#non-native speaker

Damn you insufficient language proficiency!

Have you ever wondered what clues native speakers in on your non-nativeness? I have! Apart from the obvious facts such as they simply know I am not a native or they hear my slightly off accent, there must be something else. When we’re just texting, what gives me away? Sometimes nothing, but there are days when  I simply feel that they know, like they can immediately tell. (yeah, there are days when I can’t English at all (my brain refuses to cooperate) and there are days when I excel at it). Not that it is a crime that they can tell, or it makes me feel bad about myself, but I’ve been wondering what people who have reached native-like fluency can do to improve or at least maintain their English levels. We’ve gone through pretty much every textbook there is, we read in English and listen in English, we try to use the language every day, yet we still make small mistakes that give us away! And that’s fine unless you want to assume a false identity or be a spy. 

What inspired me to make that post? Reddit, the front page of the Internet.

Read more here 

Here are the most obvious clues that give us away:

1. Do vs. Make 

Make  – You need to create something from scratch.

Make breakfast (there’s no breakfast at all)

Make a plan (there’s no plan at all; you need to create it.)

Do  – You need to complete something.

Do homework (your homework is already there; you just need to finish it.)

2. This vs. That 

Rule #1 Don’t overuse them. Use  it instead. This  and that are used for emphasis. 

Rule #2 This for things around you and that for things away from you.

Rule #3 When you talk about objects, abstract ideas, people use that.

Example:

A: Do you know Tom? 

B: Yeah, that’s a great guy. (this would be unnatural here because Tom is not standing next to me)

A: Do you like your job? 

B: Yeah, that’s a great job. (again, this would suggest I’m working right now, doing my job, and I think to myself “This is a great job”)

Rule #4 Use that to talk about things from the past. 

Example: That was a great event! That thing you just did! Can you do that again? 

Rule #5 Use that to refer to your speaker's ideas.

Example: We should paint our house blue. Yeah that is a great idea. (that because the idea is not coming from me. It’s sort of away from me)

Rule #6 Use this when you refer to your own ideas.

Rule #7 use it when you talk about tangible object/ideas.

Example: We should get a bigger couch. It will make our life better.

Rule #8 Use this or that when you talk about non-tangible ideas.

Example: 

A: We should move to Japan.

B: Yeah that will be awesome! (Two speakers)

A: We should move to Japan. This will make us happy. (One speaker

3. Syntax

SVO (Subject + Verb + Object) Adverbs/adverbial phrases follow the object and they have their own order too. How? Where? When? Vague information is followed by a more specific one.

4. Wrong prepositions 

Wrong ones or they’re just missing entirely.

Example: Can anyone explain (this to) me…

this to me is necessary!  

5. Phrasal verbs (wrong prepositions or just wrong usage)

6. Sophisticated vocabulary (formal language in informal situations)

7.  Articles (a/an/the)

8.  Indirect questions

Do you know where the toilet is? vs. Do you know where is the toilet? 

When you start your question with a helping verb, you don’t need another question further in the sentence.

Helping verb + Subject + Main verb + Wh question word + Subject + Verb

9. Verbs lacking direct objects (allow vs. allow me)

10. Transitive vs. intransitive verbs (I have vs. I have it)

Taken from Grammarly: 

"The word transitive often makes people think of transit, which leads to the mistaken assumption that the terms transitive and intransitive are just fancy ways of describing action and non-action. But these terms have nothing to do with whether a verb is active or not. A better word to associate when you see transitive is transfer. A transitive verb needs to transfer its action to something or someone—an object. In essence, transitive means “to affect something else.”

11. Fun vs. funny 

Objects and people are funny; events are fun. 

12. Countable vs. Uncountable nouns 

13. Not conjugating the verb correctly when starting a question with “Anyone...?”

Full question: “Does anyone want to grab a drink after work?”

Slightly condensed question typically asked by a native speaker: “Anyone want to grab a drink after work?”

Common error among many non-native speakers: “Anyone wants to grab a drink after work?”

14. The conjugation of (third-person singular) verbs in general. (She want vs. She wants)

15. Mixing up adverbs and adjectives is a fairly common mistake I see.

16. Lack of there is/are grammar construction when talking about the existence.

A cat is in the driveway. vs. There’s a cat in the driveway.

Both are grammatically correct but the second one sounds much better.

17. Since vs. for (Present Perfect)

Since + a date/ specific event/ time period 

For + counted years/days/ months. 16 months. I counted the months. There were 16 of them. 

18. Confusing before, after, and ago. 

For example, I often hear "before two years..." when they mean “2 years ago.”

19. For pronunciation, vowel sounds are a pretty clear giveaway.

20. Using the indefinite pronoun “nothing/no one/ nowhere” in a negative statement instead of “anything/ nothing/nowhere,”

e.g. She doesn’t eat nothing instead of she doesn’t eat anything.

I have nothing (a more popular option)

I don’t have anything 

I don’t have nothing means that you actually have something and is wrong.

21.  ED and ING adjectives 

Interesting vs. interested boring vs. bored

I am bored ( I have nothing interesting to do)

I am boring (As a human being I have nothing interesting to offer)

22. Asking questions with a raising intonation, but there’s no inversion.

This might be ok in an informal style but don’t overuse it. When you’re shocked it’s sounds ok.  

23. Mixing up never and ever.

24. People also use the verb must way too much. It’s not common in everyday language, it sounds much better to say I need to/I have to/I should/I ought to.

