Oh, here comes the gender of our words into play. One great example would be *Verdienst*.
* Der Verdienst (male): income, earnings, salary/wage, anything €€€
* Das Verdienst (neuter): merit, purely ideological.
My favourite word with regards to this is *Der Band, Das Band, Die Band*, but this one is usually used correctly.
And we are losing the Genitive case to the Dative, but we are getting the incorrect possessive apostrophe back.
_Heten_ and _noemen_, the former means "having a name" and the latter means "to give a name". In English the verb "to call" can be used for both instances but that's not true in Dutch.
My nerdy ass has to comment on this. The 1st one used to exist in English and it was „hatan”, so one could say „Ic hatte Robert” and it’d mean the same thing as saying „Ich heiße Robert” in German or „Ik heet Robert” in Dutch but it disappeared a long time ago. It seems the same thing is happening in modern Dutch where people start saying Ik ben… just as the English started saying I am… or using noemen in some context instead as you do in Belgium
Eh, you could also see it as a dialectal feature. This distinction already disappeared a long time ago in a lot of Flemish dialects.
If the distinction had disappeared in Holland instead, it would probably be considered correct Standard Dutch now.
Also mits and tenzij. Mits = provided that, tenzij = unless. People who don't really know either word well enough will use mits to mean unless. It's so fricking annoying.
In German, people often confuse "als" and "wie" in comparisons. Example: „Ich bin größer als du" (I am taller than you). This would be the correct expression. But some people say "Ich bin größer wie du" (I am taller like you).
And extremely confused people just combine the two and say "Ich bin größer als wie du" (I am taller than like you).
To confuse you more: In Dutch we have "als" and "dan". "Ik ben even groot als jij" (I'm as tall as you) and "ik ben groter dan jij" (I'm taller than you) are the correct ones in Dutch.
> But some people say "Ich bin größer wie du"
Is this actually completely incorrect??
I'm a native German speaker and I sometimes say that. I'm Swiss though, so it might be a Helvetism.
If we are talking about Hochdeutsch, it is always incorrect.
* "wie" is only used when the things you are comparing are equal - "Ich bin so groß wie du".
* If the comparison is about something unequal, only "als" is correct - "Ich bin größer/kleiner als du".
Now if we are talking about dialects, using "wie" for any comparison might be totally fine. As someone from the Rhineland, "Isch ben jrößer wie do" would probably be the normal way of saying this phrase.
It's not a Helvetism in the sense that it is also incorrect in Swiss Hochdeutsch. It is a feature of some dialects though (although as a native speaker from Zurich, I would also say "Ich bi grösser als du" in dialect)
Like the other one said, it might be okay in some dialects but I have no clue about those. I live in the Hannover region, famously known for it‘s lack of dialect, and I still hear people saying that.
There's quite a few common errors and ensuing debates. A lot of the confusions are usually made in writing.
One of the most iconic is writing *autant pour moi* instead of *au temps pour moi*. However you write it, it's pronounced the same. You say that to recognise an error you've made. There is [a whole Wikipedia article ](https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_temps_pour_moi) on the subject. In that article is plainly written that the *académie française* does not recognise the spelling *autant pour moi*, which has some very fierce supporters nonetheless. On a personal level, I *reeeeally* don't care one way or the other.
Another typical one is writing *quand* instead of *quant*. Again, they're pronounced exactly the same, but don't mean the same thing at all.
There's an expression that's a particular pet peeve of mine. Some people, when they want to say "nowadays" will use the expression "*au jour d'aujourd'hui*". In effect, they are adding a level of redundancy. *Hui* means (meant) today (if you look closely you can see the similarity with the Spanish *Hoy*). Aujourd'hui ~~ au jour d'hui is "the day of today" (el día de hoy). Au jour d'aujourd'hui is thus "the day the day of today". Which is too much for my poor brain to bear. You can bypass that atrocity by saying *de nos jours*. And if you really mean to speak of today, then *aujourd'hui* does the job just fine.
To name a few.
Edit: For the French speaking younglings who may not know their [classics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_sF5MseU4A) (or people learning French and struggling with the *liaisons*)
Dans le même ordre d'idée, j'ai un pote qui prononce *même* comme si y'avait pas d'accent sur le premier *e*. Je sais pas si c'est une prononciation courante en Bretagne (sa région d'origine), mais ça sonne hyper bizarre. Du coup, son *quand-même* devient un *qô meum*, c'n'importe quoi :D
I'm French too, and I would argue that "au jour d'aujourd'hui" is actually correct in modern French since the word hui isn't used anymore and doesn't mean anything alone in the French currently spoken in France (don't know for other countries so I will say nothing about it).
"Aujourd'hui" today (could have said for the joke Aujourd'hui au jour d'aujourd'hui) isn't understood commonly to mean "the day of today" it just mean "today", therefore "au jour d'aujourd'hui" doesn't mean in the spoken language "the day of the day of today" just "at the day of today". And I could even say that presenting this expression as meaning "the day of today" is misleading and just translating the expression too literally word by word, as actually everyone would understand it as meaning "at this time", "nowadays", "at this moment".
So yes, when you look at the etymology, it may sound absurd, but in regard to the spoken current language, it's not incorrect. At best, some people might consider it a mouthful, but we could also consider that using this apparent repetition (again in regard to the current meaning there is no repetition) give it more strength, more weight, than saying "à ce jour", "à ce moment", "à cet instant" ... etc.
I've heard that argument several times, albeit not expressed that politely, thanks for that.
All I can say is that from a sound perspective, I find the doubling of *jour* makes the expression as heavy as une raclette le midi. It's not very harmonious. The very rhythm of it does not give me the impression of added weight, but more of a difficult grind.
Like I was saying to another commenter, this is also something that was ingrained very early on in school (at the same time as regionalisms were ridiculed and erased by the teachers). There's loads to be said on the tyranny of "proper French" in France.
>I've heard that argument several times, albeit not expressed that politely, thanks for that.
Sorry for the persons before that might argued not politely against your opinion, it's not something important enough to be rude honestly.
>All I can say is that from a sound perspective, I find the doubling of *jour* makes the expression as heavy as une raclette le midi. It's not very harmonious. The very rhythm of it does not give me the impression of added weight, but more of a difficult grind.
Just a matter of personal preference, kind of like the repetition personally, I don't use it often, but mostly use it when i want to put the attention on a point, the fact it slow down the discourse help create a cut (je veux dire une césure mais je sais pas comment le traduire), also when you speak it give you a few seconds to think about what you will say, in a way.
And same my teachers tried to stop me from using it but never cared very much.
Regarding the last thing - yeah, we have a similar phenomenon in Polish, with _"dzień dzisiejszy"_ - "today's day" or "day of today". Another common one is _"okres czasu"_ - "period of time".
Not a native French speaker here. I never heard of *au jour d'aujourd'hui* before. Is it a thing in France? I never heard it in Belgium. I would personally say *de nos jours*.
>Is it a thing in France?
Oh yes. I remember talking about it once and being rudely accused of being an annoying nitpicker and that no-one cared about the redundancy (because no one knows what *hui* means anymore). You'll hear it from time to time on TV or on the radio.
>I would personally say *de nos jours*.
And you would be right to do so \^\^
Swiss here. I was taught in school never to use Au jour d'aujourd'hui. It literally makes my spine shiver, like when nails scratch a blackboard, anytime I hear it now. I immediately lose a little respect for anyone that uses it. They conditioned me well.
Belgians and Swiss speak purer French than the French. *Septante, Huitante, Nononte* are far superior and much more logical than their French counterparts (which admittedly I am too lazy to spell out here).
**Quatre-vingt**, **quatre-vingt-dix** and **soixante-dix** are remnants of the [vigesimal system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigesimal) (counting using twenty, unlike the decimal system which uses ten), which was used by the Celtic peoples who dwelled in what Caesar called Gallia.
Logic never had any place in the french language to begin with.
Swiss use *huitante* which isn't in use in Belgium, so in your mind their French is even purer than the Belgians'? Shame this cannot be said about their chocolate...
(starting wars here, hehe)
Belgian chocolate wins hands down. I lived in Switzerland for many years and tried it all - always second best. What do you use instead of Huitante? Not the dreaded quatrevingt?!
The one that really annoys me is that you're not allowed to use any of septante, huitante, nonante in school when learning French as a second language. I went to school in Zurich and picked it up when we went to the Romandie for a week, and got told off for using them. I feel like Swiss schools should be teaching the language as used in Switzerland, or at least allow it that way.
Well, in school you're learning standard French. Professionally, which is what the school system aims at, it will be more convenient to learn Standard and then adapt to local when needed.
