Often made mistakes

[Ripper666]

The official language here in BB is english and I know that here are many members whose mother-tongue isn't English. And so of course there are many grammar and spelling mistakes. I can imagine that this, is sometimes going on the nerves of other members who speak and write English very well. So this thread is about mistakes you can find here very often. May you want to correct some of them here because often the one who wrote the mistake don't know that he made something wrong. This is no critizising thread, it's just a help for those who want it. May other members can give tipps or examples for a better grammer here in BB.

To make a start I always thought that you write opinion with double "p" , untill a moderator corrected it! Now I will pay attention. 😀

 

[This Year's Girl]

Well I wrote "of coarse" the longest time until somone corrected me (in a very sweet and non judgemental way) and told me it was "of course". 🙂 I think BB is great for my english, it has improved a lot since I joined. 🙂

 

[Ripper666]

By the way, I just want to write once in my life by my first try "because" and "with" right. I always have to correct becasue and wit h. Don't know why I writethese two words wrong and wrong, again and again.

 

[white avenger]

It's just a minor thing, and it's not only the non-English speaking members who do it, but I've noticed quite a few times that the word "loose," (as in the opposite of tight) gets substituted for "lose," (as in, someone doesn't win a contest or has misplaced an object) and words like "to, too, and two" are used to mean the wrong thing. Also, the past tense of "slay" is "slew" and past perfect tense is "slain." The word "slayed," according to both my dictionary and thesaurus, does not exist. And, on a technical note crossbows don't actually shoot "arrows," they shoot "bolts." Also, when a weapon other than a firearm, such as a bow, crossbow, sling. or catapult discharges a projectile, the proper term is "release," as in "releasing the bow string or releasing the triggering device," or "launch" as in "launching a missile from a catapult or sling." The term "fire" refers only when an explosive substance, like gun powder or other combustible material is actually ignited by a flame or spark, creating an expanding gas that moves the projectile through and out of the barrel. The thing that you load into a forearm that makes it lethal is a "cartridge" for everything except shotguns, which are loaded with "shells." The "bullet" is only the projectile that leaves the barrel for everything, once again, except a shotgun, which discharges multiple pellets called "shot," or a single solid projectile, called a "slug." Both cartridges and shells are also referred to as "rounds."

Hey, you asked. For an old English major like me, that's like inviting a vampire into your home. Once it's been done, you just have to accept the consequences.

 

[david4wt]

@white_avenger It'll be hard to remember all the differences that you mentioned, but I will remember the slay/slew/slain thing 🙂

 

[Ripper666]

It's just a minor thing, and it's not only the non-English speaking members who do it, but I've noticed quite a few times that the word "loose," (as in the opposite of tight) gets substituted for "lose," (as in, someone doesn't win a contest or has misplaced an object)

I made this mistake very often and never realized that it means to different things! Thanks for posting! I think that something like this helps everybody here on BB!

Hey, you asked. For an old English major like me, that's like inviting a vampire into your home. Once it's been done, you just have to accept the consequences.

Haha great comparison! And hey, I accept the consequences with pleasure!

 

[Appelsapientje]

I think I definitely make mistakes, I just don't really know which. When I was younger I never knew how to write of course. I wrote Off course, or ofcourse or offcourse. I always try to use things like 'to' , 'too' and 'two' in the right way. I know the differences between those words and I think I almost always use them right, but sometimes I just don't think and then I start to make stupid mistaked. But I also do that kind of thing in Dutch, my native language.

 

[Ripper666]

Waht's right here?:
1)I drink to much alcohol or
2)I drink too much alcohol?

 

[Cast No Shadow]

I think a lot of the time it's tenses and colloquialisms that people mix up, English is a really tricky language to master.

Want to add I have a lot of respect for you guys who are confident enough to try! We don't mind if you get things a bit wrong sometimes 🙂

 

[BuffyElevated]

If I didn't hate Shakespear so much, I'd have been an English teacher; bad grammar and poor English really get to me sometimes. LOL I know, though, that we have a lot of members here whose first language isn't English, so it doesn't bother me so much. I feel like as long as you're trying, then I can overlook it, but I do edit posts sometimes if I find grammatical errors and things, because I know it does help someone learn the language better. 🙂

 

[Enemies]

My hat goes off to anyone that's writing anything at length in a second language. I must admit spelling mistakes especially tick me off but if you're learning a new language it really doesn't bother me that much. Let's face it we all weren't born with the inherent knowledge of spelling and grammar or we'd all be perfect. I also want to add that if for any reason I edit anyone's posts it's to make it more readable not to pick people up on their mistakes 🙂

 

[nightshade]

I think it's got to be difficult learning on a forum like this as we have different types of English as well, such as British English and American English which have different spellings for for the same word.

