because a famous person does it, does not make it right. Just because it's popular does not make it right. "Literally" is the exact opposite of "metaphorically", and anyone who says otherwise is simply uneducated or lazy. Cheerio! Mirriam Webster: Definition of literal (Entry 1 of 2) 1a: according with the letter of the scriptures adheres to a literal reading of the passage b: adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression : ACTUAL liberty in the literal sense is impossible - B. N. Cardozo c: free from exaggeration or embellishment the literal truth d: characterized by a concern mainly with facts a very literal man 2: of, relating to, or expressed in letters The distress signal SOS has no literal meaning. 3: reproduced word for word Collins: literal (lɪtərəl ) 1. ADJECTIVE The literal sense of a word or phrase is its most basic sense. In many cases, the people there are fighting, in a literal sense, for their homes. 2. ADJECTIVE A literal translation is one in which you translate each word of the original work rather than giving the meaning of each expression or sentence using words that sound natural. vocabulary dot com literal To describe something as literal is to say that it is exactly what it seems to be. For example, if you put up a literal barrier to keep the world out, you've actually built a real wall. The background of literal includes the Latin litterālis, meaning "of letters or writing." This led to the sense of exactness, suggesting something is "to the letter." Many people misuse this word, as in "Listening to that dull teacher put me in a literal coma." Possible, but highly doubtful. the free dictionary literal taking words in their primary sense without metaphor or allegory: the literal meaning of a word; expressed by letters; actual, factual, truthful, exact, reliable Not to be confused with: littoral - pertaining to the shore of a lake, the sea, etc.; a region lying along a shore
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. ;-)
"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"
English can be hard sometimes.
It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though...
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.
*tough, thorough
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.
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!
"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.
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 of bean speaking english four almost 18 years now. I are do excellent.
Ну, конечно... : )
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
This will mess up translators.
Lmao
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
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 😆
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 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
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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
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 UA-cam comments are VERY informal English.
Makes sense.
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.
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
"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
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’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.
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".
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!
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
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
"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.
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 :(
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.
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 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 UA-cam 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
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.
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!
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?
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.
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'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)
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.
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.
"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
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 ?
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
"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 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.
At this point, the word “literally” has changed it’s meaning
Literally
@@davigurgel2040 wow you had the whole squad laughing.
I used to be a real stickler for "literally', but I've chilled out on it. It's worth remembering that most of the figurative words you would use instead of "literally" started out meaning the same thing as literally. For example, "truly", "seriously", "really", even "very" comes from the latin root for "truth" (as in, "verify", or "veritas"). And it's also not like "literally" is the only word with its particular usage. We also have "genuinely", "actually", "precisely", "actually", etc. "Literally" just isn't the special linguistic flower that I once thought it was.
Sidenote, were all those quotes necessary? They were obnoxious to type on my phone. 🤔
I think it's kind of obvious when literally is being used for emphasis, and when it's being used literally.
If you're ever unsure, just ask. Lol! Do you mean that for emphasis, or in the traditional meaning? How hard is that? 😉
@@Erics_UA-cam_Handle That was very "homophonic"
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.
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
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
After watching this video, I realized that I really need to practice my use of subjunctives and improve my adverb/adjective usage.
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.
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 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 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
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 😂
God blesses this man for his defense of the subjunctive !
Before I watched this video I thought that the subjunctive disappered in English.
It only affects the 3rd person form of verbs, and screws with "to be" a bit. The fun part is that there are two separate subjunctives you'd need to know: the un-conjugated form:
"It's vital that he be vaccinated". But there's also a conjugated form: "I wish that he were vaccinated."
Engrish me doods
CJ Burkey Please tell me what grammar book taught you that ( presuming it’s not a personal observation ) ! That is HOT stuff that I knew not off even though it was staring me in the face. I bought Otto Jesperson’s Essentials because it seemed to be the Real One, but there must be better ! I even bought a Grammaire Explicative de la langue anglaise...do tell !!
Trix A famous example is, God shed his grace on thee, which most think is a past tense description rather than a prayer : arrogant !
Some languages have even a past subjunctive ! Se lo sapessi lo direi.
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
This video explained me so many things I had not understood about English until now (as a non native English speaker)!!!
I'm glad it helped!
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.
You, sir, win the Internet. Thank you for this!
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.
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.
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."
I am German, 23 years old, have started learning english with 10 years and almost every day i consume english media. To this day, i have never known, that the english language has a subjuntive mood, similar to spanish or french.
lennartgro The subjunctive in English isn’t as complicated as it is in Romance languages though. You can get away with not using the subjunctive in English. Most English speakers wouldn’t realize if I incorrectly said “if I drive would your mom get mad,” instead of correctly saying “if I drove would your mom get bad.” If you tried to construct the same sentence in Italian or Spanish without using the subjunctive native speakers would notice it immediately.
