The mistakes you've made

The best topics from Languages & Linguistics, kept on a permanent basis.
User avatar
Rui
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 541
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 9:14 pm
Location: Beiʒing 拆那

Post by Rui »

When I was reading a few sentences in Chinese characters, I pronounced them with their equivalent German words, so "他们是朋友" was read as "Sie sind Freunde."

And this was on my Mandarin midterm...

Ziz
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 274
Joined: Sat Jul 08, 2006 10:05 pm
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

Post by Ziz »

Often times I mix my Hebrew and Spanish together, so whenever I say something like "Can I go to the bathroom," it comes out something along the lines of: "Puedo lalekhet* al sherutim**?"


*lalekhet= ללכת
**sherutim= שרותים
Last edited by Ziz on Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ebilein
Niš
Niš
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri May 05, 2006 1:49 pm
Location: Austria

Post by ebilein »

schwhatever wrote:It took me a good, long minute to realize that I had added the French -er to Arbeit, leaving me with Freutsch. Joy.
This is a very nice neologism (I think at least, I've never heard it before) and better than always hearing about Denglisch. *g*

As for mixing languages... same goes for me as for most of the others. It does happen (sometimes it's funny), but I can't remember anything right now. The only thing that would come up is... well.

I'll start ranting.

I was on a school trip in Venice and the museum lady talked to us in German. Once she said "und die Goten von die Kriecher" which was supposed to mean "and the gods of the Greek population", but means "and the goths of the crawlers". It was a lot of fun and became a joke in our class.
But then, during a Latin exam, I really DID write "die Kriecher" for "graeci". Which was kind of embarassing.

End of rant.

TomHChappell
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 807
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm

Post by TomHChappell »

Chibi wrote:When I was reading a few sentences in Chinese characters, I pronounced them with their equivalent German words, so "他们是朋友" was read as "Sie sind Freunde."

And this was on my Mandarin midterm...
My goddaughter has two L1s; English and Mandarin.
As a late pre-schooler she was learning to read in both languages.
When reading Mandarin to an English-speaking relative, she would do what you did.

User avatar
Xeon
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 38
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 8:11 pm
Location: Berlin
Contact:

Post by Xeon »

I always end up adding German vocabulary and syntax into my Spanish.

e.g. Fui a la Supermarkt, um Milch zu comprar.

etc.

Cockroach
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 154
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2005 9:26 pm
Location: Seattle Metropolitan Area

Re: The mistakes you've made

Post by Cockroach »

zompist wrote:I can't think of any entertaining mistakes I've made...
Oh, so now you think your perfect, huh?

TomHChappell
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 807
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm

Re: The mistakes you've made

Post by TomHChappell »

Cockroach wrote:
zompist wrote:I can't think of any entertaining mistakes I've made...
Oh, so now you think your perfect, huh?
(I imagine you(Cockroach)'re joking.) I think Zomp just has an unrealistically low opinion of the entertainment value of his mistakes.

User avatar
Furi Tsunori
Niš
Niš
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun May 13, 2007 10:48 pm
Location: Auckland

Post by Furi Tsunori »

I often forget the russian letters and write english ones. That wouldn't be so funny if i was not Russian....

and I had no practice in my French for 2 years so I often add english words in french phrases like "mon computeur" not "mon ordinateur" etc

User avatar
Khvaragh
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 83
Joined: Mon Oct 09, 2006 8:40 pm
Location: Cairo, Egypt
Contact:

Post by Khvaragh »

In my Egyptian Arabic class last semester, we were working on using the word عاوز "want," and we had to write sentences out using it. Now I took MSA Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Persian last semester, and for the most part I was able to keep the Arabic and the Persian straight (though I often would use Egyptian vocab in MSA class, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing), but that day I had only three hours of sleep and I zoned a little. I was trying to think how to write "I want to drink the water."
(أنا عاوز أشرب المية) but I couldn't remember the word for water, then I thought I did and wrote أنا عاوز أشرب الاب . Except آب is the Persian word for water. What I wrote was something like "I want to drink the father."
My teacher was a bit confused.

I also (for some reason) confused the verbs أدرس "I study" with أسكن "I live" and wrote on a test "أنا أسكن في الكمبيوتر" which means "I live in(side) the computer."
لا يرقىء الله عيني من بكى حجراً
ولا شفى وجد من يصبو إلى وتدِ
("May God never dry the tears of those who cry over stones, nor ease the love-pangs of those who yearn for tent-pegs.") - Abu Nawas

User avatar
fahrradkette
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:08 pm
Location: Nicht Deutschland.
Contact:

Post by fahrradkette »

euphoria wrote: and I had no practice in my French for 2 years so I often add english words in french phrases like "mon computeur" not "mon ordinateur" etc
Vive la quebecois!
Kintâr-mi ami, ne-tiçma kâ merokli-mi dosi.

