What mistakes do people in your country think are correct?

[Jamie (K)]

Sometimes foreign speakers of English in certain places all make the same mistake so much, for so many years, that many of them won't believe it's wrong when they are corrected. Have you noticed any of these in your country?

An example: Very many people on the European continent say, "I look forward to see you." This is incorrect grammar, but some Europeans won't believe it. If an American, Canadian, British or other native-speaking translator, writer or teacher writes the correct sentence, "I look forward to seeing you," European students or clients often argue that he or she has made a mistake, and that the verb form should be "see".

When the native speaker explains why "seeing" is correct, some Europeans will make really crazy arguments. To an American, they'll argue that he doesn't know correct "British English". To a Briton, they'll sometimes claim that "everybody in America" says it their way.

However, the fact remains that, "I look forward to see you," is incorrect, and, "I look forward to seeing you," is correct.

Another example is when people in Central Europe say "happy end" in English, instead of the correct expression "happy ending". When we say it correctly, sometimes they think we're wrong.

Do you notice examples of this kind of "correct" mistake where you live?

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

Hi Jamie!

To answer your question one need more proficience than I have, as I?m just a learner or student of the English and thus am not really capable to figure out what?s correct or not. But let me please add a little, funny story that recently happened to me:

The company I?m working for received a letter of complaint, written in English. The customer claimed that the delivered plants don?t work. Till this point it was easy to read and understand but in the following the writer obviously was overstrained as he neither is a technician nor a proficient English user. Allowedly, I?m not that English profi, too, but in the writing there are that much mistakes that I, and not only I, had to read the letter several times to figure out that the customers had made wrong statements concerning the requirements of the plant in advance and now had tried to readjust the parameters to their tasks. In a nutshell, they managed that the plants didn?t work any longer.

Well, the technical explanation by the by; what I intended to say was that it took us a lot of time to figure out what the problem is and how important it may be to have uniform high standard of language, isn?t it?

Michael

[Cornelius]

Examples from this side of the earth..

I will visit you "next next week". (notice the use of "next next". This means two weeks from now. Sometimes people here also use "last last" to refer to the date in the past ) . I think the correct way to say this is "I will visit you on the week after next".

Also if i may ask...
Is this correct? >>> "Please repeat that again." (Sounds redundant to me.. ) That phrase is also being used frequently here.

[Englishuser]

Hi Jamie (K),

What do you think of the below sentence?

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

[Prezbucky]

I'm getting sick of seeing this in my office (Nashville, TN, USA):

can not

The proper conveyance of this is cannot.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Prezbucky]

there are so many more things to gripe about.

In the South, there's the suite/suit problem which I've mentioned previously.

Also, there are major pronunciation problems all over here in the US... we especially love to butcher foreign names:

Des Plaines (outside Chicago) is pronounced "des planes"

Lafayette is pronounced "luh-FAY-it" here in Nashville.

Buena Vista is pronounced "byoonah vista" -- rhyming with "luna sista" -- here in Nashville.

etc.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Conchita]

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

[Englishuser]

Hi prezbucky,

This is what the ODE tells us:

[Conchita]

[Prezbucky]

jamie

lew-uh-vull

yep.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Prezbucky]

Conchita

Como estas? (sorry, imagine that the accents are in the correct spots)
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.