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This is true of many skills you grow up learning. E.g. someone who grew up playing piano might be able to play at an incredibly advanced level, while also bein

by cj 1y ago

This is true of many skills you grow up learning. E.g. someone who grew up playing piano might be able to play at an incredibly advanced level, while also being terrible at reading or writing sheet music. The science around skills acquired during childhood/adolescence vs. learned skills is interesting. For example, I would not be surprised if non-native speakers, on average, have a better handle of the difference between effect/affect, there/their, etc.

pixelpoet 1y ago
English is my 4th language, after German, Afrikaans and Indonesian. People get very angry about it when it's pointed out, and yes, "you just say Bingo" (non-native speakers tend to get idioms and certain turns of phrase wrong), but at least we get singular vs plural, past vs present vs future tense etc right. I'm not sure why but "most" (therein lies the thesis) native speakers struggle so much with that basic stuff, to say nothing of its vs it's, were vs we're vs where, maybe caring about much vs many, past perfect "had had 'had had', had had"... Shoot the messenger if you want, but the evidence is literally ubiquitous.
- maleldil 1y ago
  Native speakers also seem to have given up on "less" vs "fewer" entirely.
torben-friis 1y ago
>I would not be surprised if non-native speakers, on average, have a better handle of the difference between effect/affect, there/their, etc. That’s from training system rather than age. You’ll rarely catch me mixing up there and their because I’ve learned those words reading them, and in written form they’re very distinguishable. I couldn’t write a poem to save my life though, because I can’t tell which words in English rhyme - the written form of an English word isn’t trustable. An interesting example is natives with different accents making different mistakes - Latino Spanish speakers for example commonly confuse c and s while writing, as it’s a similar sound. Spain's dialect however pronounces those letters very distinctly (their famous “lisp”) so to Spaniards it’s obvious which one to use.

by cj 1y ago

pixelpoet 1y ago

English is my 4th language, after German, Afrikaans and Indonesian. People get very angry about it when it's pointed out, and yes, "you just say Bingo" (non-native speakers tend to get idioms and certain turns of phrase wrong), but at least we get singular vs plural, past vs present vs future tense etc right. I'm not sure why but "most" (therein lies the thesis) native speakers struggle so much with that basic stuff, to say nothing of its vs it's, were vs we're vs where, maybe caring about much vs many, past perfect "had had 'had had', had had"... Shoot the messenger if you want, but the evidence is literally ubiquitous.

maleldil 1y ago
Native speakers also seem to have given up on "less" vs "fewer" entirely.

torben-friis 1y ago

>I would not be surprised if non-native speakers, on average, have a better handle of the difference between effect/affect, there/their, etc. That’s from training system rather than age. You’ll rarely catch me mixing up there and their because I’ve learned those words reading them, and in written form they’re very distinguishable. I couldn’t write a poem to save my life though, because I can’t tell which words in English rhyme - the written form of an English word isn’t trustable. An interesting example is natives with different accents making different mistakes - Latino Spanish speakers for example commonly confuse c and s while writing, as it’s a similar sound. Spain's dialect however pronounces those letters very distinctly (their famous “lisp”) so to Spaniards it’s obvious which one to use.