User avatar
Kilanie
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 71
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 12:38 am

Post by Kilanie »

In Japanese, I far too often say 'desu' at the end of a sentence when there is already another verb... And then when 'desu' is needed, I say 'ka' instead.
Boku wa Kuro no Mori ka? :|
After ordering a pint of his favorite ale, Robert was perplexed when the barmaid replied that the fishmonger was next door. The Great English Vowel Shift had begun.

User avatar
Viktor77
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 2635
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:27 pm
Location: Memphis, Tennessee

Post by Viktor77 »

I have a serious problem with the idea of verb subject in many Swedish sentences.

I would say, "...jag lär mig spela gitarr..." when it was really "...lär jag mig spela gitarr...." Still to this day I cannot figure out why the language does this.

And then there's, besides my horrendous pronunciation of the language itself, my overdramatising of Finnish diphthongs.

I've also mixed Spanish "mi" and Swedish "mig." But only with writing Spanish.

And with Cyrillic, I still can't get over Cyrillic P being English R. :x Actually, my Cyrillic cursive is ten times better than my English cursive, and my native language is English, which is odd.
Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

C'eler
Niš
Niš
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2008 3:55 pm

Post by C'eler »

Believe me! I get into trouble with that P/R thing in Greek. A lot.

Lessee...In Spanish, we were supposed to have a simple conversation with the teacher. I couldn't remember how to ask her what her name was, so I said "Lo siento. ¿Como se dice "what's your name" en español?" She told me. And I say "¡Ay dios mio! ¡Estoy estupido! Ugh, ahora soy embarazado..."

I later learned that this meant "Oh my gosh, I'm so stupid! Ugh, now I'm pregnant." Which was really funny, considering that I'm a guy.

One time, I said "tengo huevos azules." Ugh. Now you see why I hate spanish!

And the best of all (although it wasn't really a mistake per se) was when I spent a whole week using pho (Vietnamese-pronounced like fuhh) as a curse word everytime I dropped something. It's this type of rice noodles by the way.

Corundum
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 24
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2007 10:37 pm
Location: at deictic center

Post by Corundum »

Viktor77 wrote:I have a serious problem with the idea of verb subject in many Swedish sentences.

I would say, "...jag lär mig spela gitarr..." when it was really "...lär jag mig spela gitarr...." Still to this day I cannot figure out why the language does this.
From your example it looks like confusion of SVO and V2 syntax?
Last edited by Corundum on Tue Apr 15, 2008 5:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
Fight false polysemy! Free hypernymy!

Jashan
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 136
Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2003 6:26 am
Location: Oklahoma
Contact:

Post by Jashan »

Two things I've noticed frequently recently.

Background: I'm a L1 American English speaker, with 8 years of now-dead French (due to lack of use for the last 10 years), and learning Flemish Dutch for the last 9 months while living in Belgium.


Mistakes:

1) Putting English into Dutch without realizing it. "Ik heb al 40 uren gewerkt, if het niet meer is."

2) Putting Dutch into English, but usually realizing it after the fact. "Yeah, I agree, maar you have to.... er.. dammit. But you have to..."

In these two it's made even more amusing by the fact that I use the accent of whatever the "dominant" language is. "maar" with an American /r/, for example.


3) Flipping French into Dutch word order when attempting to write/speak it: "Aujourd'hui je vais en livre acheter." (also often accompanied by using Dutch instead of French words)

4) Generalizing a rule of "if it comes at the end of a clause, it must be an infinitive" in Dutch. "Als je student zijn..." instead of "Als je student bent...", on analogy of "Je moet student zijn...." and similar.

