I’m trying to find a good site on this topic. Please contribute. I’m a grammatical mendicant.
Are you looking for errors committed by native English speakers, or errors committed by Chinese (or other) people?
http://europa.eu.int/comm/translation/en/ftfog/booklet/
I really like this site. They show common and often funny English errors.
if you’re interested, i did a paper on CPE (chinese pidgin english) recently. i could send you it, or a copy of the sources …
it’s mostly from 1700’s and 1800’s though.
Chris, I am looking for common errors commited by first language speakers. I’m trying to improve my own grammar. I am also interested in common spelling errors that first language speakers commit. Once I spoke to a girl from Canada whose post I was about to take over, and I said " I’ll start teaching as from Monday" and she immediately “corrected” me by saying “as of Monday”. I doubted myself for a while but looked it up in the Oxford and found out that both were acceptable depending on where you’re from. I’m not speaking about these kinds of errors either.
Thanks Richardm for your site.
Xtrain_01 I wasn’t really looking for something on errors that second language speakers commit, but it sounds interesting. Thanks.
Huge subject, but here are a few examples, barely scratching the surface:
Grammar:
Substitution of past tense verb for past participle (“I have went”)
Substitution of past participle for past tense verb: (“I seen”, “I done”)
Substitution of homophones: (“should of gone”)
Erroneous third-person conjugation: (“he don’t”)
Erroneous use of pronoun cases: (“It’s for you and I.”)
Common misspellings:
Confusion of “it’s” and “its”
Confusion of “there”, “their” and “they’re”
Confusion of “to”, “too” and “two”
Confusion of “loose” and “lose”
Substitution of the letter “a” for the schwa sound, e.g. “definately”, “unaversity”,“contamanate”
You may also get into fights with Chinese teachers about what’s right or wrong or acceptable English?
It’s wise to be well prepared! They are!
I’ve had fights over things like
what’s a carton?
Milk comes in a carton, but what about ice tea. In Chinese it’s different, in English…?
“I can read/see a newspaper.”
Both are right, but what about the context?
Kenneth