Easily(?) Confused Words

[Duke]

One particular thing I always hate to see is people that type "I could of done..." instead of "I could have done..." or "I could've done..." <-- the contracted form being where the confusion arises.

I was just going to post that one as a serious peeve of mine, so I'll have to move on to one of my second-stringers:

Using seen by itself as the past tense of "see", instead of either "saw" or "have seen".

 

[daan]

Getting every word right is a big ask.

 

[Denur]

Irregardless of the affect my opinions could of had on what poeples thinks about words and there usages, its rediculous to try to correct people. Their ignerant of the rules of grammer and it's proper applications.

BTW "irregardless" is one of my own favorites.

Deep respect for how you get so many common errors in one sentence (on purpose I presume). It's just too much for me to grasp.

 

[Driving Park]

One thing that annoys me is the misuse of the word "literally", which happens ALL the time, both in real life and on the Internet. Sometimes I deliberately mutilate it to emphasize a ridiculous exaggeration, but in actual speech, when someone says "I was literally this close to shooting someone" when they don't even own a gun or something along those lines (I can't think of a great example) , it's quite annoying. And quite wrong.

Also, I've heard that "good English" is technically incorrect, it should be "proper English". Can anyone confirm?

And a mispronunciation thing, a lot of people where I'm from pronounce "library" as "liberry". THAT's annoying.

Oh and wfooshee, you forgot to misspell one "to" as "too".

 

[Famine]

And a mispronunciation thing, a lot of people where I'm from pronounce "library" as "liberry". THAT's annoying.

The only other person I've ever met to pronounce "Wednesday" properly is my wife.

Incidentally, I hate it when people hate when something happens.

 

[Keef]

Don't forget about the classic "I before E" scenario.
Easy to remember, no? No is right...
Science
Weird
Society
Species
Ancient

and

Vein
Being
Neighbors
Weight

That, plus...
if Car, Jar, Bar, Star, Tar, Far, Scar, and Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar all rhyme, how come War doesn't?

Also...
Spice, Twice, Rice, Ice, Mice, Nice, Thrice, Advice, Concise and Electromagnetic Device all rhyme, why not Police?

I misspell English words routinely because I took a bit of German in high school, and therefore I use the German rule. If it makes an "E" sound it's spell "ie" and if it makes an "I" sound then it's spelled "ei". Every time. Makes things simpler, and people still get the idea that the word should have an e and an i in there somewhere, in whatever order.

 

[homeforsummer]

The other, is people confusing the term borrow for lend. I often hear peoples say "Can you borrow me a pencil?" when they should say: "Can you lend me a pencil?".

Heh. Up here in the North East they do the exact opposite (the particular example you used was one familiar from my old housemate, who lived between Sheffield and Rotherham. I'm almost certain most of what she said wasn't even English).

Them: "Can I lend a pencil?"
Me: "No, but you can borrow it"

I take much pleasure from correcting them. Every single time.

English accents are a law unto themselves though. If you think the language is difficult to get to grips with, just wait until you have to decipher the hundreds of regional accents and their own particular mannerisms, colloquialisms and sometimes, downright gibberish. The latter being mostly what you get when the accent is too far beyond being intelligible.

 

[Famine]

And there is no-one in Britain who can understand the Ponteland accent.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

I don't consider them easily confused, but I have noticed some members using quite instead of quiet.

 

[Tomaz]

What about lead and lead.

English is one funny language.

 

[GT_Prologue5]

Enibudy thot uv thu werd "Brang" yett? It is wun uv mi sisturz favrits and it pissis me ovv.

 

[Apollo87]

Of course you mean favourites

Umm now you've confused me so let me get it straight, the word favorites doesn´t exist because it comes from favor, and the correct way of sayin favourites as in 'something you like or prefer' is favourites?

Getting every word right is a big ask.

Personally I don't find it that difficult, perhaps because I've spoken decent english since I was about 8 but we have a lot of people that are native english speakers and make some of the most obvious mistakes and if that were me I'd be quite ashamed.

