English Language Difficulties
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/09/06
Not being a native English speaker (though that term is difficult to define), I like the English Language Difficulties pages a lot.
They help me to get things in English writing right, that I often find difficult.
Some of them:
- Apostrophe s (and related mistakes like its versus it’s, who’s versus whose, your versus you’re et cetera)
- To, too, two (although I get two right most of the times)
- Who versus whom (also similar to who’s versus whose)
- I would have versus I had
- e.g. versus i.e. (for example, I use that is)
- slight spelling variations (including loose versus lose, color versus colour, et cetera )
There are some mistakes I make that are not covered there (instead versus in stead comes to mind, which for instance google battle does not get right).
A practical trick I use that helps a lot is to avoid using abbreviations (like ‘s or etc.).
That avoids confusion as well (not few native English speaking speaking people notice that S.O.A. is the Dutch abbreviation for S.T.D. – and even those two abbreviations have different meanings in different fields).
I know there are more sites and pages like the above (the 100 most mispronounced words and phrases in English comes to mind).
Let me know which ones you find most useful, and what mistakes you make most.
Over time, I have started to enjoy natural language aspects more and more.
I didn’t expect that to happen when I was in high school (a long time ago <g>).
Back then I was a “beta personality” (In The Netherlands we make a distinction between “alpha”, “beta” and “gamma” personalities – see for instance this Dutch posting; where roughly “alpha” means languages and culture, “beta” means science and engineering, “gamma” means social and law).
It is fun to see how I developed over time.
–jeroen
Via: English Language Difficulties
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