Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. Today we're talking about common mistakes that native speakers
make. And I use the word "mistakes" -- I use that word, "mistakes", for you. I don't actually
listen to people and say, "You're wrong! You're wrong!" because a lot of the time, it's about
variety of English and accent as well. Whether they use this grammar is incorrect grammar
in terms of standard English. But people use it, and people say it. So that's why I'm telling
Also, I've got so much respect for people who come and learn English, but like, you
could say, like, on the street, you know? They're not taking classes. They're learning
from the people they're around. Sometimes, the people you're around speak in the way
where there are these mistakes. So that's the kind of thing that you acquire. Nothing
wrong with that because people speak like that. But maybe you get to a point where you've
seen something in a book where grammar is explained, but it's not what you hear people
using. And when that happens, there's sometimes quite a lot of confusion. So I'm pointing
out these mistakes to you so that you can observe them yourself, and then, you can decide,
"Well, I like saying it that way" or, "I don't want to say it that way." "That's the way
everyone I know speaks, so I'm going to speak like that" or, "I'm going to choose not to."
So -- yeah. Let's take a little look.
So something you'll hear a lot in many different accents in English -- British English -- is
using "was" for all past subjects. So you learn in your grammar books that you say,
"I was, you were, we" -- I need to think about this -- "we were, they were, blah, blah, blah,
he, she, it -- was." But a lot of people just say "was" all the time when they're talking
about the past. They say, "We was going there" or, "they was joking." It's not standard English,
So we are, in standard English, expected to use "were" in our sentences, not to use "was"
Moving on. No. 2, substituting the past participle where the past simple is needed. Okay. So
these are example sentences that you will hear which are considered incorrect in terms
of standard English. "I done it. Did you do your homework? I done it." "Where's the vodka?
He drunk it." "Where's the dog?" No. Not, "Where's the dog." "Where are the kids? They
run over the road." Okay? You'll hear those. But these sentences should either be past
simple here because we're talking about completed, finished, past events, or they should be present
perfect sentences. So they're using the past participle, which relates to the present perfect
as in an action that happened in the past still with an impact now, but it's confused
because it's used without an auxiliary verb. So let's compare to the correct standard English
version. "Where's your homework? I did it." " Where's the vodka? He drank it." The past
simple form of the verb "drink" is "drank". I'll write that one down because it's a confusing
one. So it's "drink, drank, drunk". And -- yeah. "Where are the kids? They ran over the road."
This one is confusing as well, "run, ran, run". And let's look at it in the present
perfect form. "Where's your homework? I've done it." "Where's the vodka? He's drunk it."
And, "Where are the kids? They've run over the road."
They're still there. They haven't come back yet.
So moving on from there -- is this one a mistake? I'm not sure if this one is a mistake. I know
that I do this one, especially in text messages and things like that. No auxiliary verbs when
making questions/word elisions. So in my text messages, I say something like this,
"You going out later?" It's very direct. Not using the question. Also, in speech, it's used quite
a lot. So maybe it's just that native speakers are lazy. We know from the tone that we're
asking a question. "You going out later?" Because it goes up, we're not bothering to
say the question words. "Do you have a pen?" Just "you have a pen?" It's a bit strong.
It's not very polite. And this one -- what? This is wrong. "What you doing? What doing?"
No, no, no, this isn't right. What did I mean to say here? Oh, the word is missing. "So
we would say, "What you doing" rather than, "What are you doing?"
I'd say that it's more direct and less polite to speak like this, and it's incorrect in
terms of standard English, but people speak like that.
No. 4. I'm not so much of a language pedant, which is someone who thinks that there is
only one way to say things and there's, like, a really wrong way to say things. Things don't
really annoy me so much about language, except No. 4. This is the exception for me. I don't
know why it's a big thing for me, but -- substituting "what" for "that" or "which". Where we need
to write "that" or "which", some people use the word "what". So here's an example. "I
have two jackets what I wear." Sorry, normal people. More people say that. It's not just
normal people. "What" -- it doesn't -- I'm trying to understand why people say it. I'm
not quite sure. My only thinking is because we sometimes use "what" in a question to refer
to things -- "I've got two jackets. What jacket shall I wear?" -- because in this sense, "what"
can mean "thing". But in this sentence here, "what" just doesn't belong. We need to use
"which" or "that". "I have two jackets which -- or that -- I wear." Because in terms of
grammar, "which" or "that" are relative pronouns and we use them to refer to things. "What"
is not a relative pronoun, but just in speech, it's fairly common to hear that. Some people
don't refer to things using "that" or "which", ever. They say "what" all the time. So -- yeah.
When we come back, we'll look at four other, let's say differences -- maybe they're mistakes
-- between what native speakers say and what your textbooks tells you.