Maybe reading more fiction will have you come across the subjunctive more often. It also very much depends on the writer of the texts you read being a native English speaker or not. Still, if it were a more common phenomenon you would've noticed, I suppose.
These days, fewer and fewer people use it, because the problem is that the subjunctive forms are so similar to the past tense forms (and are the same for so many words, including almost the entire class of weak verbs) that a lot of people just aren't aware of the distinction anymore. That said, there is still a distinction for all the irregular and helper verbs as well as most of the strong verbs, which covers a great majority of situations in which you would use subjunctive. So it's still useful, especially for written communication because it expresses intent clearly, something which in spoken language you could infer from stress patterns or facial expressions.
I never learned that at school, too. That's a pity because knowing of the subjunctive mood you see that German and English conditional sentences are very alike.
lennartgro Me too
Here in the UK there's a trend of mixing "our" and "are". As in " are house". Truly does my head in!
I had no idea English had a subjunctive 😮 and i've been over here complaining about Spanish and French subjunctive moods for years, haha.
@@ericolens3 thanks for the comprehensive response! I love the spanish language too, and I think it's interesting how its use of subjunctive is almost like an art in some cases, to convey tact or reservation :)
@@ericolens3 "If I was rich,..." Is now accepted as correct. English grammar is constantly changing as it doesn't have a governing body like the RAE in Spanish.
Grammar*
@@ericolens3 The subjunctive is used in English a lot more than you realize. By the way, you mean the indicative mood, not the "imperatice" mood.
@@craigds3745 "If I was rich" is accepted as correct only by ignorant people. An exception would be when the speaker does not remember whether he or she was ever rich: "If I was rich, what happened to all the money you say I had?"
Correct: "Would it spoil some vast eternal plan, if I were a wealthy man?" - from the song "If I were a Rich Man" from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof."
we make mistakes.we are human. we all can learn a lot. thanks for posting 🇨🇦
The English language was invented around the year 500 for the punchline to "A Saxon, a Norman, and a Dane walk into a taberna". (Don't ask for the punchline itself, that's been lost to the ages.)
Anvilshock i don't get the dane part do u mean old norse vikingw
@@zak.886 Don't take it too literally.
Nice one
English used to be a romance language
@@ДьяволАльянс lol no it wasn't
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
OED has recognised that through modern usage "literally" now often means "figuratively".
Yes, that's one that just would not go away.
Same thing happened to "egregious". It used to mean "remarkable" in a good way. It still does in romance languages. I don't think "literally" will get its original meaning back.
**insert LeafyisHere reference**
Nooooooooo :(
So, nowadays, when you literally mean something literally then - figuratively speaking - you mean it figuratively?
The most common mistakes that I notice are: confusing subject & object pronouns ("These belong to Mary and I."), and, in writing confusing "its" and "it's."
True, confusiong "it's" and "its" is the most common mistake. I read it everywhere. I think they make it on purpose, it's too exhausting write the apostrophe 😓
I know this official rule, but delibrately write "it's" for possesive because "it" replaces another word and it makes sense.
The cat's tongue
It's tongue
Good idea, Winkhorst. I don't write gender-specific pronouns enough. I would probably write "their" actually.
well, mind your own business and not other people's grammatical mistakes, it's what it's. :)
wait.. there is a difference between its and it's? I thought they are the same.. except that the correct spelling should be with the apostrophe "it's"
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.
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.
Hypercorrection. "Between you and I", "He gave it to she and I" - increasingly common these days. Should be "between you and me", "He gave it to her and me". Prepositions take the objective case. It's "hypercorrection" because we know that "Him and me went to the store" is wrong and should be "He and I went..." but get confused when this follows a preposition.
I've always found that's a peculiar trend, indeed. It seems to be picked up in the UK as well.
This one drives me nuts and makes people sound like toddlers. It's so easy to test it too. Just removing one of the people from the sentence makes it clear which pronoun is necessary.
"Me went to the store." Yeah. Sounds, like, totally fine. Like, literally.
@@Anvilshock my eyes 😢
ZE GOGGELS DOO NUSSING!!
I hope you liked the video!
Langfocus have you researched the Finnish language? if so could you post a video about the intricacies of the Finnish language?
@@ExSheriffFattyBoySkinnyArms Finnish and Estonian have been compared in a recent video
I've got a C1 and never noticed the subjunctive tense, anyway I believe that even the educated people prefer to use directly the indicative one for any context, or at least my english teacher... Can you create a video of galician and portuguese, pls? Thanks in advance!
I **really** thought this was going to be a rick roll this time
As a native speaker of another language, I notice that we make a lot of grammatical mistakes in our spoken language as well.