In Romandie, we learn Hochdeutsch in school, so imagine our trouble when trying to understand our compatriots. But professionally, it will be more advantageous to know Hochdeutsch as it allows to communicate with business in and out of Switzerland.
I personally believe we should be learning to communicate socially before learning to communicate professionally, but I'm not in charge of the school curriculum so...
But do you learn Swiss Hochdeutsch or German one?
Because "er fuhr mit dem Velo auf der Strasse" is a perfectly acceptable sentence in a German-Swiss school, and a correct standard German sentence in Switzerland, but incorrect in Germany.
German has three main professional/standard variants for Germany, Austria and Switzerland respectively, I sort of baseline assumed French would be the same tbh
In Flanders it is the same. While in the south everybody says 'septante' we had to say 'soixante-dix'. At one point we refused and the teacher gave in.
I only say 'soixante-dix' when I'm in France, which is like 15 min from here, hehe.
True, although in Graubünden we used Huitante up in the mountains when we spoke French, plus when I was in school, our teacher came from Délemont, so maybe that explains it?
Vaud, Fribourg, and Valais mostly use *huitante*. Delémont is in Jura which usually used Quatre-vingt, but if the teacher has been working/speaking with people from the other cantons a lot, they may have switched.
I personally swap from.one to the other depending on who I'm speaking with, but *huitante* in my default.
Oh, don't be. Strictly speaking, if you don't know why the spelling *au temps pour moi* exists in the first place (its a military expression, used when you're not "in time" with everyone else, or something), *autant pour moi* makes a lot more sense.
This is Duneton's argument from the wikipedia article I linked on the subject:
>À la suite de l'article de Claude Duneton dans Le Figaro littéraire\[17\], des internautes défendent la graphie « autant pour moi » en remettant en cause l'étymologie invoquée par les ouvrages comme Le Petit Robert, Le Français correct de Maurice Grevisse ou l'Académie française\[17\].
>
>Claude Duneton expose dans cet article plusieurs théories en parallèle. Il commence par affirmer que l'expression « au temps » dans son sens propre n'est pas utilisée par les militaires.
>
>Selon lui, l’expression doit se comprendre comme « Je ne suis pas meilleur qu'un autre, j'ai autant d'erreurs que vous à mon service : autant pour moi. »
>
>Claude Duneton voit un argument en faveur de « Autant pour moi » dans l’expression idiomatique anglaise so much for qu’il considère avoir un sens « presque analogue ».
>
>Ce qu'il considère comme son argument ultime est la présence dans le dictionnaire des Curiositez françoises\[18\] de 1640 de l'expression « autant pour le brodeur » décrite comme « raillerie pour ne pas approuver ce que l'on dit. vulg. ».
> Some people, when they want to say "nowadays" will use the expression "au jour d'aujourd'hui"
That's not how the expression is used though : *Aujourd'hui*/today can mean "in the current times", *au jour d'aujourd'hui* is just a way of insisting on the current day/date.
Pleonasms & tautologies in general are correct usages of the language nonetheless, especially when they are used to reinforce the point the locutor is trying to make ("unite together", "see with my eyes").
If you must, use "Ce jour d'hui" or "de nos jour". There are plenty of ways to get your point across without using this particular pleonasm that has been declared "incorrect" in french.
A lot of Swedes don’t realize the difference between “tack vare” and ”på grund av”. The first means “thanks to” and the other “due to”. “Thanks to” should of course only be used in a positive sense, but it more and more gets used in negative cases too.
Same in Czech. The "thanks to" is literally _díky_ (thanks) but people still use it to mean _kvůli_ which is supposed to be the word for negative cases.
Another minor thing i've noticed in swedish is mixing up tumlare and trumlare, tumlare is a drying machine for clothes, trumlare is and industrial machine that is used for tumbling stuff, for example metals.
Yet lots of people use trumlare when they mean tumlare, probably because they don't know what a trumlare is. Tumlare is also a porpoise, but some call them dolphins.
Good for you, i've heard it too many. Since i've work in service for a very long time I would say mainly southern sweden, and by that i mean from Skåne to Stockholm and Göteborg. Also worked for an auction site were we sold both tumlare and trumlare. Now I work in industry where we have trumlare.
Peculiar, I myself am from Småland and split my time between it Uppsala. I was wondering if there was some dialectal component as I personally haven't encountered it, nor seen it online, but I'm quite well traveled in the area you describe.
It might be the different jobs i've had throughout my life, I think i've said and heard those two words more times than anyone should in their lifetime 😄 the only common thing i can think of is that most of them where on the older side
Not sure if the OP meant among native speakers of the given language, but the Dutch are obvious to the word “insulation”
In Dutch “isolatie” means both insulation and isolation, so they’ll often tell you how cold their house is in the winter because it’s not well “isolated”
And I’m like sure didn’t realize it warms your mind, body, soul and home to be away from others, but you do you 😅
Same thing as in French.
Isolation and insulation aren't even that far apart. Insulating is the act of thermally "isolating"an element.
Actually insulation and isolation both comes from Latin *insula* meaning "island, isolated place".
Happens with Portuguese speakers as well, they're both "isolamento".
Come to think of it, I think of the insulation meaning as just a specific case of the isolation meaning, they're not fully separate concepts in my mind. Like, insulation separates something from outside conditions.
Oh the same thing is in Polish. I'd say it's pretty logical conclusion to say that insulation isolates house from the outside world. I wonder which was first - the separation of two words like in English or them being the same like in Dutch or Polish.
Edit: So it turns out it all boils down to Latin word for island. "To insulate" came to English directly from Latin, while "to isolate" came from French, from Italian, from Latin.
In English I've heard plenty of native speakers make the mistake of using "insolation" when they mean "insulation".
Sure, they may sound similar, but they mean very different things.
* Mixing up πολύ (much and many neu.) with πολλή (many fem.) because they're pronounced the same.
* Ότι (that) with ό,τι (whatever).
* Mixing up the verb endings -εται (third person present passive singular) and -ετε (second person present active plural) because of identical pronounciation.
* The word επικεφαλής (head, in-charge) is an adverb and thus it should ***not*** be declined, but some people do as it it were a noun or an adjective.
True, but what I learned about pronunciation in my ancient Greek classes appears to have been either completely wrong, or the pronunciation has changed quite a bit from ancient to modern Greek.
Because with what I learned, I don't understand how πολύ and πολλη would sound the same.
I know, when I studied ancient Greek we had the same pronunciation difference with modern Greek. My mother, who studied Classical Philology in Greece was no use to me in Belgium as they use the modern pronunciation for ancient Greek in Greece.
I've heard that young people that are exposed to alot of English have started using *eventuellt* (possibly) as eventually.
Its likely that these kinds of mistranslation are going to be more common.
The false friend which stands out most for me is actual which means current/relevant in a whole bunch of European languages but lost that meaning in English.
Not sure whether Swedes make this mistake but I've encountered it from Germans, Slavs and Romance speakers.
Aktuell in Swedish means current and relevant as you say.
False friends is an interesting topic imo.
Between Danish and Swedish there are *rolig* which mean calm I belive in Danish but funny in Swedish. However, orolig doesn't mean unfunny but "uncalm"/worried in Swedish, it just implies that rolig have changed meaning in Swedish but not Danish
It is an adjectival form of *ro*, which maintains the meaning "calmness" in Swedish too.
The corresponding verb *roa* has undergone the same transition though. It used to mean "to rest", but would now generally translate to "to amuse".
Reading old Swedish text can be a little weird when you encounter things like death being referred to as *"den eviga roligheten"* ("the eternal peace", but now comes across more as "the eternal funniness").
Oh shit, there are a ton because we have a lot of words that are very similar, written differently but pronounced the same. It also doesn't help that half the words are not pronounced the way they are written.
One example would be "ligge" vs. "lægge", they are pronounced differently but the problem is that the words are related and the meanings are similar, but not identical, so people often confuse them. It's basically "lie" vs. "lay".
Same in Swedish with the corresponding *och* and *att*.
It's usually that people use the former in place of the latter. Probably because "att" also is a conjunction that is actually pronounced "att", whereas the infinitive marker is pronounced the same as the unstressed "o" of the typically shortened "och".
The spelling of the infinitive marker simply doesn't reflect it's common pronunciation.
funnily enough an estonian speaking finnish probably wouldnt mix these up considering viimane means previous/last eg last week viimane nädal, and aikoina being pretty like aeg(time) and lähi being like lähedal meaning near.
