10 Common Mistakes That Native English Speakers Make 

"He lied on the floor" IS grammatically correct when referring to a member of Congress or Parliament. }:-)

The biggest difference between a native and non-native speaker of any language is that the non-native speaker is terrified of making usage errors and the native speaker doesn't care how many errors they make.

This is writing only, but it drives me up the wall when people write "loose" when they mean "lose".

Unfortunately, once you learn to recognise such mistakes you are doomed to endure eternal irritation. You will hear them everywhere.

English can be hard sometimes. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though...

The quadruple negative is even cooler than the double one: "I'm sitting over here on Parchman farm, Ain't never done no man no harm."

I find it ironic that literally actually means figuratively now.

Being understood is the ultimate goal, regardless of mistakes.

1900s valley girl: um 80s valley girl: like um 2010s valley girl: um like literally

"Would of" instead of "would have" shits me to tears.

"Thinking on their feet." Idioms most be the hardest thing for learners to understand in any language.

I'm a native English speaker and college educated. Some of the mistakes you noted are really English in transition to a new standard, but some are definitely made by native speakers who are poorly educated or - let's face it, educated but a lot didn't sink in. When you speak or write, you convey more than just the obvious content of the communication. You convey your educational level, family background, sometimes your regional origin, occupational level and your general intelligence. We all make these types of personal assessment consciously or unconsciously, and they do have an impact on how you are perceived by others, positively or negatively. Like it or not, that's been substantiated by a great deal of social research, and it can subtly or otherwise impact how you're treated in a variety of different situations. I've noticed a general decline over many decades in the speaking and writing competency of many native English speakers in the United States up to the present time. So have many businesses and institutions of higher learning. I'm sure there are many reasons for this, but what concerns me is this: a level of competency in your native language is crucial for the ability to understand the modern world and make important decisions about your employment options and lifetime earnings, and the complex social, economic and political issues before us today. Language is thought, and democracy depends on an informed and thoughtful electorate. When your native language competency is blunted, so is your ability to deal with the world. That being said, having studied French for a number of years, I have a great deal of empathy for any non-native speakers of English learning the language. It can be a truly humbling and frustrating experience to feel like a 5-year old child instead of an adult when you attempt to communicate with a native speaker when you are new to learning their language.

As non-native speaker I always found funny that people have trouble with they`re, their and there.

My favorite is “human bean”. I saw that one yesterday.

This is why I don't feel bad when making grammatical mistakes in other languages. Deep down, I know that I make fewer mistakes in those languages than I do in my native one.

Thanks for covering these common mistakes. As a child, I was often mocked by my schoolmates for using correct grammar. (They called me Mr. Perfect English) As a result, I didn't fit in very well. Over time, I was vindicated and was consoled by achieving better test scores than many of my peers. Learning not to correct others has proved to be a valuable decision unless someone asks me to do so. I'm not always right, and I make mistakes from time to time. It's probably better to allow others the freedom to express themselves as they see fit. Living languages are dynamic and will change over time. So, even though I find considerable value in established norms, while living in glass houses, we should take care not to throw stones. :)

I ain't gave no money to nobody. Love triple negatives

Me fail English? That's unpossible.

In Japanese, the correct form of ～る verbs such as 食べる（to eat) expressing ability is ～られる (食べられる = taberareru = edible, or [I] can eat it), but a couple of decades ago young people started saying ～れる, like 食べれる "tabereru". It was clearly wrong grammatically, sounded really weird to me, and like many I used to frown upon it when I heard someone say it. Now I say it myself all the time. It so happens that ～られる takes the same form in the passive voice (be eaten, etc.), so ~れるexpresses ability more distinctively. I would say it's an example of evolution that occurred in the Japanese language recently.

"Honey, I shrunk the kids." [BUZZER] "Honey, I *_shrank_* the kids."

I don't never make those mistakes, literally.

As non native English speaker and a man who took classes of English I have to say I've never even heard about subjunctive mood. Sounds like something to fail people on English exams..

As a non-native speaker number 8 is very hard for me as well. In my first language German there are adjectives and adverbs, of course, but there is only a difference from grammatical point of view. The word is usually the same. For example: Dieser Tanz ist gut. = This (kind of) dance is good. Ich tanze gut. = I (can) dance well.

Also, I think English kind of lends itself to frequent mistakes due to its bizarre spelling rules, numerous irregularities, and its nature in general as a Teutonic-Italic-Hellenic (et al) hybrid language.