Also as much as english is insane I believe it's not as hard as some of the latin-derived languages such as spanish or french, a lot of Americans that I've seen trying to learn spanish struggle deeply with the gender of things that in the english language it was solved by using 'it', and even 'the' is used equally for both sexes. All this and you don't even start using accents and such things in punctuation that can deeply change the meaning of a sentence.

 

[Daniel]

Enibudy thot uv thu werd "Brang" yett? It is wun uv mi sisturz favrits and it pissis me ovv.

I got 'Brang', 'It' and 'is'.
The rest in English, please?

 

[Legendary]

Enibudy thot uv thu werd "Brang" yett? It is wun uv mi sisturz favrits and it pissis me ovv.

Sorry? English please 👍.

 

[RUI]

I got 'Brang', 'It' and 'is'.
The rest in English, please?

Sorry? English please 👍.

You guys should read an Irvine Welsh novel!

Also as much as english is insane I believe it's not as hard as some of the latin-derived languages such as spanish or french, a lot of Americans that I've seen trying to learn spanish struggle deeply with the sexes of things that in the english language it was solved by using 'it', and even 'the' is used equally for both sexes. All this and you don't even start using accents and such things in punctuation that can deeply change the meaning of a sentence.

You mean gender, not sex.

 

[GT_Prologue5]

That was meant to make some laughs. Get it? I'm talking in mispelling while saying I hate misspelling. Take a joke, please.

 

[Austin343]

Come on; we aren't stupid. We understood what you were doing, but there are ways to do it intelligently, such as wfooshee's post. You went too far over the top for it to be funny.

Most of the grammatical misconceptions that annoy me have been mentioned already, but in the same vein as "alot," I also hate when people spell "all right" as "alright," and, particularly, "as well" as "aswell."

Also, it may not count as a grammatical error per se, but I can't stand when people write, for example "good luckkkkkkk" or "see you tomorrowwww." This seems to pervade Facebook in particular, and I hope that it doesn't spread.

 

[Stevisiov]

I don't consider them easily confused, but I have noticed some members using quite instead of quiet.

Perhaps that's related to dyslexia?

You mean gender, not sex.

In this context, sex means gender.

If I ask you what sex you are, I am asking you what gender you are. They mean the same thing in this sense.

 

[Daniel]

Also, it may not count as a grammatical error per se, but I can't stand when people write, for example "good luckkkkkkk" or "see you tomorrowwww." This seems to pervade Facebook in particular, and I hope that it doesn't spread.

GOoooooooossshshshhsh, he was just trying to make a joooooookkkkkkee.

 

[Legendary]

That was meant to make some laughs. Get it? I'm talking in mispelling while saying I hate misspelling. Take a joke, please.

Okkk, I wll tke it es a jk. C yu arnd

EDIT:

Also, it may not count as a grammatical error per se, but I can't stand when people write, for example "good luckkkkkkk" or "see you tomorrowwww." This seems to pervade Facebook in particular, and I hope that it doesn't spread.

It shows how happy a person is, I mainly see females doing it but I dont have a problem with it. If they are happy they say 'heyyyyyy', if they arent it will just be 'hi' or 'hey'.

 

[Daniel]

One thing I hate is the overuse of Three-Letter-Acronyms...
Not the ones like 'lol' 'brb' and such, ones that are longer to say than their TLA (guess what that is ).
Like 'www', which is longer to say than 'World Wide Web'.
And in the military.. C4 is longer to say than bomb. Or IED (Improvised Explosive Device) which means Bomb.

or ACV - Amoured Combat Vehicle, which means tank. And with going overseas for buisinessmen... PRC = The People's Republic of China, which is China...

Any other TLAs that annoy you?

 

[Driving Park]

One thing I hate is the overuse of Three-Letter-Acronyms...
Not the ones like 'lol' 'brb' and such, ones that are longer to say than their TLA (guess what that is ).
Like 'www', which is longer to say than 'World Wide Web'.
And in the military.. C4 is longer to say than bomb. Or IED (Improvised Explosive Device) which means Bomb.

or ACV - Amoured Combat Vehicle, which means tank. And with going overseas for buisinessmen... PRC = The People's Republic of China, which is China...

Any other TLAs that annoy you?

