r/mildlyinfuriating 1d ago

English for Beginners

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u/Swervin69 1d ago

Don’t feel bad beginners, fluent speakers still don’t know how to tell their, there, and they’re apart.

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u/warfaceisthebest 16h ago

Funny thing is there, their and they're are not that confusing for ESL people.

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u/SmokingLimone 16h ago edited 16h ago

ESL learn on textbooks first while natives learn by speech first, so they have no doubt how they're supposed to be spelt but they might have trouble hearing the difference

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u/warfaceisthebest 16h ago

Another fun fact is due to accent and connected speech, most ESL cannot actually understanding every word in a sentence. Most of times we just guess which word it is. Although there/they're/their sounds similar, but the spelling and word classes are distinguishable so it is really easy to guess which one it is.