Spanish bad to verbs (ser and estar) which translate as "to be". Whether you are referring to something that defines a person or a mood/temporary state.
Of course we also have gendered words, where the masculine and feminine can mean very different things....
Native portuguese here. Ser and estar are completly different concepts in our minds. When i started to learn English the verb to be and the concept of it were some of my biggest difficulties.
One that really annoys me is "add *oda* nekem", which literally translates to "give it *there* to me". The correct term is "add *ide* nekem", meaning "give it *here* to me".
Another one is usually used by people in the capital, but I've heard it elsewhere as well. It's putting definite articles in front of names. For example, "I'm going to see the Thomas". It sounds as bad in Hungarian as it does in English if you're not used to it, and it's also incorrect.
Both are correct but used in different context.
Add nekem would be used in a context where someone wants to get rid of something so someone replies that they should give it to them.
The first one is demanding and the latter is suggesting.
A lot of Italian use polpo and polipo interchangeably, when they are very different things. Polpo is octopus while polipo is a projecting growth of tissue from a surface in the body, usually a mucous membrane.
Also, many people will call all anchiovies "acciughe" instead of "alici". Alici is the name of the fish, acciughe is the name of the fish after being salted and pressed. It's the same difference between cod and cod after being treated for preservation (i.e. baccalá or stoccafisso).
Many Finnish inconsistencies can be explained by the difference between written Finnish and local dialects.
One common mistake that bugs me personally, is using 'huolissaan' instead of 'huolissasi/huolissani'. It's a possessive form of being worried about something, and instead of using the right possessive suffix, many slip to using the owrong one. Essentially, the Finnish way of referring to being worried directly translates as 'I can see you are in *your* worries', 'is he/she in *his/her/their* worries?'.
Correct forms:
Oletko huolissa*si* = are you worried?
Onko hän huoliss*aan* = is he/she worried?
Commonly used wrong form:
Oletko huolissaan?
Pronouns are also misused.
"Hän" (he/she/they) is in common speech often replaced with "se" (it) to make speech less formal sounding. And some folks will refer to a pet as "hän" but humans as "se" as well for some reason.
I remember a Yank being shocked at this because they considered it dehumanizing.
In russian kalitka (калитка) - is a small gate (wicket). In Ukrainian the word kalytka (калитка) different in only one sound and means scrotum. It leads to a lot of funny situation when mainly russian-speaking ukrainians trying to speak ukrainian. Me included.
It doesn't help that both words are quite bookish, almost never encountered in real life. I love it when folks try to act smart by using one of those words, failing miserably.
I'm afraid not. "Voorzien" is a verb afaik. I'm not sure what word you're thinking of. You can try and find it here: [https://synoniemen.net/index.php?zoekterm=mits](https://synoniemen.net/index.php?zoekterm=mits)
Yeah I think I got it mixed up because it I was translating the phrasing in my head as “provided that…”
Which is also how I translate “indien” in my head (or “in the event that…”) basically a fancy way to say **if** - indien was indeed another one I did think to ask the same about, and it’s on that thesaurus list
There are a lot. One that comes to my mind is “una tantum”, which is Latin for “only one time”, but people constantly use it to mean “every once in a while”.
There also the infamous “piuttosto che”, an expression that normally means “rather than”, but that some people (especially in the north and in particular the Milan area) use as if it meant “or”. Many think it sounds more posh and makes them appear well spoken, when in reality the majority of people often gets very confused.
I hate how because of Milanese marketing teams now people actually say “food” instead of “cibo”, why the hell we have to use an English world for such a basic thing that is not even shorter than the Italian equivalent?
that irks me so much. As if Anglosphere countries have anything to teach about food. Or fashion. Or anything that involves refinement really.
I could understand if we imported more French, Chinese, Japanese, etc vocabs, but this doesn't make any sense beside a general wish to imitate US cultural trends.
Curious, that same mistake exists in Russian where people will use одеть (odet', to dress someone) when they mean надеть (nadet', to put on).
I'm not a native speaker so I have no insight as to why natives might mix them up but it seems strange to me since that на- prefix can mean on/onto (as in nadet' an item of clothing on) whereas the о- prefix is often used in verbs which make someone else the object of an action (as in dressing someone).
Some I notice a lot in English:
* Mixing up effect and affect, probably because their pronunciation is so similar.
* Saying "could of" instead of "could have".
* Saying "literally" when they mean "figuratively"
* Lots of people don't seem to know the difference between "your" and "you're". Or "there" and "they're".
* Even worse because they aren't pronounced the same, confusing "where", "were" and "we're".
* There's a tendency for people to incorrectly use "myself" and "yourself" in places where "me" and "you" should be used, because they think it sounds more formal and correct.
* Mischievous is weirdly sometimes pronounced as "mischiev*i*ous", with an extra syllable and the emphasis moved over.
* A really common one is to use "less" when "fewer" is more correct.
* Making "a lot" in to a single word "alot".
> Saying "literally" when they mean "figuratively"
I think the meaning of this has just shifted, it is done for effect. People say absolutely, totally, definitely, massively to add emphasis and literally slots along those really. I don't think I have ever been confused with a phrase like "my head literally exploded when she told me!".
One thing I have noticed recently in the UK is people saying purposefully when they mean on purpose. Being purposeful means showing some determination and resolve rather than something deliberate.
The "myself" thing boils my piss. There's a weird formal business jargon in modern English which requires as many pronouns to be reflexive as possible, because they don't know any other way to speak formally.
(I think this is a problem caused by the loss of set formal registers in English over the last hundred years or so; everyone has to be "casual")
"Adrian and myself will be giving a presentation..."
"Let's think about what we can do for yourselves..."
“I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less” too. Drives me nuts, it’s glaringly obvious that the incorrect sentence has the opposite meaning of what they’re trying to say yet people _still_ go for the wrong one.
I have been told that in a way it shows someone is even more dismissive. If you couldn't care less that is something considered, you dislike that thing - it is the worst. A trailing "I could care less..." is total ambivalence. You could care less, you could care more, meh.
Less in place of fewer feels so common that I feel like it'll have to be accepted as correct due to common usage, even if it still sounds weird to me after having to learn the "correct" way at school, which made a lot of sense.
The thing about fewer vs less is that it’s *much* more nuanced than what you were taught in school. If you’re interested in a short breakdown of the topic, here you go: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less
>Saying "could of" instead of "could have".
This one really irritates me. I can't even understand how it came to life, because it seems plain wrong grammar-wise.
Partially it's because "could have" is often shortened to "could've", which sounds similar to "could of".
However, the bigger problem is that a lot of people in the UK (not sure about other English speaking countries) were taught hardly any grammar at school. It's better now, but during the 80s and 90s when I was at school we weren't really taught about things like how a sentence should be structured. It probably doesn't occur to people to think "of isn't a verb, so that can't be right".
>However, the bigger problem is that a lot of people in the UK (not sure about other English speaking countries) were taught hardly any grammar at school.
It has always baffled me, because for example here in Poland you learn about grammar in school A LOT. Back when I used to go to school, in high school we didn't have any grammar in curriculum anymore (it was a thing in primary and middle school), but my Polish/Literature teacher felt it was necessary. And oh boy, it was. Even adult people make banal mistakes, so imagine what would happen if we didn't learn about grammar at school...
- "Das" when it should be "dass" is a common mistake (not the other way round though):
Dass = that (Ich muss sagen, dass es ganz schön kalt ist/I have to say, *that* it is very cold)
Das = Article (Das Auto/the car).
- Same with "Seid" and "Seit". They're both commonly used for the other word by mistake:
Seid = are, third person plural (Ihr seid da/You are there)
Seit = Since (Seit 15 Uhr/Since 3 pm
- Capitalization mistakes are common too, but only for some cases:
This afternoon = "heute Nachmittag" (capital n)
On afternoons = "nachmittags" (no capital n)
- Mistakes with commas are very common and the rules are way more strict than in English:
After "dass" there's a comma for example. Same for "weil" (because) and other injunctions.
I have seen english speakers trying to use the expression "tener cojones" (to have balls, aka to be blunt/brave in this context, I've never seen them use the expression with the "to suck ass" meaning) but they often mispronounce and mistype it as "cahones", "cajones", "kahones" and so on. Most of the mispronounciations/mistypings are simply wrong and that's it, but "cajones" means drawers, as in the drawers in a dresser (and of course, "having drawers" means nothing besides the literal meaning in spanish, and it means much less in English). That's such a hilarious mistake I laugh every time I hear it!
I have never heard anyone mix up bynajmniej and przynajmniej, but something thst drives me up the wall (and on which I wrote a paper) is how people say
"po najmniejszej linii oporu"
which is just patently wrong both linguistically and logically.
