Comment by TacticalCoder
14 hours ago
> What gets me as a non-native speaker far more than "a vs an" is the "a vs the" conundrum. I still don't quite get when something needs to be "indefinite" and I've been speaking English for close to forty years.
"a vs the" is quite easy IMO.
Most non-native however do not use "that" and "which" properly though. "Give me the floppy disk that is blue" and "Give the floppy disk, which is blue" are two different things.
Even as a native, I didn't know the difference until I looked it up right now, and I'm almost 50.
Short form, for those who wonder:
"That" is used for things that are important, and "which" is used for things that aren't. In the first sentence, they want the blue floppy disk in particular. In the second, they want the floppy disk, and it happens to be blue. The "which" is added to aid the listener, not to because the color blue is important.
If that's interesting, it's worth Googling for a more precise answer.
My wife is Japanese and fluent in English but still almost always mixes up the and a. I think part of the problem is that it just barely sneaks under the radar of a mistake that is bad enough to confuse English first language speakers in everyday use. So theres no impetus to correct it
Nobody says that. "Give me the blue floppy disk"