- Maybe you could talk about my native language, Yoruba (it is native to west Africa, in southwestern Nigeria & southern Benin)
The homophone mistake is how I usually recognize Americans on the internet tbh
Ichigoeki It's sad but true.
What accent do you have where "would of" and "would've" sound different?
Dr. A. Elemayo I think that the reference is related to "would have" when people erroneously write "would of" instead of "would've." I've seen it incorrectly written as "would of."
The homophobe one too
You’re probably labeling non Americans as Americans, then, because it’s not exclusive to any given nationality.
"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.
Languages are living breathing things. These "mistakes", as well as others, are how languages evolve over time from one to another. While a strong motivation for change in English throughout history has been military as one nation conquers another, much of English has changed from Old English to Modern English as a result of the simplification of word forms and grammar, which I'm sure started out as "mistakes" the common people made in speaking the language.
Michael - and what about Middle English? What you write suggests little or no knowledge of the development of the language. Ever read Chaucer? Now there's an example of Middle English...
I am well versed in the development of the English language. Middle English is a mile post on the road, an important one, and to some e tent illustrates my point as a transition. Languages change and Middle English shows that change as English evolves. Much of that change is due to borrowing from Latin and French, but some of it no doubt is due to the types of mistakes Paul speaks of becoming a regular part of the language.
Michael Milliman I think you're just trying to cover up your inability to speak or write properly, so you can feel better about yourself. There's a good reason why people choose to follow basic rules and etiquette when speaking and/or writing. Unfortunately, the English language has been bastardized over the last century.
John Stuart have you ever studied some pieces of linguistics ? you would have found that things are a little more complicated than just "don't try to excuse your mistakes".
modern English is just Indo-European with a lot of mistakes.
I wish you had mentioned the hyper-correction that often happens when people say "[so and so] and I" instead of "[so and so] and me". They would never say "That's between we" but they will say "that's between John and I". It drives me nuts.
Both forms are valid in many languages, that might be a mistake of people who learnt english
What languages do not distinguish between subject and object?
This started with teachers correcting kids who would say things like "Me and Bill are going fishing later". This is a compound subject, so the pronoun should be "I" (and placed after Bill). But then people started using subjective pronouns in compound objects - over correction. Stuff like "Join John and I for dinner" Simple test is to take out all but the pronoun and see if it sounds right.
Your examples didn't make sense
@@PanglossDr Join John and Jane for dinner. Join me for dinner = Join John, Jane and me for dinner.
John had dinner. I had dinner = John and I had dinner.
In French: past tense of the subjunctive is almost gone, though theoretically required.
Theoretically the present subjunctive (and of course passé composé) would be incorrect here: il voulait que tu le fasse. I believe this should be “fisse”.
@Ethan Hobigant Roche No, there is actually a preterit subjunctive form that is seldom encountered any more. It is still in force in Spanish and Italian, so French speakers complain of difficulty with that. I never learned it, so I'm not sure of my example, but I think for parler it's "parlasse" etc. Is it fusse, eusse for etre and avoir (sorry, I don't have accents)?
@@charlesiragui2473 It should be "fisses" with an "s" for the "tu" form :P.
Il voulait que tu le fisses.
skilldraculaX Ha! C’est juste! But the point is the same - no one uses this tense
@@charlesiragui2473 In other Romance languages, the past subjunctive is still normally used, e.,g.
Portuguese: Ele queria que tu o fizesses
Spanish: Él quería que tú lo hicieses/ hicieras
Italian: Lui voleva che que tu lo facessi
Catalan: Ell volia que tu ho fessis
French: Il voulait que tu le fisses (past)/ fasses (pres)
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 🤣
#1 mistake is using "who" instead of "whom." Guaranteed, everyone encounters this literally every day.
...and there are some people who hyper-correct themselves when they actually use the right word, lol.
Even worse when people use "whom" as the subject. They must think "whom" is just a fancier way of saying "who."
Greg Perham yeah I always mess this up lol
When I'm watching movies and they make that mistake, I can't stop myself from correcting it out loud. (And I'm swedish 😀)
Whomst among us has never messed that up?
Stolen from elsewhere.
What do you say to comfort an upset spelling pedant?
"There, their, they're."
Mike Summers-Smith.
Why is it that when people encounter others who are more particular about accuracy than they are themselves, they (the others) become pedants.
Is it maybe that the complainants hate being reminded of their (There, They're) own poor edukashun? Might that be to assuage their (they're, there) own conscience at their ( they're, there) inadequacies by belittling the implied importance
What do you say to pedant-accusers & moaners?
Get some in.... EDUKASHUN that is!