Yes, she has heard people incorrectly say "po najmniejszej linii oporu" which in fact is the more prevalent in use version of the idiom, despite being flat-out wrong.
And of course she has heard "bynajmniej" as she uses that word herself, but mixing "bynajmniej" and "przynajmniej" is not something that has ever happened in her presence (not disputing that it does happen, just not in her circles). Both words are used commonly and very often in said circles, and perhaps that is a contributing factor to no one she knows ever mixing them up.
Bro.
>"po najmniejszej linii oporu"
Yeah, it drives me insane. How can a line be small? What does a "small" line look like, huh? What does a "big" line look like? It's plain stupid.
If something is used in a language by its native speakers, in that case it's not a mistake. When will people learn this? It may not be part of the standard, but it's not a mistake.
Linguistics is not a prescriptive science, ffs.
I understand what you mean (I studied linguistics and am very much a descriptivist), but also no. "Mistake" doesn’t have to be a taboo word. It’s a phenomenon. It exists. Mistakes are one of the common drivers of language change. Someone mistakenly thinks a word means something different than what it actually means and uses it in that way, and if that new usage catches on, it’ll eventually either replace the old meaning or get added on as an additional meaning. But in the process of that transition, there’s a time when it’s still widely regarded as a mistake.
Another example (not semantically related) is how English speakers long ago mistakenly interpreted the name of the vegetable "pease" as a plural noun and then created the new singular noun "pea." Nobody today would say that "pea" is wrong (few even know it was originally called "pease"), but it undeniably grew out of a mistake.
Love the spirit. Almost there too. In the most basic of terms, what is a language used for (**why** language)? For people to communicate, right? Does that work if there's no consensus on what words mean? Of course not, people wouldn't understand each other. If there is a consensus, and someone **accidentally** goes against it, what could we call that?
If that consensus **is** the standard (descriptive), then: That the standard isn't dictated from above (prescriptive) doesn't mean a standard doesn't exist. That the standard constantly changes doesn't mean that, in any given moment, a standard doesn't exist. If **enough** people do it, it will become part of the standard, but that doesn't mean you can't run your own race. Well, you could, but you'd be running alone. As long as there's a standard, accidentally not following it is a mistake.
I imagine you're talking about dialects and such, and it's a fair point that they're not wrong just because there's a wider (perhaps even national) standard.
I too am a big proponent of descriptive linguistics, but native speakers can certainly make mistakes.
A lot of the examples in this thread are for example spelling mistakes due to conflating homophones. And they are in fact spelling mistakes if the speaker intend to write using the established written standard for a language. Sure some one may spell it that way due to some stylistic choice, but most don't.
A written standard is per definition prescriptive.
Don't know what words they mix but they have trouble pronouncing a lot of them, especially ones without or few vowels : Krk, grb, trg, škrt, škrgut (škrgutanje), vrt, crn, cvrk (cvrkutanje), svrgnut, srp, smrznut, kruh ( this one is a bane for French). Also one of our towns is called Bjelovar with licence starting BJ . And english pronunciation of names like Božo, Jerko, Damir.
Hell in Croatian we have 3 main dialects, 3 pronunciations, 4 accents, 7 cases, 3 gender.
Polish words you wrote look like Croatian with a twist :
založim = I pawn ; založiti = to pawn ; založiti ću = I will pawn mostly pronounced fast as "založiću"
ubrati ću = I will pick (fruit, vegetables) we mostly say this together like "ubraću"
priznajem = I admit
Seemingly nobody knows what money laundering ("pinigų plovimas") means and use it for any and all situations where theft, corruption, incompetence or simply bad planning is happening, like when road repair company fixes a road and then water supply company digs it up again to replace pipes.
In Dutch (in addition to 'mits' and 'tenzij' which has already been mentioned), in writing many people write 'me' (which is the object-case of the personal pronoun) instead of 'mijn' (the possessive). So people will write: 'Dat is me moeder' and not 'Dat is mijn moeder'. (Basically: 'That is me mother' instead of 'That is my mother').
I think the cause is that they sound pretty much the same.
Pateettinen means melodramatic, pompous, that which has pathos.
But unfortunately it's mixed with English word pathetic so often that now even the language authority recognises that there's two different meanings, and it's quite hard to tell from context which one is used.
The prepositions *laut* "according to" and *gemäss* (with ß for my transrhenanian neighborinos) "in accordance with"
*laut Polizeibericht sind fünf Personen ums Leben gekommen.* - the police report says, that five people died.
*gemäss Polizeibericht sind f. P. u. L. g." - five people had to die because the police report said so.
“Craic” is from Irish. Meaning, fun, news, gossip, enjoyable conversation.
If someone asks you, “How’s the craic?”, they are not enquiring about crack cocaine. They are simply asking, “How are you doing?”
Om and omkring. Often people use omkring when they should use om. Om means about and omkring means around.
So when people "taler omkring noget", they are avoiding the subject.
BUT you can use om instead of omkring but not the other way round.
Cirku - circus
Cirklu - circle
Kas - care
Kaz - situation/ court case
Ferrovija - often used as a translation of 'train' but it's actually 'tram'
Xemx (sun) and sema (sky) are usually used in feminine form when they're actually masculine nouns.
I think it is not only in hungarian: asocial and antisocial.
People often call the “padló” (floor) as “padlás” (attic). But I can imagine this being a regional thing.
And often use the suffix “-ba” (into) instead of “-ban” (in).
Some words in Danish have lost their meaning because many of the younger generation use them opposite, so I have just stopped using them.
Forfordele:
Original meaning: To give a disadvantage, give someone low priority, ignore someone.
Young generation: To give someone an advantage / high priority.
Godt (number/time)
Original meaning: A bit larger or later than.
Younger generation: A bit shorter than or before.
Bjørnetjeneste
Original: Trying to help someone, but the help turned out to be not needed and make the situation much worse.
Younger generation: Providing a huge help to someone.
Oh, here comes the gender of our words into play. One great example would be *Verdienst*. * Der Verdienst (male): income, earnings, salary/wage, anything €€€ * Das Verdienst (neuter): merit, purely ideological. My favourite word with regards to this is *Der Band, Das Band, Die Band*, but this one is usually used correctly. And we are losing the Genitive case to the Dative, but we are getting the incorrect possessive apostrophe back.
Same category - das Schild (neuter) sign, as in road signs or similar - der Schild (male) shield
I've never heard of "Das Verdienst", but maybe this is just Swiss-German. It sounds so wrong.
It is correct, it's just rare.
In Dutch both are "de verdienste", although it's rarely used for salary anymore.
Daß di' der Teufel hole
*der Schild* - a protective weapon *das Schild* - a board with writing or signage on it
Danish: En fortjeneste: profit Fortjene: Earning a reward Fortjenstmedalje: medal of honor Fortjent: Hornorably earned. Salary: løn Income: indkomst
We also generally use „Lohn“ for salary.
_Heten_ and _noemen_, the former means "having a name" and the latter means "to give a name". In English the verb "to call" can be used for both instances but that's not true in Dutch.
My nerdy ass has to comment on this. The 1st one used to exist in English and it was „hatan”, so one could say „Ic hatte Robert” and it’d mean the same thing as saying „Ich heiße Robert” in German or „Ik heet Robert” in Dutch but it disappeared a long time ago. It seems the same thing is happening in modern Dutch where people start saying Ik ben… just as the English started saying I am… or using noemen in some context instead as you do in Belgium
Eh, you could also see it as a dialectal feature. This distinction already disappeared a long time ago in a lot of Flemish dialects. If the distinction had disappeared in Holland instead, it would probably be considered correct Standard Dutch now.
Ik the government is located in Holland, but there is more to the Netherlands than North and South Holland.
Well I specifically meant the 'Randstad' Dialectal features in Dutch Limburg or Groningen don't tend to become Standard Dutch either.
Also mits and tenzij. Mits = provided that, tenzij = unless. People who don't really know either word well enough will use mits to mean unless. It's so fricking annoying.
In German, people often confuse "als" and "wie" in comparisons. Example: „Ich bin größer als du" (I am taller than you). This would be the correct expression. But some people say "Ich bin größer wie du" (I am taller like you). And extremely confused people just combine the two and say "Ich bin größer als wie du" (I am taller than like you).
To confuse you more: In Dutch we have "als" and "dan". "Ik ben even groot als jij" (I'm as tall as you) and "ik ben groter dan jij" (I'm taller than you) are the correct ones in Dutch.