 

[Flannen]

If I didn't hate Shakespear so much, I'd have been an English teacher; bad grammar and poor English really get to me sometimes. LOL I know, though, that we have a lot of members here whose first language isn't English, so it doesn't bother me so much. I feel like as long as you're trying, then I can overlook it, but I do edit posts sometimes if I find grammatical errors and things, because I know it does help someone learn the language better. 🙂

:O A pang in my little English teaching heart! Haha!

To be honest, the things that have been mentioned so far are not just made by those for whom English is a second language. You should see what I have to mark sometimes, seriously!

To/too/two and there/their/they're are such common mistakes. Oh and apostrophes! lol

But English teacher over here *waves* so I'm always happy to help anyone out learning the language with whatever English related questions you have! 😀

 

[sk]

I don't think spelling is a much of problem. It's easy enough to check these days. Google works great for that.

The tricky part is the grammar and good punctuation. I've really no idea how to construct a proper sentence. It feels like I just go by chance.
There are also some other things like to/too. Another one is when to use is or are. Should that previous sentence been - There is also some other things...?
Never managed to learn some of that stuff. I just use whatever looks the best. 🙂

But I don't know, perhaps it works pretty well. Do you mods always tell when you're editing a message?
Because I don't think I've ever been told that and I haven't seen it happened either. Not that I often goes back and check old messages of mine lol

/SK

 

[Flannen]

There are also some other things like to/too. Another one is when to use is or are. Should that previous sentence been - There is also some other things...?
Never managed to learn some of that stuff. I just use whatever looks the best. 🙂

You were right with 'there are also some other things'. You use 'is' when it's singular and 'are' for a plural. So it would be 'there is another thing'. Isn't the English language fun?! It's so hard to teach/explain this stuff in class, believe me!

To be honest, going with whatever looks best seems to work for you: I have never noticed any problems with your posts! 🙂

But I don't know, perhaps it works pretty well. Do you mods always tell when you're editing a message?
Because I don't think I've ever been told that and I haven't seen it happened either. Not that I often goes back and check old messages of mine lol

Majority of the time, we'll have left a reason in the comment box if a post is edited which will be in the PM you are sent automatically. If you've not noticed, you must be good!

 

[sk]

To be honest, going with whatever looks best seems to work for you: I have never noticed any problems with your posts! 🙂

I think that I read enough English texts to have some kind of memory of how it's supposed to look. But by not knowing the actually rules I'm never quite sure.
Should be able to learn to use 'is' for singular and 'are' for plural though. 🙂

Majority of the time, we'll have left a reason in the comment box if a post is edited which will be in the PM you are sent automatically. If you've not noticed, you must be good!

Yeah, I guess I'm doing alright. yay! 😉

Thanks!

/SK

 

[Tueuse de Vampires]

May you want to correct some of them here because often the one who wrote the mistake don't know that he made something wrong.

There's one right here. Germans often have the tendency to mix up 'make' and 'do'. It's 'to do something wrong'.

Another typical German mistake is using too many commas. German is a language with a very complex sentence structure from time to time (anyone ever tried reading anything Kant wrote?), so we're just really used to put commas everywhere for clarification purposes. My teacher always used to say "if in doubt, leave it out" as a rule of thumb for us whenever we had to decide if we had to put a comma somewhere or not.

It's also typical for Germans to overuse articles ('the' especially), mix up 'if' and 'when', mess up tenses (German doesn't distinguish between the equivalents of simple past and past perfect as strictly as English) and starting sentences with 'so'. This is acceptable in colloquial English (so probably on here), but not if you ever have anything formal to write.


Interestingly, the 'then'/'than' distinction is not a problem for foreign speakers as much as native speakers. The reason for this is that we learn these two words separately, with completely different meanings. English people, however, learn them by sound and might have trouble telling wich one's which. I actually didn't start making mistakes like this until I was on the internet and more and more starting to write phonetically. I guess it's more a good sign if you do this as a foreign speaker, because it indicates you're really thinking in English.


My most common spelling mistakes are words ending in -able, -ible and so on. Most of these I never really learned officially and just picked up on television or something, so whenever I try to use them in written English I end up looking it up to make sure it's the correct spelling.


There's way more mistakes people/me do, but these are the ones that popped right up in my mind. I really wish I could speak perfect English, but that's just really hard.

 

[SlayerFest]

Grammar/spelling mistakes get on my nerves when native English speakers make them haha. I don't really mind when it's you or anyone else here who doesn't speak English fluently or as their first language. I mean when you really think about it...English is pretty damn confusing. So many words sound the same but are spelled differently, like their, there, and they're. People who speak English get those mixed up all the time. It drives me nuts. I'm telling you, if you study the English language for a while...like watch videos on youtube and stuff, you'll probably have better grammar than most Americans within a couple of months.

I'm sure of it.

My mom's friend was born and raised in Bangladesh and her grammar/spelling is 20x better than my cousin who was born and raised in America. Scary.