Common L2 English mistakes

[The Peloric Orchid]

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a brief mini-essay for class and we were supposed to interview a bilingual person. I interviewed one of my good friends who is a native speaker of Arabic. He started learning English in school when he was 12, so he speaks English very well, albeit with an accent. 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." One of my professors also makes that same kind of mistake too. Her name and accent made me think that she speaks Spanish as her first language, but she did all of her college work in Germany, so I don't actually know what her L1 is, but it seems like this might be a common error for learners of English. I'm trying to describe this type of error, but given my limited linguistics background the closest thing I can come up with is some sort of problem with inversion, like maybe they both overgeneralize the subject-auxiliary inversion in English?

Sorry I don't have more examples, but when I hear them it always takes me a while to realize something was off which makes it hard for me to remember them.

Thanks!

[Astraios]

In a lot of languages there's no difference between "How did it happen?" and "(blahblah) how it happened", so it's not necessarily just overgeneralization , but also maybe L1 interference.

[finlay]

What a common L2 English mistake is tends to depend on what the person's L1 is. People whose L1 has no, for instance, articles (Russian, Chinese, Japanese, etc), tend to have a very hard time putting them in the right place when they speak English – even those languages that do have them sometimes have trouble because the rules are frustratingly unique for each language, so French speakers will tend to overuse articles in English. ("the French speakers will tend to overuse the articles in the English")

Speakers whose L1 doesn't use pronouns a lot, likewise, will tend to underuse them in English. This includes things like Japanese but also Spanish. Spanish does person marking but they tend to have trouble distinguishing he and she, because it'd be the same word in their language (they have él and ella, but don't use them much). L1s with different word order will beget the wrong word order in English.

The one you highlighted is perhaps a common one not to distinguish in other languages, as Astraios said, so it will come up a lot.

English tense/aspect combos tend to be more distinctive than many other languages, so that is usually a problem – particularly past simple/present perfect (I played vs I've played).

Anyway I taught the thing you mentioned to someone today, and my textbook called it an embedded question – but it tends to simplify terms (it keeps using "base form" for "infinitive", which is fucking annoying), so I wouldn't take that as authority.

[Imralu]

One of my interpreting teachers is from Hong Kong. She tends to say imbedded questions with a that after the fronted element, reanalysing them as relative clauses. For example:

And because I write everything, I know how much that I have used.

It's quite a consistent thing that she does. She's lived in Australia for more than twenty years and has of course heard sentences like this without the that. She possibly just interprets that as one of those thats that can be dropped (introducing a relative clause, but not as the subject), which it would be if it could be placed there at all, but of course, it can't.

Another thing I notice from students, chiefly from Asia, but actually sometimes from just about every nationality: am/is/are + infinitve. I think this is likely due to a poor grasp of the difference between adjectives and verbs.

This would not be that unusual for an intermediate student at my school who has a pretty bad grasp of grammar: Yesterday night I'm cook the dinner for my sharemate. We're eat it together. (= Last night I cooked dinner for my flatmates. We ate it together.)

[Io]

Another common mistake is did + past simple form — I didn't worked yesterday. A colleague at work NEVER uses 'will' for future actions, but would instead, I'm not sure why, overall his emails are written in a pretty good English, I suspect that he might think it's somehow more polite or idk.

[finlay]

One of my interpreting teachers is from Hong Kong. She tends to say imbedded questions with a that after the fronted element, reanalysing them as relative clauses. For example:

And because I write everything, I know how much that I have used.

It's quite a consistent thing that she does. She's lived in Australia for more than twenty years and has of course heard sentences like this without the that. She possibly just interprets that as one of those thats that can be dropped (introducing a relative clause, but not as the subject), which it would be if it could be placed there at all, but of course, it can't.

Another thing I notice from students, chiefly from Asia, but actually sometimes from just about every nationality: am/is/are + infinitve. I think this is likely due to a poor grasp of the difference between adjectives and verbs.

This would not be that unusual for an intermediate student at my school who has a pretty bad grasp of grammar: Yesterday night I'm cook the dinner for my sharemate. We're eat it together. (= Last night I cooked dinner for my flatmates. We ate it together.)