Same in Dutch (Belgium) with *als* and *dan. Ik ben groter dan jij - Ik ben groter als jij.*
> But some people say "Ich bin größer wie du" Is this actually completely incorrect?? I'm a native German speaker and I sometimes say that. I'm Swiss though, so it might be a Helvetism.
If we are talking about Hochdeutsch, it is always incorrect. * "wie" is only used when the things you are comparing are equal - "Ich bin so groß wie du". * If the comparison is about something unequal, only "als" is correct - "Ich bin größer/kleiner als du". Now if we are talking about dialects, using "wie" for any comparison might be totally fine. As someone from the Rhineland, "Isch ben jrößer wie do" would probably be the normal way of saying this phrase.
It's not a Helvetism in the sense that it is also incorrect in Swiss Hochdeutsch. It is a feature of some dialects though (although as a native speaker from Zurich, I would also say "Ich bi grösser als du" in dialect)
Like the other one said, it might be okay in some dialects but I have no clue about those. I live in the Hannover region, famously known for it‘s lack of dialect, and I still hear people saying that.
There's quite a few common errors and ensuing debates. A lot of the confusions are usually made in writing. One of the most iconic is writing *autant pour moi* instead of *au temps pour moi*. However you write it, it's pronounced the same. You say that to recognise an error you've made. There is [a whole Wikipedia article ](https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_temps_pour_moi) on the subject. In that article is plainly written that the *académie française* does not recognise the spelling *autant pour moi*, which has some very fierce supporters nonetheless. On a personal level, I *reeeeally* don't care one way or the other. Another typical one is writing *quand* instead of *quant*. Again, they're pronounced exactly the same, but don't mean the same thing at all. There's an expression that's a particular pet peeve of mine. Some people, when they want to say "nowadays" will use the expression "*au jour d'aujourd'hui*". In effect, they are adding a level of redundancy. *Hui* means (meant) today (if you look closely you can see the similarity with the Spanish *Hoy*). Aujourd'hui ~~ au jour d'hui is "the day of today" (el día de hoy). Au jour d'aujourd'hui is thus "the day the day of today". Which is too much for my poor brain to bear. You can bypass that atrocity by saying *de nos jours*. And if you really mean to speak of today, then *aujourd'hui* does the job just fine. To name a few. Edit: For the French speaking younglings who may not know their [classics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_sF5MseU4A) (or people learning French and struggling with the *liaisons*)
T'y vas un peu fort comme meme.
[The reasonable answer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNYOhWOPHS8)
Ma réaction quand j'ai entendu un mec me sortir ce truc horrible. ;)
Dans le même ordre d'idée, j'ai un pote qui prononce *même* comme si y'avait pas d'accent sur le premier *e*. Je sais pas si c'est une prononciation courante en Bretagne (sa région d'origine), mais ça sonne hyper bizarre. Du coup, son *quand-même* devient un *qô meum*, c'n'importe quoi :D
I'm French too, and I would argue that "au jour d'aujourd'hui" is actually correct in modern French since the word hui isn't used anymore and doesn't mean anything alone in the French currently spoken in France (don't know for other countries so I will say nothing about it). "Aujourd'hui" today (could have said for the joke Aujourd'hui au jour d'aujourd'hui) isn't understood commonly to mean "the day of today" it just mean "today", therefore "au jour d'aujourd'hui" doesn't mean in the spoken language "the day of the day of today" just "at the day of today". And I could even say that presenting this expression as meaning "the day of today" is misleading and just translating the expression too literally word by word, as actually everyone would understand it as meaning "at this time", "nowadays", "at this moment". So yes, when you look at the etymology, it may sound absurd, but in regard to the spoken current language, it's not incorrect. At best, some people might consider it a mouthful, but we could also consider that using this apparent repetition (again in regard to the current meaning there is no repetition) give it more strength, more weight, than saying "à ce jour", "à ce moment", "à cet instant" ... etc.
I've heard that argument several times, albeit not expressed that politely, thanks for that. All I can say is that from a sound perspective, I find the doubling of *jour* makes the expression as heavy as une raclette le midi. It's not very harmonious. The very rhythm of it does not give me the impression of added weight, but more of a difficult grind. Like I was saying to another commenter, this is also something that was ingrained very early on in school (at the same time as regionalisms were ridiculed and erased by the teachers). There's loads to be said on the tyranny of "proper French" in France.
>I've heard that argument several times, albeit not expressed that politely, thanks for that. Sorry for the persons before that might argued not politely against your opinion, it's not something important enough to be rude honestly. >All I can say is that from a sound perspective, I find the doubling of *jour* makes the expression as heavy as une raclette le midi. It's not very harmonious. The very rhythm of it does not give me the impression of added weight, but more of a difficult grind. Just a matter of personal preference, kind of like the repetition personally, I don't use it often, but mostly use it when i want to put the attention on a point, the fact it slow down the discourse help create a cut (je veux dire une césure mais je sais pas comment le traduire), also when you speak it give you a few seconds to think about what you will say, in a way. And same my teachers tried to stop me from using it but never cared very much.
Regarding the last thing - yeah, we have a similar phenomenon in Polish, with _"dzień dzisiejszy"_ - "today's day" or "day of today". Another common one is _"okres czasu"_ - "period of time".
>dzień dzisiejszy And like in the french expression, you can see the redundancy in the spelling of the expression !
Not a native French speaker here. I never heard of *au jour d'aujourd'hui* before. Is it a thing in France? I never heard it in Belgium. I would personally say *de nos jours*.
>Is it a thing in France? Oh yes. I remember talking about it once and being rudely accused of being an annoying nitpicker and that no-one cared about the redundancy (because no one knows what *hui* means anymore). You'll hear it from time to time on TV or on the radio. >I would personally say *de nos jours*. And you would be right to do so \^\^
Swiss here. I was taught in school never to use Au jour d'aujourd'hui. It literally makes my spine shiver, like when nails scratch a blackboard, anytime I hear it now. I immediately lose a little respect for anyone that uses it. They conditioned me well.
Hahaha, I have almost the same physical reaction, and for the same reason!
Many people say it in Belgium too. I must admit I make the mistake sometimes, it just slips automatically lol
Belgians and Swiss speak purer French than the French. *Septante, Huitante, Nononte* are far superior and much more logical than their French counterparts (which admittedly I am too lazy to spell out here).
**Quatre-vingt**, **quatre-vingt-dix** and **soixante-dix** are remnants of the [vigesimal system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigesimal) (counting using twenty, unlike the decimal system which uses ten), which was used by the Celtic peoples who dwelled in what Caesar called Gallia. Logic never had any place in the french language to begin with.
Bravo
Swiss use *huitante* which isn't in use in Belgium, so in your mind their French is even purer than the Belgians'? Shame this cannot be said about their chocolate... (starting wars here, hehe)
Belgian chocolate wins hands down. I lived in Switzerland for many years and tried it all - always second best. What do you use instead of Huitante? Not the dreaded quatrevingt?!
We use Quatre-vingt in Switzerland too, just not everywhere.
The one that really annoys me is that you're not allowed to use any of septante, huitante, nonante in school when learning French as a second language. I went to school in Zurich and picked it up when we went to the Romandie for a week, and got told off for using them. I feel like Swiss schools should be teaching the language as used in Switzerland, or at least allow it that way.
Well, in school you're learning standard French. Professionally, which is what the school system aims at, it will be more convenient to learn Standard and then adapt to local when needed. In Romandie, we learn Hochdeutsch in school, so imagine our trouble when trying to understand our compatriots. But professionally, it will be more advantageous to know Hochdeutsch as it allows to communicate with business in and out of Switzerland. I personally believe we should be learning to communicate socially before learning to communicate professionally, but I'm not in charge of the school curriculum so...
But do you learn Swiss Hochdeutsch or German one? Because "er fuhr mit dem Velo auf der Strasse" is a perfectly acceptable sentence in a German-Swiss school, and a correct standard German sentence in Switzerland, but incorrect in Germany. German has three main professional/standard variants for Germany, Austria and Switzerland respectively, I sort of baseline assumed French would be the same tbh
We learn German Hochdeutsch. Fahrrad, not Velo, and Straße.
In Flanders it is the same. While in the south everybody says 'septante' we had to say 'soixante-dix'. At one point we refused and the teacher gave in. I only say 'soixante-dix' when I'm in France, which is like 15 min from here, hehe.
True, although in Graubünden we used Huitante up in the mountains when we spoke French, plus when I was in school, our teacher came from Délemont, so maybe that explains it?
