20+ Mistakes in your English that may reveal you are a foreigner

Learning and maintaining the English language at a native level is very, very difficult. And almost all of us make the mistakes that show us as a foreigner long before our interlocutor pays attention to pronunciation errors and gaps in grammatical structures. The main reason for annoying shortcomings is that we, like all people in the world, perceive a foreign language through our own prism and therefore try to speak English thinking in our native language.

O awesome.club discovered what are the shortcomings of our speech that English speakers most often notice, and we now reveal them to you.

Often, when choosing words to build an English sentence, we rely on the meaning that the dictionary shows us and do not take into account possible nuances that may be relevant for an English-speaking person. For example, we use:

Casa, Lar in the sense of an “apartment building”, whereas to an English speaker this word means “family home”. A “department building” is said to apartment building (American version) or block of flats (British version).
Close the door in the sense of “closing the door”. The range of meanings of our verb “to close” is quite wide and ranges from “delimit” to “close with a key”. In English, there are suitable expressions for these meanings: to close the door (literally: “return the door leaf to the threshold”) and to lock the door (“close the lock, put the key in the door”).

Dinner in the sense of “lunch”, while daily food intake has long been said to lunch🇧🇷 To use dinner in this context is to honor the 1978 English dictionary, not the modern and current one, in which dinner means “dinner” (the last meal of the day).
Comfortable in the sense of “convenient” (convenient time for a meeting, a convenient route, etc.). In English, comfortable relates to a physical or emotional feeling of comfort, and to say “convenient” one uses the word convenient🇧🇷 comfortable chairbut convenient time to meet🇧🇷

Another common category of errors is the use of the plural in nouns that have it in Portuguese but not in English. For example:

In Portuguese there is both “knowledge” and “knowledge”, while in English, only knowledge🇧🇷 in Portuguese, you can either give “advice”, but also some “advice”, while in English there is only advice🇧🇷

It also works the other way around, there are words that in English are only used in the plural:

in Portuguese we can say “série” or “séries”, while in English it will always be series🇧🇷 in Portuguese there is a “species” and several “species”, while in English it will always be species🇧🇷 and if an English speaker wants to say “French” or “French people” in English, for example, he will always use frenchNever French🇧🇷

This is a global problem for everyone who studies a foreign language: we often don’t try to speak English, but translate phrases from our own language, which is fundamentally incorrect. As a result, we get combinations like:

How is your mood? In the sense of “how’s your mood?” For this phrase, there are many well-established correct options: How are you? 🇧🇷 How’s it going? 🇧🇷 What’s up?

I feel myself (well, fine…) in the sense of “I feel (well, excellent…)”. In English, the “me” (myself, himself, herself) is completely unnecessary, the correct thing is to say: I feel good🇧🇷 i feel fineetc.
thank you in advance as an analogue of “thank you, in advance” of the formal expression in Portuguese. For the British, this phrase is a form of coercion (as already thanked, you must comply with the request) and its use is not welcome. Phrases like: We with my brother, as a result of the literal translation of: “We with my brother”. In English, a completely different word order is used in this class of combinations: My brother and I (as an option me and my brother🇧🇷
I think yes in the sense of “I think so” instead of correct: I think so🇧🇷

The Portuguese language is redundant: in it, the same lexical or grammatical information can be transmitted more than once.

For example, in the sentence: “A little girl went to the store”, information about the subject’s gender is transmitted three times: in the article “um”, in the sense of the word “girl”, which ends in , characteristic of feminine nouns, and the same ending of the adjective .

As examples of lexical redundancy, the combinations “Lilhote Pequeno”, “Young girl”, “Snow white”, etc. can be cited. The English language is laconic and does not need this kind of clarification, but when we speak in English, we always try to add them to our speech by inertia. As a result, we make mistakes like:

I study the English language (correct: I study English🇧🇷
During that period of time (correct: during that period🇧🇷
carla went shopping with her girlfriend (correct: carla went shopping with her friend), which arises from the unconscious desire to apply the feminine word “friend” to the same English word that has no gender.

In English there is even the expression: To sound like a textbook, which means “speaking in abstract and academic language”. By memorizing and absolutely correctly repeating expressions from a textbook, we immediately prove that we are foreigners, because English speakers usually do not communicate so fully and correctly. In particular, you will rarely hear them say:

Hello, how are you? — I’m fine. Thank you! And you? They will usually say: Hey, what’s goin’ on? 🇧🇷 What’s up? 🇧🇷 What’s happening? (yes, exactly with the abbreviated ending ). These questions can be answered as follows:

What’s goin’ on? — Nothin’ much / It’s goin’ good.

What’s up? — Not much. What’s up with you?

What’s happening? — Nothin’ much.

My name is John🇧🇷 Most likely, they will present themselves more quickly and clearly:
I’m John🇧🇷

I bought a new car 🇧🇷 I received a letter 🇧🇷 I came home too late🇧🇷 With a high degree of probability, you will hear instead: I got a new car 🇧🇷 I got a letter 🇧🇷 I got home too latesince in spoken English there is a pronounced tendency towards simplification.

Literal translation of individual words isolated from the general context not only prevents you from speaking English correctly, but also from understanding it. Here are some curious examples of translation that were born because of this approach:

Watch out!: “Look out!” (in place of: “Watch out!”).
Come on, old boy!: “Come here, old boy!” (in place of: “Come on, buddy!”).
A girl with pig tails: “A girl with a pigtail” (instead of: “A girl with a braid”).
fly fishing: “Fly fishing” (instead of: “Fly fishing”).
She is bold today!: “She is bald today” (instead of: “She is sassy today”).

It’s especially difficult to understand fluent conversation, when it’s particularly easy to confuse two words that sound similar but have very different meanings:

I have been there: “I have beans there” instead of: “I was there” (been is the participle of the verb to be; bean and bean”).
By the way: “Buy the way” in place of: “certainly” (by is the preposition “by”;
buy: “purchase”).
Stop the violence!: “Stop the violins!” instead of: “Stop the violence!” 🇧🇷violence: “violence, cruelty”; 🇧🇷violins: “violins”).

Don’t memorize individual words, learn them directly as part of combinations and then think of at least 10 different phrases for each word. This will allow you not to forget the word you just learned, and will also create the basis for its oral use.

Be sure to check your vocabulary and grammar for relevance. The best way is to talk to native speakers (nowadays it’s easy to find such a person on the internet), although movies, music, chat conversations, etc. are also useful.

Don’t waste the proven methods of memorizing rules and words like nursery rhymes, sayings or funny phrases:

excuse me you say when you’re about to bother and I’m sorrywhen it bothered

After if it’s from thenas the grammar instructs, we use Present instead of Future.

And you, have you ever been in a situation where a native speaker corrected you in a conversation? Or did you notice a particularly notable error in your speech? Share your experience in the comments below!