25. Misusing bare infinitive and to-infinitive (verb patterns!) 

26. Using the Present Perfect as a past tense. (I've seen that movie last week.)

27.  Agreeing incorrectly (I don't like that, too.)

Ways of agreeing/disagreeing. Remember NO DOUBLE NEGATION. Single negation rule!

Use helping verbs to form such answers.

A: I don’t like it! 

B: I don’t like that either/ Neither do I

A: I like it!

B: So do I! / I like it too/

28. Not knowing how to form tag questions. 

Common mistake: "He lives here, or?"

I struggled with learning English and I still do, I don’t think it’s a struggle that will ever truly end, because I’ll never be a native even if my English reaches a near-native level. It will never be the same as being raised with this language. 

It sounds funny, maybe even silly, when I say that English is a huge part of my identity, but it’s true. This process of learning it has been part of my life since I was 4, it’s my entire life. I am a student even now when I teach it. It shaped me into who I am now. 

It helped me become more aware of issues such as LGBT rights and racism. It helped me to explore my hobbies and find joy in things I used to dismiss. It helped shape my political and ideological views. It opened so many doors for me, gave me so many opportunities I didn’t have before, but it’s also been a struggle and a source of a lot of pain and shame. 

My relationship with English as a non-native speaker is complex and hard to explain and I talk about it a lot because I’m still struggling to figure it all out for myself. It’s been one of the most important parts of my life for years now. I teach English, but in a lot of ways I’m also still someone studying it, someone who’s learned so much about it and still has to learn more. 

I’m proud that I made so much progress, but there are days when I go back to that point in my life when I was afraid of using it, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of my own imperfection, because it felt like I failed. Wanting to communicate something and not being able to is a horrible feeling, it kinda felt like suffocating for me, wanting to express yourself and struggling to find words to do so, feeling like no matter how hard you try it won’t be enough. Like there’s always something that you just can’t articulate even though you know what you want to say and the words are right there at your disposal. 

There are still days when I feel like that. Days when I just... Can’t English well. I am still afraid of having an actual conversation with native speakers. I still check my posts 20x times before posting them, because I feel like I could phrase things better or because what if I mixed one word with some other word, which happens to me often no matter which language I use. I still rely on dictionaries and frequently google synonyms. I still catch myself thinking about how much better my fan fics would be if articulating what I want to say wasn’t so hard sometimes and if I didn’t need to rely on a beta to fix some weird wording, because I tend to borrow syntax from my first language. 

I’m still learning how to be more proud of the progress I’ve made. How to stop feeling so damn inadequate. How to be more proud of the work I do as a teacher, helping others reach my level of language faster, helping them have more confidence in their skills than I do in mine. How to stop equating my self worth to how well I speak or write in English. 

A heads-up for my poor English. I checked this more than a million times before posting🙃🙃

In many ways, I deeply relate to the characters in thg. I’ve been in situations similar to theirs, and that’s why I’m so attached to Katniss and Gale, and especially to their relationship.

I discovered that Katniss and I share similar personalities to some degree. We’re both children traumatized by our parents, quiet, and not very good at expressing our true feelings. We need someone who genuinely understands what we’re thinking, even when we can’t put it into words.

Like Katniss, I was also an outsider during my teenage years. I had a very close male friend, and in that sense, Katniss and Gale felt like a idealized model for what a female–male relationship can look like—whether platonic, queerplatonic, or something undefined. Their bond is supportive, trustworthy, and genuinely positive.They protect each other, rely on each other, and show up when it matters. Gale even says he would take care of Katniss’s family if she didn’t make it back. That level of commitment is what makes their dynamic so compelling to me.

I also see myself in Gale’s position watching someone you care deeply about perform intimacy with another person, knowing part of it isn’t real, yet still being hurt by it. But my story is real. I mean, my friend did start hanging out with a girlfriend I didn’t know about, and he didn’t tell me. We gradually drifted apart, and our perspectives changed dramatically.Because of that experience, I can fully understand how Gale feels when he sees Katniss growing closer to Peeta and engaging in public, physical intimacy with him.

I know those are not the same thing, but this really affected me because, in our culture, relationships between men and women are often seen as controversial. I mean, when two people of different genders are close to each other, people always assume they might end up as a couple. That confused me a lot, especially at the time, because I was so young and still discovering that I might be on the spectrum, and I didn’t understand my own feelings yet.

That’s why I became really interested in this fandom—I wanted to see if there were like-minded people, or someone who also wanted a different perspective on how their relationship could have ended. I felt strongly that they shouldn’t have ended up like that.

However, my friend’s situation and Gale’s are fundamentally different. That’s why I don’t see Gale as cold, irresponsible, or controlling. I’ve seen what truly irresponsible or utilitarian friendships look like—people who only stay when they see value in you, and leave once that value disappears. Gale is not that kind of person, and I genuinely don’t understand why he’s often framed that way in the fandom.

This is also why I ship Galeniss. First, it’s about how they interact. As someone on the spectrum, I don’t share the conventional belief that male–female friendships must either turn romantic or inevitably fade once one person gets married. I strongly disagree with that idea. That’s why the ending of the story made me feel angry and desperate—their relationship is pushed further and further apart, as if distance were inevitable.

We see cuddling and even kissing between them, yet they never become a traditional couple. That’s exactly what I love most about their bond—it reflects how I see intimacy. I believe we need to de-romanticize and de-sexualize certain forms of physical closeness, like hugging, kissing, or holding hands. Not because romance is wrong, but because these actions deserve more freedom in how they’re understood. Stories can still carry emotional or romantic undertones, but intimacy itself shouldn’t be so narrowly defined.