Speakers of non-English languages, what common mistakes do native speakers make that drive you crazy?
Speakers of non-English languages, what common mistakes do native speakers make that drive you crazy?
For example, English speakers commonly mix up your/you're or there/their/they're. I'm curious about similar mistakes in other languages.
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Due to Linguistics I spend more time trying to analyse the feature than judging it.
That said, two things that grind my gears, when it comes to Portuguese:
- Usage of the gerund for the future tense; e.g. *estaremos enviando (roughly, "we will send") instead of "vamos enviar" or "enviaremos". My issue here is not grammatical, but that this construction usually marks lack of commitment.
- "Cuspido e escarrado" (spat and coughed up) to highlight the striking resemblance between two things or people. When the saying is supposed to be "esculpido em Carrara" (sculpted in Carrara).
Wait, the resemblance thing is also used in other languages: "spitting image" in English, for example, and "copia sputata" in Italian. I'm actually wondering for the first time where it comes from, so maybe there's a reason for the Portuguese saying to be related to spit
I think that there is some semantic association between spitting and copying, that all three languages are using. (I wonder how modern it is; photocopy machines spitting copies come to my mind.)
However in Portuguese it might be also because most people don't know the reference of the original saying (the marble sculptures of that Tuscan city), so they parse it as a phonetically similar saying. And in quick speech they do sound similar, e.g. for me:
- esculpido em Carrara - [(e)skʊ(w).'pi.dẽ.kɐ̥.'hä.ɾɐ]
- [cópia] cuspida e escarrada - [kʊs.'pi.des.kɐ̥.'hä.dɐ]
From a quick search that didn't provide anything really insightful, it seems that at least in Italian the term has been used since the XIV century, so it's not photocopy related
Yeah, if copia sputata is so old there's no way that it's from those machines.
Digging further on the expression it seems to be old in English too, attested in 1689. And the only explanation that I've seen to account to Italian and English both having it is religious in nature - while not biblical it seems common the idea that God spat into the clay to create Adam.
Speaking on Italian: people (often native speakers) messing with the apostrophe bug me a bit, it's a good example for this thread. Specially un' followed by a masculine word; e.g. *un'altro for un altro. It tilts the autocompletion inside my brain, expecting a word and getting another in place. I'm not native speaker though so this likely plays a role.
Oh trust me, it happens a lot even between native speakers, and it irks me too haha
Excellent comment. I've tried to look this up, but no dice... Anyone have insights?
Good points overall! I'd add that in my opinion "estaremos enviando" is closer to "we will be sending", which also better conveys the odd, misplaced telemarketer politeness vibes it carries.
we will be sending
This. I was struggling to convey the aspect, but you got it right IMO. And, pragmatically, it's more like "we might be sending", with that might highlighting that it probably won't.
Is 'estaremos enviando' not just Brazilian Portuguese?
I believe that it's more used in dialects spoken in Brazil than elsewhere, but even in Brazil it's considered poor grammar. Specially given that both nós conjugations¹ and the synthetic future² are falling into disuse, so it sounds like trying to speak fancy and failing hard at it.
EDIT: now it clicked me why you likely said so; it's common in European dialects to use "a enviar" (gerundive infinitive) instead of "enviando" (traditional gerund)³. The phenomenon that I'm talking about can be used with either, e.g. "estaremos a enviar"; for me it's the same issue, people would say "estaremos a enviar" instead of "enviaremos" to throw the event into a distant future that might never happen.
- They're still fairly used by older people in speech, but there's a clear gen gap with younger folks using "a gente" almost exclusively.
- almost completely replaced by conjugated ir + infinitive.
- Note that "enviando" is still fairly used in Alentejo and the Algarve.