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!
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).