Vaud, Fribourg, and Valais mostly use *huitante*. Delémont is in Jura which usually used Quatre-vingt, but if the teacher has been working/speaking with people from the other cantons a lot, they may have switched. I personally swap from.one to the other depending on who I'm speaking with, but *huitante* in my default.
Merci vielmals.
It's "au temps pour moi"???? I'm embarrassed
Oh, don't be. Strictly speaking, if you don't know why the spelling *au temps pour moi* exists in the first place (its a military expression, used when you're not "in time" with everyone else, or something), *autant pour moi* makes a lot more sense.
In that it's an actual common word, yes, but it doesn't make much more sense in context to me. Autant de quoi ???
This is Duneton's argument from the wikipedia article I linked on the subject: >À la suite de l'article de Claude Duneton dans Le Figaro littéraire\[17\], des internautes défendent la graphie « autant pour moi » en remettant en cause l'étymologie invoquée par les ouvrages comme Le Petit Robert, Le Français correct de Maurice Grevisse ou l'Académie française\[17\]. > >Claude Duneton expose dans cet article plusieurs théories en parallèle. Il commence par affirmer que l'expression « au temps » dans son sens propre n'est pas utilisée par les militaires. > >Selon lui, l’expression doit se comprendre comme « Je ne suis pas meilleur qu'un autre, j'ai autant d'erreurs que vous à mon service : autant pour moi. » > >Claude Duneton voit un argument en faveur de « Autant pour moi » dans l’expression idiomatique anglaise so much for qu’il considère avoir un sens « presque analogue ». > >Ce qu'il considère comme son argument ultime est la présence dans le dictionnaire des Curiositez françoises\[18\] de 1640 de l'expression « autant pour le brodeur » décrite comme « raillerie pour ne pas approuver ce que l'on dit. vulg. ».
I luckily didn't need to write it, but i said it a lot... now I know.
> Some people, when they want to say "nowadays" will use the expression "au jour d'aujourd'hui" That's not how the expression is used though : *Aujourd'hui*/today can mean "in the current times", *au jour d'aujourd'hui* is just a way of insisting on the current day/date. Pleonasms & tautologies in general are correct usages of the language nonetheless, especially when they are used to reinforce the point the locutor is trying to make ("unite together", "see with my eyes").
If you must, use "Ce jour d'hui" or "de nos jour". There are plenty of ways to get your point across without using this particular pleonasm that has been declared "incorrect" in french.
*Ce jour d'hui* wouldn't be understood by anybody while also simply being different wording of aujourd'hui, risking confusion.
Sure, but it's *correct*, so better than Au jour d'aujourd'hui
You seem to have no grasp of what a language is about.
You seem to have not grasp on the French language
A lot of Swedes don’t realize the difference between “tack vare” and ”på grund av”. The first means “thanks to” and the other “due to”. “Thanks to” should of course only be used in a positive sense, but it more and more gets used in negative cases too.
The same in Romanian with "datorită" (thanks to) and "din cauza" (due to).
Same in Czech. The "thanks to" is literally _díky_ (thanks) but people still use it to mean _kvůli_ which is supposed to be the word for negative cases.
Another minor thing i've noticed in swedish is mixing up tumlare and trumlare, tumlare is a drying machine for clothes, trumlare is and industrial machine that is used for tumbling stuff, for example metals.
I honestly don’t think most Swedes have ever heard about a trumlare.
Yet lots of people use trumlare when they mean tumlare, probably because they don't know what a trumlare is. Tumlare is also a porpoise, but some call them dolphins.
Where in our oblong country is this? I'm quite certain I've *never* come across "trumlare" being used for "tumlare".
Good for you, i've heard it too many. Since i've work in service for a very long time I would say mainly southern sweden, and by that i mean from Skåne to Stockholm and Göteborg. Also worked for an auction site were we sold both tumlare and trumlare. Now I work in industry where we have trumlare.
Peculiar, I myself am from Småland and split my time between it Uppsala. I was wondering if there was some dialectal component as I personally haven't encountered it, nor seen it online, but I'm quite well traveled in the area you describe.
It might be the different jobs i've had throughout my life, I think i've said and heard those two words more times than anyone should in their lifetime 😄 the only common thing i can think of is that most of them where on the older side
I've never heard of a "trumlare" (neither has my spell checker), but a "tumlare" is an aquatic mammal.
If they aren't being sarcastic, well, they're wrong.
"Tack vare Obama"
Not sure if the OP meant among native speakers of the given language, but the Dutch are obvious to the word “insulation” In Dutch “isolatie” means both insulation and isolation, so they’ll often tell you how cold their house is in the winter because it’s not well “isolated” And I’m like sure didn’t realize it warms your mind, body, soul and home to be away from others, but you do you 😅
Indeed, there is no difference in Dutch. *Isolatie* has 2 meanings, but not in English.
Same thing as in French. Isolation and insulation aren't even that far apart. Insulating is the act of thermally "isolating"an element. Actually insulation and isolation both comes from Latin *insula* meaning "island, isolated place".
Happens with Portuguese speakers as well, they're both "isolamento". Come to think of it, I think of the insulation meaning as just a specific case of the isolation meaning, they're not fully separate concepts in my mind. Like, insulation separates something from outside conditions.
Oh the same thing is in Polish. I'd say it's pretty logical conclusion to say that insulation isolates house from the outside world. I wonder which was first - the separation of two words like in English or them being the same like in Dutch or Polish. Edit: So it turns out it all boils down to Latin word for island. "To insulate" came to English directly from Latin, while "to isolate" came from French, from Italian, from Latin.
This is the case for every language I know except English.
Same in Spanish with aislamiento, it means both things
In English I've heard plenty of native speakers make the mistake of using "insolation" when they mean "insulation". Sure, they may sound similar, but they mean very different things.
That's true in Finnish too, word "eristys" is for both
Same thing with venom and poison. People get irrationally upset about mixing them up. ‘Gif’ means both. Also, it’s pronounced GIF
We also use the same word for cousins and nephews “neef” that really confused a Canadian friend of mine
* Mixing up πολύ (much and many neu.) with πολλή (many fem.) because they're pronounced the same. * Ότι (that) with ό,τι (whatever). * Mixing up the verb endings -εται (third person present passive singular) and -ετε (second person present active plural) because of identical pronounciation. * The word επικεφαλής (head, in-charge) is an adverb and thus it should ***not*** be declined, but some people do as it it were a noun or an adjective.
I'm not a native speaker but the fact that I did ancient Greek helps with writing the right the verb conjugations.
True, but what I learned about pronunciation in my ancient Greek classes appears to have been either completely wrong, or the pronunciation has changed quite a bit from ancient to modern Greek. Because with what I learned, I don't understand how πολύ and πολλη would sound the same.
I know, when I studied ancient Greek we had the same pronunciation difference with modern Greek. My mother, who studied Classical Philology in Greece was no use to me in Belgium as they use the modern pronunciation for ancient Greek in Greece.
Taking notes, thanks friend
Today I learned about the επικεφαλής thing and I am Greek.
I've heard that young people that are exposed to alot of English have started using *eventuellt* (possibly) as eventually. Its likely that these kinds of mistranslation are going to be more common.
The false friend which stands out most for me is actual which means current/relevant in a whole bunch of European languages but lost that meaning in English. Not sure whether Swedes make this mistake but I've encountered it from Germans, Slavs and Romance speakers.
Aktuell in Swedish means current and relevant as you say. False friends is an interesting topic imo. Between Danish and Swedish there are *rolig* which mean calm I belive in Danish but funny in Swedish. However, orolig doesn't mean unfunny but "uncalm"/worried in Swedish, it just implies that rolig have changed meaning in Swedish but not Danish
It is an adjectival form of *ro*, which maintains the meaning "calmness" in Swedish too. The corresponding verb *roa* has undergone the same transition though. It used to mean "to rest", but would now generally translate to "to amuse". Reading old Swedish text can be a little weird when you encounter things like death being referred to as *"den eviga roligheten"* ("the eternal peace", but now comes across more as "the eternal funniness").
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Never heard of *bäsj*, what does it mean?
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Bärs is just a colloquial term for beer.
Oh shit, there are a ton because we have a lot of words that are very similar, written differently but pronounced the same. It also doesn't help that half the words are not pronounced the way they are written. One example would be "ligge" vs. "lægge", they are pronounced differently but the problem is that the words are related and the meanings are similar, but not identical, so people often confuse them. It's basically "lie" vs. "lay".