I speak 2 languages. Bad English and Texan.

I of bean speaking english four almost 18 years now. I are do excellent.

In Tagalog, a lot of people always uses "ng" instead of "nang" for appropriate moment. That's also true for "daw" and "raw" and "din" and "rin". And in written Tagalog, people would combine two different particles like "ka" and "na" would be "kana". It's also true for "kapa", "naba", and in some cases, "palang".

Well done, Paul. I am now retired after teaching EFL for over 40 years and I'm very impressed with your videos. They are an excellent resource,

this video should be titled "watch this before writing comments"

A native English speaker here. In my experience, the object form of "who" ("whom") is increasing not used. I've even seen this occur in articles published by notable major media sources, such as NPR and The Economist. Given that trend, native English speakers might soon commonly ask "For *who* the bell tolls".

I love your videos ! Thanks so much for all the joy you bring to all who love languages and linguistics! What a treasure trove your channel is. I'm sure you know and it's probably been pointed out already in the comments , but the Oxford English Dictionary included the definition of "metaphorically" for the term "literally" as correct English usage a few years ago.

I never knew “ lain” was even a word. Damn.

The three flags on display at the beginning imply that native speakers from the United Kingdom do not make mistakes. This is, of course, correct.

Putting apostrophes in the wrong words, like plurals.

Another great video! I am a fan of correct, i.e. grammatical, speech and writing. As such, I truly appreciate videos such as this one. Bravo!

Here in the UK there's a trend of mixing "our" and "are". As in " are house". Truly does my head in!

You forgot about the confusion with the homophones "to" and "too." Those are equally as infuriating to see.

You sound foreign-ish because you have great diction. Speakers tend to speak faster rather than clearly.

I love this video! As both a native speaker of English and an Australian, I feel like your point at 3:58 attributes an unlikely turn of phrase to us. This wouldn't represent the way a typical Aussie would address the situation; they would say "he needs to go to the hospital".

This video is brilliant. Thank you for publishing it. I hear these mistakes very regularly and it really frustrates me.

Thank you for clarifying "lay" and "lie". I am a native speaker (American) and have always had difficulty with this one.

"I could care less" being used instead of "I couldn't care less".

The most common mistake in Turkish is the spelling of "Yanlış" and "Yalnız". "Yanlış(Mistake, Wrong)" comes from the verb "Yanılmak(to be wrong)" so the "n" comes before "l". "Yalnız(Lonely, Only, sometimes used to contrast like "but" or "however")" comes from the adjective "Yalın(Without any additions, bare, also is the name of the Nominative case in Turkish)" so the "l" comes before "n".

I agree totally with you on lie vs lay, also on less vs fewer, and on misunderstanding of subject vs object of a preposition.

Are you sure you're from the United States've America?

I would expect that some native speakers of all languages make mistakes. One mistake that annoys me is the misuse of apostrophes. For example, when talking about a period of time, many people write the 60's. This incorrectly makes it a possessive. The correct way to write it is the '60s, where the apostrophe indicates an abbreviation in which the 19 (or 18 or 17) is left out.

Misusing "literally" (literalmente) is common in Portuguese too.

I am native French Canadian from province of Quebec and I discovered your channel yesterday and I love it! Sorry if you find mistakes in this post but I always try my best because I don't speak English fluently ❤

I can’t stand when people mix up “you’re” and “your”, or “there”, “their”, and “they’re”, or “effect” and “affect”, or “then” and “than”.

Misuse of the word literally makes me FIGURATIVELY insane

I appreciate how brisk your videos are. No fluffy padding like so many other channels have wasting our time.

"Lie" vs "lay," oddly enough, is also present in Danish ("ligge" vs "lægge"). We have another similar one: "sit" vs "put down" ("sidde" vs "sætte"). Many people, especially where I am from, just can't figure out what to use when.