True, but a key point to these is that you sound cool while you say them.

 

[Daniel]

True, but a key point to these is that you sound cool while you say them.

Unless you overuse them

 

[RUI]

Also as much as english is insane I believe it's not as hard as some of the latin-derived languages such as spanish or french, a lot of Americans that I've seen trying to learn spanish struggle deeply with the sexes of things that in the english language it was solved by using 'it', and even 'the' is used equally for both sexes. All this and you don't even start using accents and such things in punctuation that can deeply change the meaning of a sentence.

In this context, sex means gender.

If I ask you what sex you are, I am asking you what gender you are. They mean the same thing in this sense.

He's talking about things, not people! Things don't have a sex; they - or rather, their names - have a gender though, in Portuguese, Spanish, French and many other languages.

 

[Max Powers]

Also, it may not count as a grammatical error per se, but I can't stand when people write, for example "good luckkkkkkk" or "see you tomorrowwww." This seems to pervade Facebook in particular, and I hope that it doesn't spread.

This drives me insane too. I removed my cousin from my friends list because every damn thing she posted was like that. So far girls are the only culprits of this that I've seen. If any guy on my friends list starts posting like that, I'll make it my duty to harass him ruthlessly about it.

 

[Smallhorses]

He's talking about things, not people! Things don't have a sex; they - or rather, their names - have a gender though, in Portuguese, Spanish, French and many other languages.

Indeed, it's one of the few things that English is simpler about.
Someone/something male is "he", someone/something female is "she" and just about everything else is a genderless "it".
Everything is referred to by the non-gender specific "the", e.g. "The boy and the girl sat on the rug and watched the fish in the tank eating the food that they were given."
(A sentence that wouldn't win any literary prizes!!! )

German is quite confusing in that there's "Der" for "the male something", "Die" for "the female something" and "Das" for "the neutral (neuter) something", but there doesn't, to the the outside observer, seem to be any logic to the assignment of gender of objects!

In English, I am male, my wife is female, all the stuff in the house is genderless and therefore an "it". (Car, table, oven, picture, beer, plant, etc.)

In German, I am male, my wife is female, but the car is neutral or male*, the table is female, the oven is male, the picture is neutral, the beer is neutral, and the plant is female!

* Depending on the word you use, Das Auto or Der Wagen!

That's before you even get started on nominative, dative and accusative cases, where the 3 words for "the" can change again dependent on how an object is being referred to, e.g. "Der Hund" is "the dog", but if you say "Ich sehe den Hund" (I see the dog) "der" becomes "den", and plural objects, even male or neutral ones, which all then become "Die", e.g. "Die Autos" making them indistinguishable (except for the pluralising "s") from the female version of "the". It still makes my brain hurt!

 

[GT_Prologue5]

I did go too far....

 

[Apollo87]

You mean gender, not sex.

Sorry, my bad, either way you got the point and it's now corrected.

But yeah most of the people that speak english as their first language get confused with the gender since in english it's pretty simple. Something as simple as a car it's male in spanish but a pickup or a minivan is female and then a garbage truck is a male, and so on.

Anyway can anyone clear my doubt about favorite and favourite, from what I've read both are ok it's just what dictionary(as in American or British) you use.

 

[PureAwesomeness]

Sorry, my bad, either way you got the point and it's now corrected.

But yeah most of the people that speak english as their first language get confused with the gender since in english it's pretty simple. Something as simple as a car it's male in spanish but a pickup or a minivan is female and then a garbage truck is a male, and so on.

Anyway can anyone clear my doubt about favorite and favourite, from what I've read both are ok it's just what dictionary(as in American or British) you use.

You're quite right - it's just a difference in British and American spelling.

My Dad always says the British invented English, the Americans made it user-friendly. This isn't actually true but generally speaking American spelling seems to be more logical.

 

[daan]

Getting every word right is a big ask.

Personally I don't find it that difficult, perhaps because I've spoken decent english since I was about 8 but we have a lot of people that are native english speakers and make some of the most obvious mistakes and if that were me I'd be quite ashamed.

My post was indicating something that annoys me. What is a big ask? A big question? A tough task?