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Speakers of non-English languages, what common mistakes do native speakers make that drive you crazy? (infosec.pub)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For example, English speakers commonly mix up your/you're or there/their/they're. I'm curious about similar mistakes in other languages.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive.

Even technically I'd consider it an error - the genitive/"possessive" apostrophe in English highlights that you're dealing with a clitic, attached to the end of the noun phrase; e.g. the dog**'s** food` → the dog and the cat**'s** food. In German however it doesn't behave like a clitic, it's a plain declension; e.g. das Futter des Hundes → das Futter des Hundes und der Katze - you're switching words, not moving them.

I wonder if that's because most people nowadays use von+Dative instead.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Not a native speaker, so I could be wrong about this:

I've seen a construction using proper nouns (eg. Annas Haus) where an "s" indicates possession, but no apostrophe. This doesn't seem to apply to non-proper nouns (das Haus der Frau) and is different from normal genitive construction that adds an "s" to masc/neut noun genders (das Haus des Mannes)