Hi (sorry for my bad English)

I’m French and there’s a mistake pretty common in everyday language: confusion about the preposition "à". Prepositions are small words that connect two parts of a sentence. The most commonly used prepositions in French are à, chez, de, en, entre, jusque, hors, pour, sans, vers. The meaning of "à" varies depending on the sentence (in, to, at...). 1) Confusion between the homophones "a" (third person singular present tense of « avoir ») and "à" appears quite frequently in writing. You must write: « Il part à New York pour ses études » = "He moves to New York for his studies" « Il part à sept heures » = "He comes at seven o’clock » « Il a eu beaucoup de cadeaux » = "Il had/got a lot of presents" 2) To express possession/belonging, confusion between "à" and "de" are also frequent, both in writing and oral. -The preposition 'de' is used with a name or noun in place of the English ’s and s’: « La lettre de Guillaume » = "Guillaume’s letter" « La chambre de leurs parents » = "Their parents’ bedroom" -The preposition 'à' is used with the verb « être » in front of stressed pronouns in order to emphasize the ownership of the object: « À qui est ce livre ? » or «À qui appartient ce livre ? » = "Whose book is this?" or "Who this book belongs to?" « Il est/C’est à Marie » or « Il/Ça appartient à Marie » = "It’s Marie’s" or "It belongs to Marie" « Ce livre est à Marie » = "This book is Marie’s" « Le livre est à elle » = "The book is hers" « C’est un livre à elle » = "It’s a book of hers" « Ce livre est à lui/Guillaume», « Non, c’est à elle/Marie » = "This books is his/Guillaume’s" "No, it’s hers/Marie’s" So in familiar French, instead of hearing « C’est le livre de Marie », « Le livre de Marie est... », it’s common to hear « C’est le livre à Marie », « Le livre à Marie est... », which is grammatically incorrect. 3) Senseless combination between possessive determiner (my, your...) and possessive pronoun (mine, yours...) as an emphatic way is indiscriminately used, specially by young French speakers. « Ma chérie à moi » = ~My~ sweetheart ~of mine~ (an immature way for "MY sweetheart", "My sweetheart and only mine", "My very own sweetheart"...)

Paul, you've outdone yourself with this video! I loved the ending, and I do intend to have a great evening. I hope you have one as well.

wow that was very helpful. i mostly learned English listening to people, so naturally i picked up many mistakes with it

The subjunctive mood in English is dying out, which is a shame, because I think it's useful. You were spot on about these being very, very common.

I literally never make none of them mistakes what he talked about in that video

Good work!

Great video, Paul! You hit some of my top pet peeves! :)

English is my second language (my first language was Filipino), and I still don't understand how native speakers can confuse "effect" and "affect".

I don't know if I've improved my listening skills or you just speak amazingly clear, literally. Thank you.

“Stative verbs” My blood ran cold and goosebumps covered my back as I remembered the amount of time I spent reading and then attempting to understand Vendler’s classification of verbs…

As an English speaker in the mideastern US, a definitely do most of these things. I also frequently shorten "going to go" to "gonna go" or "gonn go," with the last one using more of a guttural sound and more rounded Oh vowels. There are other things that I frequently change, but that's one of the main ones.

The one that used to get me was the people at work who were so proud of their degrees & would confuse 'then' & 'than' in their emails. They would pronounce them distinctly differently in conversation, but couldn't seem to distinguish them in writing.

"Literally" has been used in the figurative sense for literally centuries. Shakespeare used it in that manner.

Wow! I really enjoyed this. I am not a native English speaker, but I always like to hear and see correct use of language. Living in Canada and very close to the Canadian/USA border, I encounter far too much erroneous use of English, even on radio and television, not to mention papers and magazines.

Hello, I'm from the Philippines and many of us are afraid to make mistakes when we speak in english because we might get judged by our fellow Filipinos who are very particular in grammar. Indeed many Filipinos are grammar nazi that's why even though many of us want to practice english to become fluent but because of some people that will make fun of us because of our grammar mistakes it turns out our willingness and passion will disappear

Did I just enjoy learning English grammer?

In my native language (Czech), I make mistakes almost in every sentence due to its grammatical complexity.

Brilliant video! You listed my ten top gripes about people abusing and misusing English. If only there were ONLY ten examples ...

I learnt French orally, so, I learnt it with French mistakes, makes me more of a native speaker!

I learned about the subjunctive when i was learning spanish. It was a bit shocking to know it existed in english

As a non-native speaker of English, these mistakes make my skin crawl. Literally.

I'd love to see videos about this sort of phenomenon in other languages as well.

actually a really good video, i wasn't expecting too much

I eat so much cookies that I consider them uncountable

In french, "littéralement" (which means "litteraly") is misused in the same way that in english.

