Mine is people who separate words when they write. I’m Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct
Still, people write words the wrong way by separating them.
Examples:
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“Ananas ringer” means “the pineapple is calling” when written the wrong way. The correct way is “ananasringer” and it means “pineapple rings” (from a tin).
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“Prinsesse pult i vinkel” means “a princess fucked at an angle”. The correct way to write it is “prinsessepult i vinkel”, and it means “an angeled princess desk” (a desk for children, obviously)
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“Koke bøker” means “to cook books”. The correct way is “kokebøker” and means “cookbooks”
I see these kinds of mistakes everywhere!
(American) English: Inflammable vs flammable vs non-flammable.
Inflammable and flammable don’t strictly mean the same thing.
Flammable can be set alight
Inflammable can set itself alight.
I think “enflammable” was the intended meaning
How about ignitable instead.
superbesplodey
I’ve known the difference ever since I decided to look it up one day, but I’ve always felt the ‘in-’ prefix was the wrong choice (especially when labeling potentially dangerous substances). “In-” is more often used to qualify a word as “not”.
“Autoflammable” would have been my choice.
It’s prefix is in- because of “it can become inflamed”.
Remember: invaluable is a synonym of priceless, but not of worthless.
So much of English just does not make sense. lol
tbf it’s referring to the verb “to value”, not the noun. long as you keep that in mind it makes perfect sense
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Ambiguously used words like “biweekly”. Does it mean twice per week? Every other week? Business meeting calendar scheduling terminology is especially bad with this.
Odd phrases like you can chop the tree down. Then but then you proceed to chop that same tree up.
Parking in a driveway and driving in a parkway is also a good one.
Norwegian is more accurate. “Biweekly” means “annenhver uke” (every other week)
That second example is… Wow.
These are all real examples. Here’s a picture of someone posting that they want to give away a princess desk
Last sentence, “godt brukt”, means “well used”
How numbers are pronounced.
In German the number 185 is pronounced as “hundred-five-and-eighty” (hundertfünfundachtzig), the digits are not spoken in order of their magnitude.
Not terrible, not great.be the change you want to see, all young germans should start saying numbers sensibly and call anyone who does it the old way a boomer
Same thing for Dutch. For example, when we see 74 we pronounce it as four and seventy (vierenzeventig) and it makes no sense.
I guess it’s a Germanic language thing.
Early modern English has it so it tracks (four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie)
Also in the teens. Sixteen has the six before the ten
24 blackbirds baked in a pie?
This is the same in Danish, but weirdly not in Swedish.
We say four-seventy for 74, and hundred-four-seventy for 174. But the swedes does it like the English. Don’t know about Norwegian though. Maybe OP can provide me with some new knowledge.
French: 80 is four twenties (“Quatre-vingt”)
Edit: not four tens, four twenties. I can’t count in any language, dammit!
And 90 - 99 are even worse, in that they are basically eighty-ten, eighty-eleven, etc.
Makes zero sense to my English speaking mind
It depens on age and/or dialect. My dialect is from the middle of Norway (trøndersk), and I say 74 as “fir’å søtti”. Other parts of Norway may say “søtti fire”. Luckily we do not do the weird danish numbers.
I remember reading that one of the Scandinavian languages had a specific (successful) governmental policy to change from German-like numbers to English-like ones. I don’t remember which of them it was.
It is true, at least here in Norway: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_nye_tellemåten (“The new way of counting”).
Our parliament deceided in 1949 that 21 should not be pronounced as “one-and-twenty”, but as “twenty-one”. It was because new phone numbers got introduced, and the new way gave a lot less errors when spoken to the “sentralbordamer” (switch operator ladies).
“Hundre-og-åtti-fem”
It’s not so much a feature of English as it is a recurring bug in the way people use the language…
If you write “of” instead of “have” or “'ve” you need to be taken out back and beaten with a dictionary, preferably until you can apologize to your ancestors in person for the effort they wasted in passing down the English language to you.
Incidentally, when did people start saying “on accident”? It’s by accident! Has been for ages! Why this? Why now? I hate it.
With that out of the way… English isn’t a language, it’s five dialects in a trenchcoat mugging other languages in a dark alley for their loose grammar.
Edit: With regards to OP, “a cookbook” and “to cook the books” are similar phrases in English, too, but have, eh, wildly different meanings. XD
The word “colonel”
Colonel Kernel
And “lieutenant” in AE and “lieutenant” in BE
Not my native language, but the one I speak the most is (American) English.
So many homophones-words that sound the same but are different in meaning or spelling such as knight/night, altar/alter, ail/ale, isle/aisle/I’ll.
Also homographs-words with same spelling but different meaning and/or pronunciation like minute, bass, capital, wind, moped.
