this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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In German people tend to increase "only" (das einzige). As in, they say something is the "onliest" (das einzigste). It's usually a good indicator of someone's education.
In many regions it is common to do comparisons with "as" (wie). As in "My dog is bigger as yours" instead of "My dog is bigger than yours". The most infuriating thing about this is that most people doing that mistake don't even acknowledge that it is one. At least people who say "onliest" can be convinced that it is wrong.
Technically not an error but still annoying is to append an apostrophe and an s to a name to indicate the genitive. Like in "Anna's food is good". In German that should be written as "Annas Essen ist gut". But due to many people making the same mistake (I guess also because we're used to it from English sentences) it has been allowed to use an apostrophe. So in that case I'm just a grumpy old guy.
In Dutch it's also common to use als (as) instead of dan (than). Technically it's wrong though.
This gets really confusing if you're from Limburg. In Limburgish, "daan" (the cognate to Dutch "dan") only exists as the time indicator. With comparisons the correct Limburgish is to use "es" for differences (e.g. "Jan is groeter es Maria", "John is bigger than Mary"), and "wie" for equivalents (e.g "Jan is eve aajd wie Maria", "John is as old as Mary"). Now "es" is cognate to Dutch "als", but using it in Dutch as in Limburgish is wrong. So yeah this gets confusing.