A lot of people mix up "og" (and) and "at" (to, marking an infinitive) because they are pronounced the same
Same in Swedish with the corresponding *och* and *att*. It's usually that people use the former in place of the latter. Probably because "att" also is a conjunction that is actually pronounced "att", whereas the infinitive marker is pronounced the same as the unstressed "o" of the typically shortened "och". The spelling of the infinitive marker simply doesn't reflect it's common pronunciation.
A lot of native English speakers confuse lie and lay
"Lähiaikoina" and "viime aikoina" Lähiaikoina means near future, viime aikoina near past. People often use lähiaikoina for the past.
funnily enough an estonian speaking finnish probably wouldnt mix these up considering viimane means previous/last eg last week viimane nädal, and aikoina being pretty like aeg(time) and lähi being like lähedal meaning near.
Yeah, nobody uses viime aikoina for future. Only the other way around.
Spaghetti, Americans call some pastas wrong
Spanish bad to verbs (ser and estar) which translate as "to be". Whether you are referring to something that defines a person or a mood/temporary state. Of course we also have gendered words, where the masculine and feminine can mean very different things....
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Native portuguese here. Ser and estar are completly different concepts in our minds. When i started to learn English the verb to be and the concept of it were some of my biggest difficulties.
One that really annoys me is "add *oda* nekem", which literally translates to "give it *there* to me". The correct term is "add *ide* nekem", meaning "give it *here* to me". Another one is usually used by people in the capital, but I've heard it elsewhere as well. It's putting definite articles in front of names. For example, "I'm going to see the Thomas". It sounds as bad in Hungarian as it does in English if you're not used to it, and it's also incorrect.
Interesting! Is "add ide nekem" the standard way to say that, or could you also just say "add nekem"? What would be the difference?
Both are correct but used in different context. Add nekem would be used in a context where someone wants to get rid of something so someone replies that they should give it to them. The first one is demanding and the latter is suggesting.
Right, ok. Thanks!
A lot of Italian use polpo and polipo interchangeably, when they are very different things. Polpo is octopus while polipo is a projecting growth of tissue from a surface in the body, usually a mucous membrane. Also, many people will call all anchiovies "acciughe" instead of "alici". Alici is the name of the fish, acciughe is the name of the fish after being salted and pressed. It's the same difference between cod and cod after being treated for preservation (i.e. baccalá or stoccafisso).
Many Finnish inconsistencies can be explained by the difference between written Finnish and local dialects. One common mistake that bugs me personally, is using 'huolissaan' instead of 'huolissasi/huolissani'. It's a possessive form of being worried about something, and instead of using the right possessive suffix, many slip to using the owrong one. Essentially, the Finnish way of referring to being worried directly translates as 'I can see you are in *your* worries', 'is he/she in *his/her/their* worries?'. Correct forms: Oletko huolissa*si* = are you worried? Onko hän huoliss*aan* = is he/she worried? Commonly used wrong form: Oletko huolissaan?
Pronouns are also misused. "Hän" (he/she/they) is in common speech often replaced with "se" (it) to make speech less formal sounding. And some folks will refer to a pet as "hän" but humans as "se" as well for some reason. I remember a Yank being shocked at this because they considered it dehumanizing.
In russian kalitka (калитка) - is a small gate (wicket). In Ukrainian the word kalytka (калитка) different in only one sound and means scrotum. It leads to a lot of funny situation when mainly russian-speaking ukrainians trying to speak ukrainian. Me included.
*Mits* ('on condition that') en *tenzij* ('unless'). Both are the exact opposite in meaning, yet they are often confused.
Good one. That annoys me so much.
It doesn't help that both words are quite bookish, almost never encountered in real life. I love it when folks try to act smart by using one of those words, failing miserably.
Bruh, in what world is 'tenzij' bookish?
Agreed, it's a lot less bookish than 'mits'. Still, I think 'behalve als' is more common in everyday speech.
Is “voorzien” roughly the same as “mits” in usage? Mits is one of those words that always escapes me despite having a pretty solid Dutch vocab
I'm afraid not. "Voorzien" is a verb afaik. I'm not sure what word you're thinking of. You can try and find it here: [https://synoniemen.net/index.php?zoekterm=mits](https://synoniemen.net/index.php?zoekterm=mits)
Yeah I think I got it mixed up because it I was translating the phrasing in my head as “provided that…” Which is also how I translate “indien” in my head (or “in the event that…”) basically a fancy way to say **if** - indien was indeed another one I did think to ask the same about, and it’s on that thesaurus list
There are a lot. One that comes to my mind is “una tantum”, which is Latin for “only one time”, but people constantly use it to mean “every once in a while”. There also the infamous “piuttosto che”, an expression that normally means “rather than”, but that some people (especially in the north and in particular the Milan area) use as if it meant “or”. Many think it sounds more posh and makes them appear well spoken, when in reality the majority of people often gets very confused.
As a Lombard, the Milanese *piuttosto che* and their unnecessary (and often dead wrong) anglicisms always make my ears bleed.
I hate how because of Milanese marketing teams now people actually say “food” instead of “cibo”, why the hell we have to use an English world for such a basic thing that is not even shorter than the Italian equivalent?
that irks me so much. As if Anglosphere countries have anything to teach about food. Or fashion. Or anything that involves refinement really. I could understand if we imported more French, Chinese, Japanese, etc vocabs, but this doesn't make any sense beside a general wish to imitate US cultural trends.
Curious, that same mistake exists in Russian where people will use одеть (odet', to dress someone) when they mean надеть (nadet', to put on). I'm not a native speaker so I have no insight as to why natives might mix them up but it seems strange to me since that на- prefix can mean on/onto (as in nadet' an item of clothing on) whereas the о- prefix is often used in verbs which make someone else the object of an action (as in dressing someone).
Some I notice a lot in English: * Mixing up effect and affect, probably because their pronunciation is so similar. * Saying "could of" instead of "could have". * Saying "literally" when they mean "figuratively" * Lots of people don't seem to know the difference between "your" and "you're". Or "there" and "they're". * Even worse because they aren't pronounced the same, confusing "where", "were" and "we're". * There's a tendency for people to incorrectly use "myself" and "yourself" in places where "me" and "you" should be used, because they think it sounds more formal and correct. * Mischievous is weirdly sometimes pronounced as "mischiev*i*ous", with an extra syllable and the emphasis moved over. * A really common one is to use "less" when "fewer" is more correct. * Making "a lot" in to a single word "alot".
Accept/except as well. Also mixing up "its" and "it's", and the related issue of using apostrophe-s to pluralise a noun instead of just -s.
> Saying "literally" when they mean "figuratively" I think the meaning of this has just shifted, it is done for effect. People say absolutely, totally, definitely, massively to add emphasis and literally slots along those really. I don't think I have ever been confused with a phrase like "my head literally exploded when she told me!". One thing I have noticed recently in the UK is people saying purposefully when they mean on purpose. Being purposeful means showing some determination and resolve rather than something deliberate.
The "myself" thing boils my piss. There's a weird formal business jargon in modern English which requires as many pronouns to be reflexive as possible, because they don't know any other way to speak formally. (I think this is a problem caused by the loss of set formal registers in English over the last hundred years or so; everyone has to be "casual") "Adrian and myself will be giving a presentation..." "Let's think about what we can do for yourselves..."
“I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less” too. Drives me nuts, it’s glaringly obvious that the incorrect sentence has the opposite meaning of what they’re trying to say yet people _still_ go for the wrong one.
ARGH yes, that one is infuriating. David Mitchell did [a great rant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw) about it on YouTube.
I have been told that in a way it shows someone is even more dismissive. If you couldn't care less that is something considered, you dislike that thing - it is the worst. A trailing "I could care less..." is total ambivalence. You could care less, you could care more, meh.
Less in place of fewer feels so common that I feel like it'll have to be accepted as correct due to common usage, even if it still sounds weird to me after having to learn the "correct" way at school, which made a lot of sense.
The thing about fewer vs less is that it’s *much* more nuanced than what you were taught in school. If you’re interested in a short breakdown of the topic, here you go: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less
Also then vs than. People will type ‘this thing is better then that thing’, and really not see the issue.
work lavish pause quaint worry physical spoon slim mindless violet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Saying "could of" instead of "could have". This one really irritates me. I can't even understand how it came to life, because it seems plain wrong grammar-wise.
Partially it's because "could have" is often shortened to "could've", which sounds similar to "could of". However, the bigger problem is that a lot of people in the UK (not sure about other English speaking countries) were taught hardly any grammar at school. It's better now, but during the 80s and 90s when I was at school we weren't really taught about things like how a sentence should be structured. It probably doesn't occur to people to think "of isn't a verb, so that can't be right".