I find that Japanese students, especially lower level, will replace any instance of は with "is". In basic sentences they tend to come in the same place in the sentence: between the subject and predicate. But any more complicated than equative statements and you need to actually put the verb in there instead in English. Except that then you reach present continuous and their は=is notion is strengthened. And then they overuse present continuous tense and the ing forms in general because the roughly-equivalent て-form has a much wider range of uses (including conjunction, so if they conjoin two verbs in English you can practically guarantee that one of them will be incorrectly a gerund), and their own present continuous tense also covers a range of uses that are covered by present simple and perfect in English. At least they don't struggle with the present continuous itself, like Europeans.

[clawgrip]

The Japanese -te iru form indicates both continuous and perfect, and the interpretation is decided by the verb itself. I have the impression (though I haven't looked into it too deeply) that intransitive verbs are far more likely to treat -te iru as a perfect, and transitive ones as a continuous (though I can think of exceptions, so it is not an absolute rule). So the overuse of continuous in English is caused by incorrectly assuming that English continuous works the same way, when actually English most often uses present simple where Japanese uses perfect -te iru.

[Ser]

so he'll say things like "I don't know how did it happen" instead of "I don't know how it happened." One of my professors also makes that same kind of mistake too. Her name and accent made me think that she speaks Spanish as her first language, but she did all of her college work in Germany, so I don't actually know what her L1 is

What Astraios said. Spanish doesn't really distinguish "(I don't know) how it happened" and "How did it happen?", generally using VS (verb-subject) order for both (SV order is also possible for both, but it's significantly less used). So if she's a Spanish a speaker it's very likely to be simple L1 transfer. Dunno about German.

Speakers whose L1 doesn't use pronouns a lot, likewise, will tend to underuse them in English. This includes things like Japanese but also Spanish. Spanish does person marking but they tend to have trouble distinguishing he and she, because it'd be the same word in their language (they have él and ella, but don't use them much). L1s with different word order will beget the wrong word order in English.

As somebody who used to confuse "he" and "she" all the time (since Spanish is my L1), I think it was mostly because they were quite similar to each other acoustically (remember most speakers of Spanish can't do a word-initial [ʃ], I used to be one of them). I remember having a hard time remembering whether [hi] was supposed to be masculine or feminine at all, since both [hi] and [ʃi] sounded quite similar to me, and both were very different from their Spanish counterparts...

Anyway I taught the thing you mentioned to someone today, and my textbook called it an embedded question – but it tends to simplify terms (it keeps using "base form" for "infinitive", which is fucking annoying), so I wouldn't take that as authority.

Don't you think that's because the "infinitive" includes a "to (X)"? Yeah... I remember using textbooks that distinguished the terms "base form" and "infinitive" that way.

[Thry]

I haven't really had that many problems with he and she; though I've noticed more with his and her (In Spanish both are "su"), as well as, for example, using their in the right place (because the word is also "su").

Pro-drop can be quite a bitch as you guys have mentioned, too, like articles, since the usage is not the same. And, off the top of my head, another problem for us Spanish native speakers in English is the countable/uncountable distinction in determiners, things like "little people" instead of "fewer people"; or "many time" for "much time" are commonly heard.

[Imralu]

Spanish doesn't really distinguish "(I don't know) how it happened" and "How did it happen?", generally using VS (verb-subject) order for both (SV order is also possible for both, but it's significantly less used). So if she's a Spanish a speaker it's very likely to be simple L1 transfer. Dunno about German.

German definitely distinguishes between them. Wie ist es passiert? - Ich weiß nicht, wie es passiert ist.

Anyway I taught the thing you mentioned to someone today, and my textbook called it an embedded question – but it tends to simplify terms (it keeps using "base form" for "infinitive", which is fucking annoying), so I wouldn't take that as authority.

Don't you think that's because the "infinitive" includes a "to (X)"? Yeah... I remember using textbooks that distinguished the terms "base form" and "infinitive" that way.

[/quote] I find it so frustrating because all my students come with different terminology. I say "infinitive" and "to (plus) infinitive". Why the fuck do some textbooks say "infinitive with to"? It's a bit like instructions for disarming a bomb saying "cut the red wire. But first, cut the blue wire."

[Ser]

Pro-drop can be quite a bitch as you guys have mentioned, too, like articles, since the usage is not the same. And, off the top of my head, another problem for us Spanish native speakers in English is the countable/uncountable distinction in determiners, things like "little people" instead of "fewer people"; or "many time" for "much time" are commonly heard.

