What are some grammar rules in your language that not even the natives get it right?
My first language is Korean, and one rule no one gets right is the spacing. It seems pretty obvious in English and many other languages, but in Korean, there are things that look like a single word but is actually two separate words (and vice versa), particles which needs to be written without spacing, and some other rules that makes it confusing. It's bad enough that one of the former director of the National Institute of Korean Language confessed he's not confident about it either.
Possessive 's and s'
I hate this one when it comes to names ending in s as well. I need it to be plural and possessive but Robbinses' Robbins' and Robbins's all seem wrong.
Same, this rule seems straightforward but it just feels wrong when writing that. I straight up rewrite the entire sentence so I don't have to use it at all.
Robbinses'this isn’t correctRobbins'belongs to a group of people in theRobbinfamilyRobbins'sbelongs to one person in theRobbinswho is being referred to by their last nameBut now the singular has more syllables than the plural and part of me is just not willing to accept that. I'll stick with just avoiding it altogether.
Hey everybody, please respect zero_spelled_with_an_ecks’s choice.
Two that always kill me:
Not knowing when to use "and I" vs "and me" and defaulting to "and I" because they think it's correct.
You do things on purpose and by accident. You do not do things on accident. That's saying you did it accidently on purpose.
The "and I" vs "and me" is a tricky one, especially because we don't teach people to understand subject vs object except in perhaps grade school.
I have to really think about it, and I consider myself a bit of a pedant.
In German, the construction to say "because of X", "wegen X", requires X to be put into genitive case. Most people will default to dative, unless they're actively thinking about it. "Because of the car" should be "wegen des Autos" but you'll regularly see "wegen dem Auto". "Because of you" should be "wegen deiner" but you'll absolutely never hear that but "wegen dir" (or maybe "deinetwegen", if they're fancy, which is also correct).
This is widespread enough that I'm wondering why it hasn't been standardised yet.
I was going to say, "Don't end a sentence with a preposition."
However, this rule is heavily debated and mostly defunct now, it seems. It does make a sentence sound more formal, though, so sometimes I use it that way.
The one I'll mention instead is "I could care less" as opposed to "I couldn't care less", but only as a preamble to the one I really want to say (ahem). I think most people now agree that "I could care less" does not usually convey what the speaker means to say, and that "I couldn't care less" is usually correct.
In the same vein, "I'm going to try and do something" should almost always be "I'm going to try to do something". Because, if you try and do something, then you don't need the "try", you're just going to do it. By saying "and" you've presupposed you're going to succeed, making the "try" redundant. But, if you try to do something (as in moving toward a goal), that means you don't know whether you'll succeed. I know I've lost this one, because "try and do" is so ubiquitous now. Just like we're losing the word "envy" in favor of "jealousy" used incorrectly, and the distinction between less and fewer is all but forgotten.
Don't get me started on "affect" and "effect".
I think the preposition thing comes from people who learned Latin (and a long time ago, 1700's) - I think you simply can't end a Latin phrase with a preposition because of how sentences are constructed.
Your other examples grind my gears too.
Less and fewer are like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.
Same! Then and than, too...shiver.
If someone says "I could care less" I finish it in my head with "but it would be really difficult" and all thing are right in the world.
Tongue in cheek, try and do something could still be correct. I'm going to try, if I fail, I'm going to have a beer.
You mean vice-versa ? ;)
Prescriptive rules or descriptive rules?
On the internet, at least, it seems like most rules of English are ignored. People largely ignore spelling, punctuation, and other rules like capitalizing every word in a title; even when they know the god damn rules.