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By Muhammad Mahdi
#12232
Common errors found in our local English

“Will you please borrow me your pencil? I am finding mine, but I can’t see it.” How many times do we come across people talking this way? In an effort to improve the community’s English usage, BIZ will …

1. Borrow vs. lend: Borrow means to take on loan. Lend is to give on loan. The correct sentence would therefore be:

“Can I please borrow your pencil?”

OR “Will you please lend me your pencil?”

2. Find vs. look for: To find is to come upon. The process is to ‘look for’. You ‘look for’ a lost object till you ‘find’ it.



3. "It would have been more better..."

Better means ‘more good’ than something else. ‘More’ before ‘better’ is superfluous and incorrect. The correct sentence is “It would have been better…”

4. Me vs. I: Where do you use what? ‘Me’ is used when you are the object (on which an action is performed) and ‘I’ is used when you are the subject (performing the action). The easy way to get through this is to omit the other person(s) and see what would have been correct. The same word is correct.

Incorrect: “My friend and me went to the shop.”

Correct: “My friend and I went to the shop.”

Reason: You are performing the action of going to the shop. Therefore, you use ‘I’.

The easy way: Omit ‘my friend’. The correct sentence would be “I went to the shop.”

Incorrect: “The teacher punished my friend and I.”

Correct: “The teacher punished my friend and me.”

Reason: You are the one who was the object of the punishment. So, use ‘me’.

The easy way: Omit ‘my friend’. The correct sentence would be “The teacher punished me’

5. “You are going to the beach today, no?”

Question tags…Which is the correct one to use? The correct question tag is always a negated form of the helping verb in the stem.

Examples: “You are going to the beach today, aren’t you?”

“You did that, didn’t you?”

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