Re:U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
by davidgay on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @11:17PM
(#13432967)
Dropped articles is a good indicator of (most) Slavic language speakers, but not of most European languages. E.g., French would not have dropped those definite articles either.
Definite article rules do vary a little bit, though, so extra definite articles would be a good indicator of European native speakers...
Re:U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
by pps43 on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @10:45PM
(#13432814)
Correct on both counts, although it's not quite clear how much of the difference is from place of education rather than native language. Math is the same no matter where you study it, at least in theory. Probably need a bigger sample.
Re:U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
by smnscu on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:18AM
(#13435176)
That was an incredibly obvious example. My favorite telltale sign for native English speakers is the rampant misspelling of trivialities like it(')s, you(')r(e), etc. I've seen so many well educated peers fail at basic grammar, or misspelling common words (e.g. electrisity, from a CS undergrad) that I'm comfortable making this generalization.
Re:U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
by jnky on Thursday January 19, 2017 @01:31PM
(#13438157)
My favorite sign for native English speakers is "could of" instead of "could have"/"could've".
I have never witnessed that mistake with non native English speakers.
The "tell" that I'm primarily relying upon is that you often drop articles where a US-native speaker would use them. Just one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13197570 (that was as far back as I went) I think most native US speakers would use "the gun industry" and "the film industry". Several later comments drop an "an" or "a" article as well.
You also have a habit of using a comma splice rather than a semi-colon to join sentences, but that one is harder to place geographically, as it's a somewhat common trait within the US as well. In my experience, it is often a trait of European native speakers who learned English as a second language, but is less reliable than dropped articles.