What is the most fascinating mistake that non-native speakers of your language make?


Mats Andersson, Professional translator, B. Sc. in Physics, M. Sc. in Applied Computer Science
Answered Jan 2
It’s not so much the mistakes a non-native will make—it’s the mystery of how we native speakers get it right.

Swedish has two grammatical genders; none of them is masculine or feminine, so there is never a “natural” way of deciding which gender a particular word has. Native speakers who hear a new or invented word will immediately know which gender it should be, and we are quite unable to figure out why. It just “sounds right”.

Swedish often makes compound words. Any native speaker knows immediately which words go together and what a newly minted compound word means. As Fredrik Lindström (who is something as odd as a celebrity linguist) once said, “you don’t have to agree with the politics or the view of women it conveys, but you gotta love a language which can come up with the word ‘hängbröstvänster’ (‘sagging-breasts-left-wing’) and have any native speaker understand the word immediately.”

Swedish is partly a tonal language. Subtle differences in stress and the length of sounds makes it possible for us to differentiate “anden” (“the spirit”) from “anden” (“the duck”) or “bildrulle” (“reckless driver”) from “bildrulle” (“roll of film”). We never get it wrong, search me why.

Swedish uses the same word for “six” and “sex”. We figure it out from context (it’s hardly ever very difficult, unless your taste runs somewhat to the exotic).

Swedish has the most curious way of using the word “skit” (“shit”). When we say it alone, with emphasis, it means the same as in English. When we use it in compound words, it can mean the same as in English: “skitväder” means “shitty weather”. But often it is used as a strong emphasis: “skitbra”, literally “shit-good”, means “extremely good”, and “skitgott”, literally “shit-tasty”, does not mean “tastes like shit”, it means “extremely tasty”.

That last one must have been invented just to make life difficult for immigrants.

That was an interesting post, Geoff. I love Quora.

I had a hisch gf who did ASF her sr yr in Sweden. She was not a natural at picking up foreign langs, but returned fluent (& kicking & screaming cuz she wanted to stay on & marry her Swedish bf!)

I like the general Q, what is the mistake non-native speakers of yr lang typically make? My pet theory that applies to several languages: how you pronounce the long-O vowel-sound can be a dead giveaway you're not a native speaker. Probably other vowel-sounds qualify as well. More so than consonants, in the sense that you'll probably get the consonant launching the vowel right, if you've got the vowel right.

I've been watching the Dr Blake mysteries on pbs: the vowels in Australian English are amazingly complex!

PBS isn't running that series here. I'll have to check it out at the library. We've gotten the series, "800 Words" on video, which has OZ and New Zealand actors. I'd swear some are Americans, but a couple have accents I sometimes can't decipher.

PS: Link us to some of your Quora posts!

Very interesting, Geoff. I wonder how the Swedes "just know" what gender new or invented words are?

How do the speakers of any language get everything just right?