On Jul 11, 2017, at 1:52 AM, Stephan Beal <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Related trivia: native German speakers, regardless of whether they're
> functionally fluent in English, can often be identified in internet forums
> via their overuse of commas
Another telltale is the implicit subject in sentences meant to refer to the
reader, as in “This feature allows to set the framistating rate.” Idiomatic
English requires a definite subject here, but apparently German does not, since
I’ve seen this across multiple native German speakers writing in English.
I haven’t bothered to try and associate it with any specific language family,
but another oddity I’ve frequently seen from ESL[*] types is to use “software”
as a singular noun: “I wrote a new software today.” In idiomatic English, the
singular of “software” is “program.” Ain’t English fun? :)
[*] English as a Second Language
> and their use of the word "actual", which is used differently in German - if
> someone writes "the actual version of the software is ..." when you would
> have said "current version" then they're most likely a native German speaker
That word has a lot of strange uses, as in “Galactica Actual.”
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/actual (noun sense 1)
And if you don’t get that reference, turn in your nerd card right now. ;)
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