Mike Hewitt via luv-talk wrote:
Similar too for the use of English language : one point could be that when you read, or hear, sentences in 'english' you could take them literally or guess at the meaning and then you get shot for 'picking' wrongly. Common mistakes, which caused me to re-read paragraphs are : singular plural confusion when addressing groups {a group may contain one or many elements but it is a single item} subject and object are often not clear : The cat sat on the mat. It is wet. => so what is wet? cat or mat?
FYI, that also has tense confusion. You typically want one of The cat sat on the mat. It was wet. The cat sits on the mat. It is wet. Re plural agreement, an error I often encounter is A bag of words are a method for ... which should be A bag of words is a method for ... ...because the copula plurality must agree with "bag of words" (i.e. "bag"), not "words". By far the most common source of problems seems to be adpositions, though, because they usually don't have any logic to them, and they're different in different languages, so you simply have to memorize. For example, I rode IN a car I rode ON a bus Is the difference because historically, car(riages) were enclosed and (omni)buses were not? :-) In English we "dream about X", in Spanish we "dream with X", &c &c