You guys have surely all heard Adele's "Hello" quite a few times by now.
It's really good, but at one point near the end of the chorus, you guys might feel a little confused.
That grammar's wrong, isn't it?
Adele should say, "It doesn't matter,"
but she doesn't, even though she's a native speaker.
Yep.
In that example, Adele intentionally uses "don't" in place of "doesn't,"
because "don't" fits the rhythm of the song better.
And a lot of other singers do that, too.
However, there are lots of other situations where native English speakers make mistakes completely by accident.
I'm going to show you eight such situations, so that you can avoid those mistakes,
and when you find a native speaker making one of them, you can say:
"I'm better at English than those so-called natives."
Reading the comments on YouTube means seeing this mistake constantly.
As you know, this word means "of you,"
and this word means "you are."
The reason a lot of native speakers get confused when writing these words, is that when we speak,
both of them are typically unstressed, and they're pronounced the same: /jər/.
Nevertheless, you guys need to be careful to choose the correct word in your writing.
And if you see a comment online that says:
Just reply calmly:
For some reason, a lot of native speakers continue to think that "a lot" is one word.
This mistake is so common that the author of the famous blog "Hyperbole and a Half"
created a character called "the Alot."
Aw, isn't it cute?
Any time you see a native speaker write "a lot" as one word,
picture this creature, and remember that "a lot" is two words.
Do you guys know what this punctuation mark is called in English?
It's called the "apostrophe,"
and native speakers misuse it like crazy.
There are hundreds of pages online that collect the worst examples of it.
You'll find that people often use it correctly in one place, and then use wrong immediately after.
Remember, the apostrophe is used in only two situations.
The first one is to indicate possession. For example:
And the second situation is to replace letters that have been glossed over. For example:
We put the apostrophe right at the spot of the glossed-over letter, so "you're" like this is correct,
and "your'e" like this is wrong.
If you see native speakers using it in the wrong place, or using it to indicate a plural noun,
give them a good smack for me, would you?
This mistake is related to the previous one,
and sometimes I, too, am guilty of it when writing quickly and carelessly.
"It's" means "it is."
And "its" is the possessive form of "it."
But a lot of times, native speakers use "it's" in every situation.
Do what I do:
when you finish writing, check to make sure you've used the right form.
I probably make this mistake now and then, even though I've known the correct grammar since I was little.
In English, "I" is always used as a subject, and "me" is an object.
It's a simple principle, and no one makes a mistake when using those words singularly.
For example, no one says:
Or:
However, when using "I" or "me" with a supplementary word, native speakers often get confused.
Wrong.
The correct grammar is:
It seems that there's a trend online of spelling "definitely" with an "a" in place of the "i."
No.
If you check Urban Dictionary, you'll see that that's "idiot speak."
You guys know native speakers are really lazy when speaking their language, right?
Using correct grammar, "there is" goes with singular nouns and uncountable nouns.
And "there are" goes with plural nouns.
However, since native speakers are lazy, they often just say "there is" or "there's,"
especially when there's a phrase such as "a lot of" or "not many" that comes between "there's" and its object.
Maybe the content of that sentence is correct, but the grammar is nevertheless wrong.
The correct way to say it is:
In English, the spelling and pronunciation of a word can be very different, and this often confuses you guys.
And native speakers are the same way.
For example, if you thought you were going to lose a competition of some kind,
how would you write that in English?
If you copied milions of native speakers, you'd write it like this, but that's wrong.
This word is pronounced . . . and it means . . . (Just look at what's on the screen. It explains everything.)
The correct spelling is:
Weird, right?
Why isn't this word written in a more sensible way, like:
Why?
Because English is insane.
So study insanely along with it, ok?