A question to non-native English speakers

[Omega]

I'm just curious, those of you whom English is a second (or third, fourth, whatever) language, how prevalent is grammar mistakes in your native language, how is your language structured, and if it's common to see grammar mistakes in your language amongst native speakers. With English being one of the most common languages in the world, approximately 1.8 billion people can speak English to at least a reasonable degree, however, less than half of those are native English speakers (ie, as their first language).

As a native English speaker, I can't help but notice that many other native English speakers can't even grasp some of the most basic aspects of the language, case and punctuation. It's strangely common to see incorrect spacing around commas (it's always comma-space, the space is not optional). Likewise, sentences starting with lowercase characters, the absence of commas when they're necessary (let's eat, grandpa; let's eat grandpa), and commonly mixed up words (there, their, they're).

Obviously nobodies expecting non-native English speakers to have flawless English, although it makes me flinch at how often even native speakers who graduated from high school with mandatory English classes can make such simple mistakes. What common language-related flaws are prevalent in your native language (who knows, perhaps it'll keep us non-native speakers from making them)?

[MoLAoS]

I'm just curious. For those of you for whom English is a second (or third, fourth, whatever) language, how prevalent are grammar mistakes in your native language? How is your language structured? Is it common to see grammar mistakes in your language amongst native speakers? With English being one of the most common languages in the world, approximately 1.8 billion people can speak English to at least a reasonable degree, less than half of those are native English speakers (ie, as their first language).

As a native English speaker, I can't help but notice that many other native English speakers can't even grasp some of the most basic aspects of the language, like case and punctuation. It's strangely common to see incorrect spacing around commas (it's always comma-space, the space is not optional). Likewise, sentences starting with lowercase characters, the absence of commas when they're necessary (let's eat, grandpa; let's eat grandpa), and commonly mixed up words (there, their, they're).

Obviously nobody's expecting non-native English speakers to have flawless English, although it makes me flinch at how often even native speakers who graduated from high school with mandatory English classes can make such simple mistakes. What common language-related flaws are prevalent in your native language (who knows, perhaps it'll keep us non-native speakers from making them)?

Sorry, what?

[Omega]

Sorry, what?

I love you.

[Yggdrasil]

If it is still understandable, i don't really care about grammar mistakes. I probably don't notice most of them.

What i find more interesting/odd is how many grammar mistakes some german dialects make in speech. That makes it sometimes very hard to follow. Ok, one has more problems understanding their pronunciation. Some of these mistakes probably also creep into written language.

I'm from Saxony (Dresden to be precise) and our dialect is very unpopular in other parts of Germany (of course, i don't get why). But i can't think of any big grammar mistakes we are doing.

So, yeah, native german speakers make mistakes in their language too. I guess that's the case in every language. What you cite as common mistakes sound more like stuff you'd face in chats or other quickly typed messages. A similar one in german is plenken (even has an english wikipedia entry):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenken

[Gabbe]

I usually don't notice them, and when I do, I usually understand the message and correcting it serves no purpose whatsoever.

[GunChleoc]

Some thoughts from a non-native English speaker from the linguist's point of view:

What i find more interesting/odd is how many grammar mistakes some german dialects make in speech. That makes it sometimes very hard to follow. Ok, one has more problems understanding their pronunciation. Some of these mistakes probably also creep into written language.

Well, that's because they are not native speakers of mainline German - it's actually their first foreign language! Their native language is their dialect
And you are correct on the pronunciation - it's always the first barrier in spoken languages. Which is what tees me off when it's neglected in language classes. Most of us don't know how to understand and practice pronunciation, because often it's not taught enough.

The most common writing mistakes that are made by both native speakers and learners are actually spelling mistakes (at least in the Latin alphabet, I guess for syllabic writing systems like Cherokee or logographic writing systems like Chinese, statistics might differ). Grammar mistakes come later.

The ratio between spelling and grammar mistakes is obviously different for learners, since they make more grammar mistakes. A lot of learner mistakes are also tied to choice of words, for example picking the wrong preposition, or using uncommon word combinations (so-called collocation errors, e.g. why do you  "do your homework" and not "make your homework"?).

Also, some native speakers make grammar mistakes in writing that they would never do when speaking, because it's a different task.