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Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by mootothemax on Saturday April 08, 2017 @04:55PM (#14068984)
While I get your wider point, I find the different types of mistakes that ESL'ers with different mother tongues make absolutely fascinating.

I've noticed, say, that in Poland, where the native tongue lacks articles, people regularly mess up "the" and "a," or miss them altogether. I've never met a French person with the same issue, for obvious reasons.

When I started looking into people's mistakes with tenses in English - dear god, so much about my native tongue that I had no idea about, and yet made particular nationality error combinations really stand out. It's crazy fun.

Edit: and I love my eldest's progress with English. While she's basically a bilingual preschooler, she tends to speak English with polish word order: I like cars red. Her natural instinct is to also use the polish rules for nouns when choosing he/she/it. It's an absolutely fascinating process I feel privileged to observe.

Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by Pyxl101 on Saturday April 08, 2017 @05:37PM (#14069183)
> I like cars red

Interestingly, that word order is also valid English, though it has a slightly different meaning than "I like red cars".

Example: "I like [my] soup warm".

"I like soup warm, but you can eat it cold and left over if you want."

"I like having soup warm"

"I like my cookies freshly baked"

"I like men muscular and toned"

"I like my women blonde, so you can go for the brunette"

"I like cars red" doesn't quite work as well but doesn't seem wrong. Add a little context and it seems more normal. "As a buyer of many sports cars, I like my cars red, even despite the speeding tickets I get".

Perhaps a linguist could explain how this phrasing works.

(That said, of course I advocate teaching her to speak fluently and to use that word order only when she intends its subtlety of meaning.)

Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by Geee on Saturday April 08, 2017 @08:56PM (#14069904)
I think this form puts the emphasis on "how?" instead of "what?".

What do you want? - I want tea. How do you want your tea? - I want my tea hot with sugar.

Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by noobermin on Saturday April 08, 2017 @07:38PM (#14069671)
I think it is a short hand slang for "I like cars painted red." or "I like cars colored red."
Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by FeepingCreature on Sunday April 09, 2017 @09:04AM (#14072086)
I think it's short for "I like for cars to be red."
Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by jwilk on Saturday April 08, 2017 @05:51PM (#14069252)
No, in Polish adjectives normally go before nouns, just like in English.
Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by Avenger42 on Saturday April 08, 2017 @07:26PM (#14069635)
I assumed he was facetiously referring to Reverse Polish Notation[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation

Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by wyldfire on Sunday April 09, 2017 @12:10AM (#14070399)
No, it seems to me more like Polish is actually one of his daughter's native languages.
Re:Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal ... by mootothemax on Sunday April 09, 2017 @03:22AM (#14070924)
Ehhhh... not often quite set in stone enough that you can rely on it, especially for spoken language. Emphasis and a whole host of other situations lean towards - but by no means demand - order in the example given.