So confusing for people trying to learn English and also for people that actually speak it
I can’t speak for all native English speakers, but in my experience we’re very accepting of imperfect grammar from non-native speakers because we know how crazy this language is.
Homographs are just cruel. As a native english speaker, it’s like… bullying for someone trying to learn the language. Read vs. Read - evil.
It can be pretty confounding, the words that look the same but are pronounced differently. Through, though, thorough, tough, trough.
There are no rules, you just have to learn it. And it could be confusing if you mix them up. Through and throw, for example.
English has never had a spelling reform, but you can see the “real” spelling in informal language sometimes. Through = thru (in texts and chats). Tough = tuff (in slang and brand names).
English person: “What’s your name?”
Norwegian person: “Knut”
English person: “Nnuut?”
Norwegian person: “Kno 😢”
In French they fucking have the same word for “no more” and “more”, and only differs in pronounciation of the last letter:
“J’ai plus de pommes” pronounced as “j’ai plu de pommes” means “I have no more apples” (nobody says the “ne” particle)
“J’ai plus de pommes (que toi)” pronounced as “j’ai plus de pommes (que toi)” means “I have more apples (than you)”
Which is even worse because usually last letter is not pronounced, so that makes it an exception to the rule
Mon Dieu!!! Zut alors!!! Quelle merde!!!
“-sts” and “sps” et al
e.g. ghosts, frosts, wasps, clasps, flasks, basks.
Just a stupid sound.
i propose we return to the germanic roots of english and replace the endings of those words with “-en”, ghosten, frosten, waspen…
“Frosts”!?
English having no consistent spelling, grammar or pronunciation.
(English)
So many people treat the letter S like it’s special, regardless of why it’s there.
Instead of Gus’s, they’ll say Gus’ when they are talking about a possession of the singular Gus.
If the S is part of a name, it doesn’t activate the plural-possessive rule for dropping the S after the apostrophe.
Burns’s poems
Samus’s starship
Kass’s themeProblem: ambiguity of date terms like saying “this Wednesday” on a Thursday. Is the speaker referring to yesterday or the coming Wednesday six days from now? Not always clear.
Solution: I propose standardising our understanding of the week as beginning Monday, ending Sunday. At any point in the current week, “this whateverday” refers to that day in the current week, no matter if it’s past or future. “Next whateverday” refers to that day in the upcoming Monday through Sunday week.
“This Wednesday”, on a Thursday, is referring to yesterday.
“Next Wednesday”, on a Thursday, is referring to a day six days from now.
(I also suggest adopting ISO 8601, writing dates in year-month-day order to avoid that ugly ambiguity.)
Better: say “this past” or “this coming” to indicate the direction in time.
There are some words that have fallen out of use that may be helpful. Overmorrow and score ( as in “…fourscore and seven…”) come to mind. There may be others and I think it would be interesting to research.
Point being that English may have already solved this problem and forgotten the solutions.
We have the same, and the reason I always ask for a specific date.
“Førstkommende onsdag” = “the first coming wednesday”. WHAT? Give me a date.
“Denne helga” = “this weekend”. OK, it works, but to be sure I want to have a date for friday, saturday and sunday.
“Ikke førstkommende helg, men den etter” = “not the first coming weekend, but the second.” … Fuck off!
“Do you mind …” has been mis-answered for so long that yes means no. It’s hard to explain because written down, yes/no have different meanings, but when speaking to someone it depends on tone, context, and body language.
“Do you mind if I take that seat”
“No” “Yeah” depending on tone can both mean, “I’m fine with you taking that seat”. Most people will add on to make the intention clearer like, “Yeah, go ahead” but not always. Absolutely crazy.
Norwegian is easier. If you see a vacant seat, you don’t use it because sitting next to some one is what psychopaths do. You’re not a psychopath, are you?
In English, lack of second-person plural, aside from a dozen regionalisms: y’all, yinz, youse, etc.
No distinction between inclusive & exclusive ‘we’: if I say “we’ve got to go now”, do I expect you to come?
Unnecessarily generated pronouns. I know ‘they/them’ has been used for individuals for ages, but I still find it awkward. I wish we just used one set of ungendered pronouns for every specific person.
Doesn’t “you all” qualify?
English isn’t really a language, it’s a shambling amalgamation of a bunch of different languages so it’s got all sorts of insane, nonsensical rules and exceptions. I can totally understand why it’s a frustrating language to pick up, and IDK that I would’ve bothered to learn if it wasn’t my native language.
eh i don’t really understand why people are so obsessed with rules in language, like that’s not how humans inherently learn language anyways and just memorizing rules seems like a great way to make yourself use the language wrong for a long time.
The ideal way to learn languages is immersion, expose yourself to the language as much as possible and your brain will just automatically start making sense of it, and when you do it this way the regularity of the language is basically irrelevant.
As a norweigan, it is one of the easiest languages to learn