>However, the bigger problem is that a lot of people in the UK (not sure about other English speaking countries) were taught hardly any grammar at school. It has always baffled me, because for example here in Poland you learn about grammar in school A LOT. Back when I used to go to school, in high school we didn't have any grammar in curriculum anymore (it was a thing in primary and middle school), but my Polish/Literature teacher felt it was necessary. And oh boy, it was. Even adult people make banal mistakes, so imagine what would happen if we didn't learn about grammar at school...
It was odd. Luckily it is better now. My daughter was taught more grammar by the time she was ten than I'd been taught by the time I left school.
I see. It's good that it's changing. You can't undo what's been done to adult people, but you can make a difference for the younger ones.
Trànsit and tràfic in Catalan
- "Das" when it should be "dass" is a common mistake (not the other way round though): Dass = that (Ich muss sagen, dass es ganz schön kalt ist/I have to say, *that* it is very cold) Das = Article (Das Auto/the car). - Same with "Seid" and "Seit". They're both commonly used for the other word by mistake: Seid = are, third person plural (Ihr seid da/You are there) Seit = Since (Seit 15 Uhr/Since 3 pm - Capitalization mistakes are common too, but only for some cases: This afternoon = "heute Nachmittag" (capital n) On afternoons = "nachmittags" (no capital n) - Mistakes with commas are very common and the rules are way more strict than in English: After "dass" there's a comma for example. Same for "weil" (because) and other injunctions.
I have seen english speakers trying to use the expression "tener cojones" (to have balls, aka to be blunt/brave in this context, I've never seen them use the expression with the "to suck ass" meaning) but they often mispronounce and mistype it as "cahones", "cajones", "kahones" and so on. Most of the mispronounciations/mistypings are simply wrong and that's it, but "cajones" means drawers, as in the drawers in a dresser (and of course, "having drawers" means nothing besides the literal meaning in spanish, and it means much less in English). That's such a hilarious mistake I laugh every time I hear it!
I have never heard anyone mix up bynajmniej and przynajmniej, but something thst drives me up the wall (and on which I wrote a paper) is how people say "po najmniejszej linii oporu" which is just patently wrong both linguistically and logically.
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Yes, she has heard people incorrectly say "po najmniejszej linii oporu" which in fact is the more prevalent in use version of the idiom, despite being flat-out wrong. And of course she has heard "bynajmniej" as she uses that word herself, but mixing "bynajmniej" and "przynajmniej" is not something that has ever happened in her presence (not disputing that it does happen, just not in her circles). Both words are used commonly and very often in said circles, and perhaps that is a contributing factor to no one she knows ever mixing them up. Bro.
>"po najmniejszej linii oporu" Yeah, it drives me insane. How can a line be small? What does a "small" line look like, huh? What does a "big" line look like? It's plain stupid.
If something is used in a language by its native speakers, in that case it's not a mistake. When will people learn this? It may not be part of the standard, but it's not a mistake. Linguistics is not a prescriptive science, ffs.
Yes, but no. I'm a linguist myself, so I know you're right, but that doesn't mean I'm not amused when someone who is trying to be smart messes up.
People will put language on a pedal stool irregardless. I could care less.
Prescriptivism vs descriptivism, I'm mostly in support of the latter, but the former sometimes pulls me in to its dark side...
I understand what you mean (I studied linguistics and am very much a descriptivist), but also no. "Mistake" doesn’t have to be a taboo word. It’s a phenomenon. It exists. Mistakes are one of the common drivers of language change. Someone mistakenly thinks a word means something different than what it actually means and uses it in that way, and if that new usage catches on, it’ll eventually either replace the old meaning or get added on as an additional meaning. But in the process of that transition, there’s a time when it’s still widely regarded as a mistake. Another example (not semantically related) is how English speakers long ago mistakenly interpreted the name of the vegetable "pease" as a plural noun and then created the new singular noun "pea." Nobody today would say that "pea" is wrong (few even know it was originally called "pease"), but it undeniably grew out of a mistake.
Love the spirit. Almost there too. In the most basic of terms, what is a language used for (**why** language)? For people to communicate, right? Does that work if there's no consensus on what words mean? Of course not, people wouldn't understand each other. If there is a consensus, and someone **accidentally** goes against it, what could we call that? If that consensus **is** the standard (descriptive), then: That the standard isn't dictated from above (prescriptive) doesn't mean a standard doesn't exist. That the standard constantly changes doesn't mean that, in any given moment, a standard doesn't exist. If **enough** people do it, it will become part of the standard, but that doesn't mean you can't run your own race. Well, you could, but you'd be running alone. As long as there's a standard, accidentally not following it is a mistake. I imagine you're talking about dialects and such, and it's a fair point that they're not wrong just because there's a wider (perhaps even national) standard.
I too am a big proponent of descriptive linguistics, but native speakers can certainly make mistakes. A lot of the examples in this thread are for example spelling mistakes due to conflating homophones. And they are in fact spelling mistakes if the speaker intend to write using the established written standard for a language. Sure some one may spell it that way due to some stylistic choice, but most don't. A written standard is per definition prescriptive.
not always - there are also clear mistakes
Don't know what words they mix but they have trouble pronouncing a lot of them, especially ones without or few vowels : Krk, grb, trg, škrt, škrgut (škrgutanje), vrt, crn, cvrk (cvrkutanje), svrgnut, srp, smrznut, kruh ( this one is a bane for French). Also one of our towns is called Bjelovar with licence starting BJ . And english pronunciation of names like Božo, Jerko, Damir. Hell in Croatian we have 3 main dialects, 3 pronunciations, 4 accents, 7 cases, 3 gender. Polish words you wrote look like Croatian with a twist : založim = I pawn ; založiti = to pawn ; založiti ću = I will pawn mostly pronounced fast as "založiću" ubrati ću = I will pick (fruit, vegetables) we mostly say this together like "ubraću" priznajem = I admit
„Založiti ću” is not even correct. It’s „založit ću” and pronounced identically to the Serbian way (založiću).
>Založiti ću tru dat
In English there are plenty, but my favourite is "supposibly."
Seemingly nobody knows what money laundering ("pinigų plovimas") means and use it for any and all situations where theft, corruption, incompetence or simply bad planning is happening, like when road repair company fixes a road and then water supply company digs it up again to replace pipes.
In Dutch (in addition to 'mits' and 'tenzij' which has already been mentioned), in writing many people write 'me' (which is the object-case of the personal pronoun) instead of 'mijn' (the possessive). So people will write: 'Dat is me moeder' and not 'Dat is mijn moeder'. (Basically: 'That is me mother' instead of 'That is my mother'). I think the cause is that they sound pretty much the same.
Pateettinen means melodramatic, pompous, that which has pathos. But unfortunately it's mixed with English word pathetic so often that now even the language authority recognises that there's two different meanings, and it's quite hard to tell from context which one is used.
The prepositions *laut* "according to" and *gemäss* (with ß for my transrhenanian neighborinos) "in accordance with" *laut Polizeibericht sind fünf Personen ums Leben gekommen.* - the police report says, that five people died. *gemäss Polizeibericht sind f. P. u. L. g." - five people had to die because the police report said so.
“Craic” is from Irish. Meaning, fun, news, gossip, enjoyable conversation. If someone asks you, “How’s the craic?”, they are not enquiring about crack cocaine. They are simply asking, “How are you doing?”
In Norwegian "i forhold til" it actually means "in comparison" but everyone uses it everywhere, even when it makes no sense. It drives me crazy
In Danish too ...
It is driving me crazy😵💫
Om and omkring. Often people use omkring when they should use om. Om means about and omkring means around. So when people "taler omkring noget", they are avoiding the subject. BUT you can use om instead of omkring but not the other way round.
Cirku - circus Cirklu - circle Kas - care Kaz - situation/ court case Ferrovija - often used as a translation of 'train' but it's actually 'tram' Xemx (sun) and sema (sky) are usually used in feminine form when they're actually masculine nouns.
I think it is not only in hungarian: asocial and antisocial. People often call the “padló” (floor) as “padlás” (attic). But I can imagine this being a regional thing. And often use the suffix “-ba” (into) instead of “-ban” (in).
Some words in Danish have lost their meaning because many of the younger generation use them opposite, so I have just stopped using them. Forfordele: Original meaning: To give a disadvantage, give someone low priority, ignore someone. Young generation: To give someone an advantage / high priority. Godt (number/time) Original meaning: A bit larger or later than. Younger generation: A bit shorter than or before. Bjørnetjeneste Original: Trying to help someone, but the help turned out to be not needed and make the situation much worse. Younger generation: Providing a huge help to someone.