Oh, and I love double negation. In English it is infused with a certain degree of pathos or irony when used by an educated person, but in Spanish and Russian it is as normal as can be. Double negation will be the new standard English. But I won’t live long enough to see its demise and lament it:)

To err is human, brother. Again and again, you’re amazing, literally! I’ve been studying English for four years, but RU-vid’s algorithms haven’t suggested to me your channel before! Where were your channel and videos? I really needed them! Better late than never! As for your question to non-native English speakers, my first language is Arabic, and it’s a bit difficult to find mistakes in it because standard Arabic is no longer used in everyday conversations. Therefore, if I compare the Arabic dialect I use to standard Arabic, it collapses (the dialect). 😂

At this point, the word “literally” has changed it’s meaning

We don't need no education.

It’s funny that the “lay” and “lie” confusion is also present in Danish and is commonly used incorrectly: Let’s lie on the bed = Lad os LIGGE på sengen Let’s lay the laundry on the bed = Lad os LÆGGE vasketøjet på sengen What makes it even more commonly misused is how close these two words sound. But I guess English and Danish sharing a common language ancestor is part of the reason.

Thanks Paul. I didn't knew about this mistakes.

Excellent, as always, Paul. Regarding "literally"--Webster's says that using "literally" hyperbolically dates back to at least 1796. We may have lost the battle on that one.

I've spoken English for over 50 years and it never occurred to me that well is the adverb of good and, as a totally different word, also an adjective meaning healthy. I was there thinking you can never teach me anything about English. Wrong! Thank you!

As a teacher of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), I think that our association should award you a medal or something. Every time I point out one of these mistakes to my students, they complain that their favourite influencer speaks like that and s/he can't be wrong as s/he's a native speaker of English. This video will come in handy next time they play that card on me.

Thank you for this video! Could you do a video about double negatives used as an emphatic? Example: I don't NOT have the answer. I find this type of double negative very useful in certain situations.

Of all the mistakes mentioned, I think the last one is the worst, reason being there is not a replacement for the word literally to mean what literally used to mean, so now each time you say something in the literal sense you have to explain that you indeed mean it literally and not just exaggerating. Continuing with the example used, if you happen to know a girl who has thousands of pairs of shoes (maybe due to a collection or something) and you tell someone else that she literally has thousands of pairs of shoes they'll think she has far less than what you actually wish to portray.

I hope you liked the video!

I'm glad you alluded to the fact that most of these "mistakes" can really be innovations, because that's exactly how I see them. When you have a language with influences from all corners of the world, plus outdated spelling and grammar conventions, you're bound to have people getting relaxed with the rules. Most of these "mistakes" are definitely things the majority of people do in everyday casual speech. And even though you said you're not talking about dialects, some of these can even be aspects of certain dialects, like the frequent use of double negatives in AAVE. I will say though, I do find too many "literallys" to be annoying sometimes - I've consciously cut back on my own use of it over the years 😂

Wow!!! This contents really console english learner of all of life like me in the world!!!

Fantastic video! Thank you, Paul! I am a French teacher (native English speaker) who is passionate about expression, syntax, etc. in language. Over the years, I have shared (dare I say 'harped on') points with my students of all these topics (save 'literally') since I recognize as you do that it is used for 'making one's point' to an extreme. Loved your address, presentation and the excellent examples you provided.

I had no idea English had a subjunctive 😮 and i've been over here complaining about Spanish and French subjunctive moods for years, haha.

The one that is like fingernails on a chalkboard to my ears is saying "I" when they should say "me." He invited my brother and I to the party. They were talking about my wife and I.

The one that really gets me is the difference between among and between.

I literally can't believe you didn't include incorrect usage of "I and "me". The old mistake was saying something like "Mary and me went to the store". That mistake was corrected so much that we now have the other extreme being used commonly: "John gave the ball to Mary and I". I hear this on the news all the time and I cringe.

Other mistakes include saying Soda instead of Pop and pronouncing Z as Zee instead of as Zed.

Langfocus you are the best English native speaker that sounds like a foreigner loooolll Anyway I am Italian, and we also make mistakes in our own language it is pretty normal... When I chat with English native speakers they sometimes make mistakes too but I have always thought that I was wrong And what it's weirder that I tend to copy them... Copy that!

Regarding the question, as a non native speaker this video was pretty clarifying in the sense that there were occasions where I was being corrected by native speakers for saying "If I were" or writing "would've," which confused me a lot lol