Question for every native english speaker

What is the most common mistake you can see in other people messages while reading chat or taking on discord etc.?

So, this isn't an actual answer to your question, but close enough - so, I'll go ahead and post it.

Most of the world outside the English-speaking parts has very limited teaching of how to communicate, esp in a written form. A speaker gets an idea and they just type it out, willy-nilly and this simply doesn't fly in English, since it's a non-inflected and so highly nuanced way to get your point across. Native English speakers almost never use the active voice, it's a quick and dirty way to get you squelched and tuned out by native speakers. It's reserved for formal chats, where you know the speaker is going for emphasis - using the active voice in informal speech is just bad form.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world uses languages that _are_ inflected, and so they adopt almost exclusively the use of the active voice, and almost to a man do it to a very annoying degree - the Baltics and former Yugo countries are really bad perpetrators of this, everything they type is a command or denigration of the listener, with dimunization of their points and experiences.

Most of the rest of the world, by the time they can type out paragraphs of info at a time, are too ingrained in exclusive use of the active voice to be un-trained, which makes it nearly impossible to sit down and wade through a forum where many of them congregate.

Loose/loosing instead of lose/losing.

Hands down.

"

ReyLee wrote:

What is the most common mistake you can see in other people messages while reading chat or taking on discord etc.?

I taught English to junior high through undergrad students for a number of years here in Taiwan. What they truly struggle with is verb forms in general, with tenses and subject-verb agreement both being huge problem areas. What makes these so hard for them is that tenses do not exist in Chinese, and neither does subject-verb agreement.

They use the simple past or simple present tenses for nearly everything, and they often get them backwards. Talking about the future is also quite difficult for them. They don't use "will" in a lot of situations where it's necessary or just useful. Then when they do use it, it's almost always done incorrectly with a present participle (such as "I will going to ..." instead of "I will go to ..." or "I am going to ..."). The perfect tenses are pretty much a non-starter altogether for many students.

More often than not, they just stick with the simple present for the majority of things because the base form of verbs is what comes naturally to them.

Another problem that ties in to that is choosing between a past or present participle to describe things. Most of them eventually learn through repetition which one to use for common situations where one is clearly right and one clearly wrong (such as "The movie was boring." rather than "The movie was bored."). The hardest part of this for them is situations where either could be used depending on what needs to be expressed ("He is bored." vs "He is boring.")

Then of course there are prepositions and other adverbials, conjunctions, and articles. At/in/on/by/for are all problematic, and articles like a/an/the don't exist in Chinese. Most of them can grasp the meaning and purpose of and/but/so/etc, but they often neglect to use them.

A lot of the trouble they have with English concepts is compounded by the fact that they tend to have few opportunities to actually use English. Their Taiwanese teachers in the public school system don't even use English to teach English. They use Chinese to teach the concepts, and they mostly only use English for vocabulary or when teaching specific sentence patterns.

I could go on and on about the trials and tribulations of trying to teach English to Taiwanese students (and for them trying to learn). But it would likely be an absurdly long list, all of which are quite common.

"

Orca_Orcinus wrote:

Spoiler

So, this isn't an actual answer to your question, but close enough - so, I'll go ahead and post it.

Most of the world outside the English-speaking parts has very limited teaching of how to communicate, esp in a written form. A speaker gets an idea and they just type it out, willy-nilly and this simply doesn't fly in English, since it's a non-inflected and so highly nuanced way to get your point across. Native English speakers almost never use the active voice, it's a quick and dirty way to get you squelched and tuned out by native speakers. It's reserved for formal chats, where you know the speaker is going for emphasis - using the active voice in informal speech is just bad form.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world uses languages that _are_ inflected, and so they adopt almost exclusively the use of the active voice, and almost to a man do it to a very annoying degree - the Baltics and former Yugo countries are really bad perpetrators of this, everything they type is a command or denigration of the listener, with dimunization of their points and experiences.

Most of the rest of the world, by the time they can type out paragraphs of info at a time, are too ingrained in exclusive use of the active voice to be un-trained, which makes it nearly impossible to sit down and wade through a forum where many of them congregate.

I think you're quite confused. We use both the active and passive voices in formal as well as informal speech and writing, but it's the active voice that's far more dominant nowadays in most (but definitely not all) situations. What you're describing sounds more like you're confusing "voice" with "mood". I'm thinking you likely mean "imperative mood" rather than "active voice".

"

Orca_Orcinus wrote:

Native English speakers almost never use the active voice

This is written in the active voice.

To be blunt, English is a hodge-podge cluster-fuck.

"

GusTheCrocodile wrote:

"

Orca_Orcinus wrote:

Native English speakers almost never use the active voice

This is written in the active voice.

Um, what? No it isn't.

The active voice is the conceptualization, in communicated form, that the progenitor/the actuator of the agency in a sentence is the speaker, it mostly relies on using self-referential logic as a substitute for actual idea transmission.

Like I said, you can sit and listen to non-native speakers specifically from the former Balkans and you'll get a heaping dose of the active voice, everything is a command, it involves substituting actual discourse with authoritative dictums about the topic.

"Playing God is a bad idea".

If you type that out in a paragraph, in literally any context, you'll not get a single reader who says, "whoa, that there is a hot take".

Now, transform it to the active voice, "I really do think that playing God is a hella bad idea", and the tenor of the construction, the overtone now is not the issue of the morality play, but rather the fact that the speaker thinks his take is the right one, and should be agreed with, period.

The passive voice is almost always used in actual conversation, cause the active requires of the listener more uptime, if you will, than the passive which allows the listener to assume his position alongside the speakers, which is, after all, the entire point of conversation.

So, no... you are wrong, sorry.

"

Orca_Orcinus wrote:

"

GusTheCrocodile wrote:

"

Orca_Orcinus wrote:

Native English speakers almost never use the active voice

This is written in the active voice.

Um, what? No it isn't.

Yes, it most certainly is using active voice.

The passive form of that sentence would be: Active voice is almost never used by native English speakers.

edit: spelling

"

Orca_Orcinus wrote:

Native English speakers almost never use the active voice

The quick and dirty is:
Active = The subject "performs" the action
Passive = The subject "receives" the action

Quick and easy example:
Active = Someone stole my wallet. (someone did something to my wallet)
Passive = My wallet was stolen by someone. (something happened to my wallet)

There can certainly be more to it than just that, and are numerous websites that go into more detail for different scenarios. But that's the primary distinction between the two most of the time. You just have them backwards.

Here are a few sites that I directed my students to for when they ran into problems outside of class.

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/passive-voice.htm
https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/passive_voice.htm
http://www.englishlanguageguide.com/grammar/passive.asp

Edit: This page has a pretty good breakdown and comparison of the two voices.

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/passive-voice.htm#active

Sometimes you can tell what a person's native language is, by the way they make mistakes in English.

I'd imagine the same is true for native Spanish speakers sussing out who's a tryhard Anglo, and to a lesser extent who's Chileno, Boriqueno, Yucatec, schoolbook Castellano, Norteño, or just using Google Translate a lot.

It shouldn't be viewed as a mark against them. Hey, they're learning English and following the rules in chat, would we be able to say the same or make as much sense in their chat?

If you can tell it's a grammar mistake, then you've gotten far enough to parse their intended meaning - communication successful! - and that's what counts. (Even if it leads to them being placed on your ignore list because regardless of the country, language, or alphabet, there will always be 9-year-olds spamming memes and shitposting in chat, somewhere.)