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Interesting mistakes made by foreigners

Name: Penis Master 2010-07-24 17:45

(I'd like to clarify that this is not meant to insult foreigners learning or speaking English. It's just interesting to see how a person's mother language can affect the way they speak any foreign languages that they've learned)

Recently I was speaking to an Italian person about my eyesight. I explained that one eye was weaker than the other, and it seemed to be getting weaker with time. While we had this conversation, he referred to the eye using 'he'/'him'/himself'.
I later learned that the word for eye in Italian is a masculine noun, and so I suppose that's why he used those particular words.

There's also a German person on another site that I go to who's learning English. This person's English text seems to feature some interesting word ordering. Here's an example:
"i heard the movie should 20. december come out... but im not 100% sure and ive not a link to point it... sorry
..when i get information about i will it each say"

I find this kind of thing very interesting.

Name: Reiko 2010-07-24 20:23

I think it makes perfect sense for foreigners learning english or an american learning a foreign language to speak in these ways.
Because in europe  when saying a date, the day comes first.
So instead of July 24 it would be the 24 of July.
with foreign languages it's always interesting to understand why a person says something a certain way.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-25 3:52

>>1
Italian: Yep. oglio (eye), AFAIK.
German: note, the verb is always the 2nd informative thing in the sentence.

>>2
In these cases, I always spell the month.
It's hard to mistake "4 March 1990" or "March 4 1990", but what about 03/04/1990 versus 04/03/1990?

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-25 13:36

That's because of German word order, OP

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