User avatar
Radagast
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 97
Joined: Sat May 21, 2005 9:46 am
Location: Denmark
Contact:

Post by Radagast »

An interesting mistake I have caught myself making quite a few times is to have spanish verbs agree with 3rd person plural objects instead of with their person singular subjects. I have done this both with first, second and third person singular subjects.

e.g. "El perro mataron las gallinas" to mean "the dog killed the chickens"
or "las canciones que yo cantan" to mean "the songs that I sing"

It is weird since danish doesn't agree with neither verbs or objects, and I don't know where the influence should come from - that makes me think that there must be a cognitive explanation. Such an explanation might be that plural numbers are somehow more salient. or that I am just stupid.
[i]D'abord on ne parla qu'en poésie ; on ne s'avisa de raisonner que long-temps après.[/i] J. J. Rousseau, Sur l'origine des langues. 1783

User avatar
qiihoskeh
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2005 6:20 pm
Location: Miami, FL
Contact:

Post by qiihoskeh »

Radagast wrote: e.g. "El perro mataron las gallinas" to mean "the dog killed the chickens"
or "las canciones que yo cantan" to mean "the songs that I sing"
I notice that in both examples your objects are plural. Maybe you're thinking ergatively???
"The sable is empty, and his Norse is gone!" -- kathrynhr

User avatar
Radagast
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 97
Joined: Sat May 21, 2005 9:46 am
Location: Denmark
Contact:

Post by Radagast »

yeah something like that - split ergativity. where the ergativity is triggered by plurality of object.
[i]D'abord on ne parla qu'en poésie ; on ne s'avisa de raisonner que long-temps après.[/i] J. J. Rousseau, Sur l'origine des langues. 1783

BordonianArchivist
Niš
Niš
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:03 pm

Post by BordonianArchivist »

When I was in China, I was talking to a French woman in Spanish during a Chinese banquet. There were a number of people there. I speak Spanish, English and intermediate Chinese. The French woman spoke English, French and Spanish. and the Chinese speakers spoke Chinese (Mandarin and local dialect), with some also speaking English. When we wanted to speak privately, we'd speak Spanish. However, I'd gotten so used to speaking Chinese that my 2nd language brain kept adding Chinese particles (and some Chinese words) to my Spanish, as in "Has ido al tushuguan aqui ma?"

It was very disturbing to my sense of reality.
Pisace man Bordonieta. Kore man ko Bordonieta, ak azun nan save kumplecs man se Bordonieta.
=======
Bearded. Make of it what you will.

User avatar
coch
Niš
Niš
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:41 pm

Post by coch »

When speaking English I often mistake /s/ for /z/. This is due to my local dialect which does the same even with respect to Italian pronunciation. Then I have problems with using past simple and present perfect at the right times, switching between using too much of the first and too much of the second in different occasions. This is also because of the Italian spoken in the north, where usually only the present perfect is used for both.

User avatar
Miekko
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 364
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2003 9:43 am
Location: the turing machine doesn't stop here any more
Contact:

Post by Miekko »

this wasn't really while learning any language, but once, I've made a rather silly mistake in Finnish by taking the Swedish word and applying Finnish morphology. I blame excessive tiredness at the moment, though.

paljonko kostaa instead of paljonko maksaa.

kostaa means 'avenges', maksaa means 'costs'.
(how much does it avenge vs. how much does it cost)

the fact that I asked this of an immigrant was even funnier.
< Cev> My people we use cars. I come from a very proud car culture-- every part of the car is used, nothing goes to waste. When my people first saw the car, generations ago, we called it šuŋka wakaŋ-- meaning "automated mobile".

imploder
Niš
Niš
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Jun 28, 2006 2:00 pm
Location: Brno, Czech Republic
Contact:

Post by imploder »

Radagast wrote:It is weird since danish doesn't agree with neither verbs or objects, and I don't know where the influence should come from - that makes me think that there must be a cognitive explanation. Such an explanation might be that plural numbers are somehow more salient. or that I am just stupid.
Why? You can just make a mistake. Maybe you wanted to say it in the passive at first and then decided to not and forgot to shift the marking. I don't see any other logic in that.
[url=http://awkwords.wsr3.net]Awkwords - word generator[/url] | [url=http://awkwords.wsr3.net/help.html]Documentation & download[/url]

User avatar
dhok
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 859
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:39 pm
Location: The Eastern Establishment

Post by dhok »

Ah, jeez.
One time in French class, there was a textbook question I was to anwer out loud: "Est-ce que tu vas inviter les etudiants mexicains?"
And I said: "Non, je ne vais pas les inviter parce que je ne parle pas mexicain."
I meant to say "espagnol", of course, but for some reason "mexicain" came out.

Ambessalion
Niš
Niš
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 3:34 am

Post by Ambessalion »

i have a problem knowing when to use has/had....

another i do is i'll tend to intermix my 2 languages like some people do with spanglish....
Ahmie K-[ay]

User avatar
Torco
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 2372
Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:45 pm
Location: Santiago de Chile

Post by Torco »

that I remember I've often instinctively 'englified' many spanish words, to such results as 'estaments' or 'car consesionary', but then again all latinos do xD

Post Reply