Here we are with some more native speaker issues to talk about. So what are these words,
"ain't" and "innit"? These are negative forms for verbs that you probably know. "I ain't
doing it." "Ain't" means, like -- "I'm not" is the best way of saying it. So I would say
-- my pen is not very, very nice. "I'm not doing it." That's the grammatically standard
way, "I'm not doing it." What you'll often hear "ain't" in sentences in London. "I ain't
doing it." And also, "It's a nice day, innit?" "Innit", when we have a question tag, people
say "innit", which is "isn't it".
These ones are important to mention because a lot of people will judge you for saying
"ain't" and "innit" as being an uneducated person because there's so much judgment that
goes on about language in England. I'm just pointing it out to you. But sometimes, we
all probably say "ain't". You can say it to add emphasis or in a joke or whatever. "Go
and clean your room. I ain't doing it!" You know, you can say anything if you know what
you're saying it for and, you know, you choose to say it that way.
So sometimes, speaking in a non-standard way, it can be a bit funny or being inventive with
language. But I wouldn't say that in any kind of formal situation or work situation, really.
But you know, you'll probably observe just general people using it.
Looking at the next point, not saying past participles that end in -en. So here are some
verbs, "take, write, break, ate", and here are the forms in the past participle. So "take"
becomes "taken"; "write" becomes "written"; "break" becomes "broken"; and "ate" becomes
"eaten". A lot of people don't use the past participle form in their sentences. So they
say things like this. "He hasn't took his lunch." You take your lunch break. You know,
you go away for 20 minutes or 30 minutes to eat. Another verb we can use is "have". "He
hasn't had his lunch." But it doesn't fit with the past participle example I'm talking
about. So this is wrong, "He hasn't took his lunch." How should it be? "He hasn't taken
Next example. "Has he wrote the letter?" This is a question form. "Has he wrote the letter?"
This is the present perfect, so we need to use the past participle. The past participle
of this verb is "written". "Has he written the letter?" I'm just going to put crosses
there so you can see it's wrong.
"She has broke it." What do we put? "She has broken it." And the last example, "We haven't
ate our cake." What's the past participle -- oh, this is the -- I've put the past form
there. The present simple tense -- the present form is "eat", so it becomes "eat, ate, eaten".
And I'll just mention a pronunciation difference here. Some people will say, "We haven't ate
our cake", and some people will say, "We haven't ate our cake." So there's variety there. I
personally say "ate". "I ate my lunch earlier."
No. 7, let's take a look at this. Confusing "borrow" and "lend". Let me try to explain.
What a native speaker may say is, "Borrow me some money. You've got money. I want it.
Borrow me some money." But that's wrong. You can lend someone money. So you can say,
"Lend me some money, please", demanding it. Or "Could you please lend me some money?" But you can
borrow money from somewhere. So you lend me the money, and I borrow it from you. I could
say, "I borrowed money from you." "You lent me the money." When it's coming this direction
to me, I use "lend". "You lent me the money. I borrowed it from you." Or you could say,
"The bank lent me some money. I borrowed some money from the bank." So it depends on the
direction. "Lend" is towards, and when it's borrowed, you take it from someone, and you
bring it to yourself. You have to give it back later.
And No. 8, this isn't one you're going to hear in speech. This is one you're going to
see a lot in writing. And it always surprises me, actually, how many people don't know the
difference, native speakers, between these words. These are homonyms. That means that
they sound the same. "Homonym." Sound the same, there, their, they're, but they have
different meanings. So "there" means "place". "Over there." I can understand what that means
by feeling it in my hands. "There" -- pointing word, -ere.
We use this " their", which is a pronoun for talking about possessions. "This is their
pen." There are some people over there, and this pen belongs to them. To do with possession,
-eir
And this one, with the apostrophe, is a contraction of "they are". And it's different to these
two. It means "they are". "They are coming." You know, just like "I am", "you are". "They
are" -- it's different. It's not to do with possessing something. It's not to do with
pointing at something. So -- yeah. Native speakers are a little bit confused about this
and may write the wrong thing in a text message or in an email or something like that. Many,
many people. So that can confuse you as well when you think you know it and then you see
So there you go. I've just covered eight of probably the most frequent native speaker errors
or we could say nonstandard mistakes in speech and in writing. You can go and do a quiz about
this lesson on the EngVid site. So go and check the quiz out. You can also subscribe
here to my English channel. And you can also subscribe to my other channel, which is also
about learning English and stuff. So there are so many videos. You can watch me every
day of your life. Or you can even watch them all together in 24 hours of me teaching you
English if you want to do that. So I'm going to go now. See you later.
Yeah. I just got confused. I'll not be laughing at the beginning of it. No. 7.