Common L2 English mistakes

[linguoboy]

You've hit upon one of the areas of difficulty which I especially noticed my old Arabic tutor had: how to use "for/since" and select the right tense/aspect combination. She might say things like, "We've lived here since two years."

This sort of difficulty seems nigh-universal for L2 learners of English. "I am speaking English since five years" is the kind of error I hear all the time from German native-speakers, even those who English is fairly idiomatic otherwise. Seems we're alone among the languages of Europe in preferring the present perfect (progressive or otherwise) in this context. And most other languages don't even have a present perfect construction to begin with.

[Ser]

Seems we're alone among the languages of Europe in preferring the present perfect (progressive or otherwise) in this context.

Nope, not alone. Hemos vivido aquí por cinco años sounds as normal and idiomatic to me as Vivimos aquí desde hace cinco años.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Seems we're alone among the languages of Europe in preferring the present perfect (progressive or otherwise) in this context.

Nope, not alone. Hemos vivido aquí por cinco años sounds as normal and idiomatic to me as Vivimos aquí desde hace cinco años.

And Swedish works exactly like English in this respect.

[Richard W]

However, after meticulously listening to everything that he says I realized that he makes a certain kind of mistake consistently, so he'll say things like "I don't know how did it happen" instead of "I don't know how it happened."

This is a very common *L1* mistake.

[clawgrip]

However, after meticulously listening to everything that he says I realized that he makes a certain kind of mistake consistently, so he'll say things like "I don't know how did it happen" instead of "I don't know how it happened."

This is a very common *L1* mistake.

Not among any native speakers of English I know, at least. It really sounds like a learner's mistake to me.

[finlay]

I do it if I can contract the verb, sometimes, so I'm more likely to say "I don't know where's the toilet" rather than "I don't know where the toilet is", although I couldn't say "I don't know where is the toilet", but the one above I could only say in the native way. Part of that is because I'm an English teacher and spend a lot of time trying to get my students not to say the non-native way, though.

[Ser]

When I hear "I don't know where's the toilet", I can't help parsing it as "I don't know; where is the toilet?" (but said with a weird intonation).