Note however that "less" can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns (less love, less hearts), not just with uncountable nouns (as certain peevers say). "Fewer" is a relatively new invention and is restricted to countable nouns, and is generally of a higher register than "less" when used with them.

EDIT: It's also worth noting "some" is used with both countable and uncountable nouns.

[Imralu]

And, off the top of my head, another problem for us Spanish native speakers in English is the countable/uncountable distinction in determiners, things like "little people" instead of "fewer people"; or "many time" for "much time" are commonly heard.

Usually, native speakers say "less people" instead of the prescribed "fewer". Saying "few" and "little" are not so common - they sound quite formal. Usually we say "not many" or "not much" (eg. "I don't have much money" instead of "I have little money"). "A few" is often used (although it has a different meaning to "few"), but "a little" is usually replaced by "some", at least in my dialect. "Many" and "much" (particularly the latter) sound ridiculously formal in positive sentences and are mostly restricted to negative sentences, questions or with "too" (I have much money. > I have a lot of money. I don't have much money. Do you have much money? He has too much money.) What a nightmare! I think all these words that usually only appear in questions and negatives are really difficult for most students (yet, any, anyone, anywhere, much, many).

[Thry]

I think the way it's taught here is also infinitivo con to vs. infinitivo sin to.

[Thry]

[...] What a nightmare!

You can imagine xD

Let's not talk about the usage of prepositions (and I'm not talking about phrasal verbs)... I'm fluent and I mess up with them all the time, in/at/on vs Spanish en for instance.

[Io]

What a nightmare! I think all these words that usually only appear in questions and negatives are really difficult for most students (yet, any, anyone, anywhere, much, many).

That's far from being the one of the real nightmares of English.

[Thry]

English is a nightmare in itself. But I still like it.

[Terra]

Phrasal verbs are notoriously confusing.

[Imralu]

What a nightmare! I think all these words that usually only appear in questions and negatives are really difficult for most students (yet, any, anyone, anywhere, much, many).

That's far from being the one of the real nightmares of English.

Speak for yourself. I've had Upper Intermediate students that have told me that that's one of the hardest things for them.

[Qwynegold]

Today I saw that two Nordic people (don't know from which exact countries they came from) had written something like "I don't have any, what I know of" when they meant "I don't have any, that I know of".

[Jipí]

What, no mention of forgetting the -s of 3rd person present verbs so far? Even though German conjugates its verbs diligently, I used to hear this all the time in my secondary-school English classes. I suppose it's due to overgeneralization in the case of German L2's.

Phrasal verbs have already been mentioned, but I think another aspect of that is phrasal verbs vs. prepositional verbs. You have to learn when you can put stuff between the verb and the preposition and when not. I suppose this is another possible source of mistakes. A related issue is verb + preposition collocations in general: which preposition goes with which verb? It's still a constant source of wonder and amazement for me even after having studied this language formally for about 15 years.

Another thing I've seen mentioned is the distinction between "by" and "until", which is not necessarily present in other languages, so people will e.g. say that they have to get their work done *"until Friday" when they mean "by Friday". I did this myself for a long time, too, and still occasionally slip, but it's not limited to German according to a discussion we had on #isharia the other day. At least Spanish and Czech L2 speakers are prone to make this mistake, too.

[clawgrip]

Japanese speakers frequently mix up 'by' and 'until' despite this exact distinction existing in Japanese.

[Io]

Speak for yourself. I've had Upper Intermediate students that have told me that that's one of the hardest things for them.

I spoke for myself? I wasn't generalising like you.

[GBR]

Japanese speakers frequently mix up 'by' and 'until' despite this exact distinction existing in Japanese.

I'm assuming they're conflating both into まで(made until, to etc)、no?

[Astraios]

It's a reasonable thing to get stuck on:

We have until Friday to do this. / We have to do this by Friday. / We have to do this until Friday.

The first two mean the same, even though the first and last look like they should mean the same.

[clawgrip]

Japanese quite strictly differentiates made 'until; upto' and made ni 'by; no later than' (a phrasing like "We have until Friday" is not really possible), so you would expect Japanese learners to pick up the difference between 'by' and 'until' quite quickly. I suspect, though, that for many Japanese speakers, 'by' is so strongly associated with its instrumental meaning (instrumental constructions in Japanese being wholly unrelated to made) that they have trouble separating it from that and so have trouble accepting additional meanings for it.