🤣
No we aren't annoyed by pedants for correcting mistakes. Its quite helpful. But their corrections are intrusive to an otherwise smooth going conversation. it interrupts people for stupid grammatical mistakes that no one else noticed and/or don't care. Everyone understood it but the pedant feel the need to interrupt everything else that is going on and put the person on the spotlight.
There's a time and place for everything and a pedant does not care.
Before watching, I already know this will be one:
Your vs. You're
Your a genius
@@andknuckles101 literally crying over this rn
This one has become ubiquitous these days, especially in internet posts, and often,( and I mean often), confuses me to the extent that I have to re-read the posts to understand the true meaning of the text.
Or even "Yore", referring to times long past.
1 second ago
Nowadays, if you have an opinion or are debating someone online and you accidentally type 'your' instead of 'you're' then a troll will automatically 'win' the debate by saying 'you're*'. Because you are totally discredited from that point on.
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!
Are you into linguistics? Dude, you should totally start a linguistics series, in which you explain different grammatical concepts that do and don't exist in the English language. It'd be such an interesting thing to watch and it would probably be helpful for language learners.
I can give you one.
Obama is the nth president of the United States?
What nth president of the United States is Obama?
Ordinal interrogative is a very common feature in Filipino/Tagalog. We use it in everyday conversation. Well you can say the same thing in Japanese (第何番目の大統領) but a native Japanese speaker has told me they wouldn't really ask such question.
I asked an American to phrase the question properly and he came up with "How many presidents were there before Obama?" as an approximation.
Similiar to Slovak:
Obama je štyridsiaty štvrtý (44tý) prezident USA.
Koľký prezident USA je Obama?
Man, that is really interesting. Ordinal interrogative seems useful.
We might say 'What number (of) president is Obama?'
weskos Yeah, that's probably the closest one can get in english.
*Y E S N 'T*
My grandmother would say "Dassn't". "You dassn't talk back to me." "Don't you dare talk back to me." I think that she heard it in a movie Western, and she liked it.
Ignite non”t
Head a splode
Just say yesn't, and non't woud belief em.
*_Y’all’ve_*
Your videos are as accurate as they are entertaining. While some comments here and there can be trying, I'm rather impressed at how motivated your audience is to be part of the conversation. That means they are really paying attention-- a UA-cam anomaly perhaps?
Misusing "literally" (literalmente) is common in Portuguese too.
I fought the schwa and the schwa won.
ahahaha good one tho
I don't think that I've ever said "lain" instead of "laid"
Who tf actually says that
Whoever said that must have lain with an English major.
I've never heard or used that word and I've been speaking English all my life
maybe the heard "lion"
I think the word has nearly gone out of usage. I haven’t in my memory ever used ‘lain’ except to make a funny accent.
it's more likely due to the fact that you would rarely ever need to use the past participle of "lie." I know the word "lain" but I have never needed to say something that required the use of the word.
Wasn't literally literally used by Shakespeare as hyperbole? So saying nowadays is literally wrong
That is literally true! 😀
Chain maille has been also used since 1822, because of a fiction writer, but it's still wrong. After all, maille (from the Latin word macula or "net") has always been armour made of links. Just because something has been done the wrong way for a few hundred years does not make it right. Just because a famous person does it, does not make it right. Just because it's popular does not make it right. "Literally" is the exact opposite of "metaphorically", and anyone who says otherwise is simply uneducated or lazy. Cheerio!
Mirriam Webster:
Definition of literal (Entry 1 of 2)
1a: according with the letter of the scriptures
adheres to a literal reading of the passage
b: adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression : ACTUAL
liberty in the literal sense is impossible
- B. N. Cardozo
c: free from exaggeration or embellishment
the literal truth
d: characterized by a concern mainly with facts
a very literal man
2: of, relating to, or expressed in letters
The distress signal SOS has no literal meaning.
3: reproduced word for word
Collins:
literal
(lɪtərəl )
1. ADJECTIVE
The literal sense of a word or phrase is its most basic sense.
In many cases, the people there are fighting, in a literal sense, for their homes.
2. ADJECTIVE
A literal translation is one in which you translate each word of the original work rather than giving the meaning of each expression or sentence using words that sound natural.
vocabulary dot com
literal
To describe something as literal is to say that it is exactly what it seems to be. For example, if you put up a literal barrier to keep the world out, you've actually built a real wall.
The background of literal includes the Latin litterālis, meaning "of letters or writing." This led to the sense of exactness, suggesting something is "to the letter." Many people misuse this word, as in "Listening to that dull teacher put me in a literal coma." Possible, but highly doubtful.
the free dictionary
literal
taking words in their primary sense without metaphor or allegory: the literal meaning of a word; expressed by letters; actual, factual, truthful, exact, reliable
Not to be confused with:
littoral - pertaining to the shore of a lake, the sea, etc.; a region lying along a shore
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. ;-)