Episode 21 Say this, not that... 4
Hello folks,
This week I’m back with another episode of say this, not that. I’ve picked three pairs of words that often cause problems for native speakers of German, namely: isolated vs. insulated; economic vs. economical, & happy vs. lucky. Two of these errors arise as a result of L1 interference or false friends.
I haven’t yet pinpointed why native speakers of German tend to struggle with the difference between economic vs. economical but when I figure it out, I’ll let you know. It might be that it’s just a morphological error or perhaps people are oblivious to the fact that these words describe two entirely different things. Do you have any idea what triggers this error? If so, let me know in the comments below.
If you or your students/pupils make any of these errors, work on correcting them. As you already know, repeated correction is the only way to eliminate fossilised errors.
