Comment by hef19898
5 years ago
One of the beat ways to tell really peoficient foreign speaker of, in my case, German isn't the accent (as some people don't have one anymore) but a too perfect Grammar usage, either in writing (less obvious) or speaking (clear as day). I yried one of the German grammar tests of my son, and failed miserable, despite being a native speaker. My wife isn't, and she's so much better in German grammar then I am.
The gist: Don't worry too mich, just use the language. Most people are than delighted to meet a foreigner trying to speak their language.
"Perfect grammar usage" is only a negative when you have "perfect grammar knowledge", whatever that means. I'm actually knowledgeable enough to to be more spontaneous if I want. In reality I only use Grammarly on the desktop, which is only a tiny fraction of my usage of the English language. Things are not as black and white as they seem. I'm neither a child nor a robot.
It's the same with English. Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I've noticed many non-native speakers either write too formally, or choose the wrong synonym for the context. Everything is grammatically correct, but it just feels wrong.
Non native speakers are generally more formal regardless of their usage of formal. I'm autistic so I'm highly formal in my native language as well!
My wife told me that when she was studying Russian in college, some of the professors in the advanced courses would refer to certain phrasings as the "spy's variant."