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I got a new class of English learners today and they're all Spanish/Catalan native speakers. Once again they're making much the same errors as the previous class.

Almost everyone seems to begin sentences with "For me..."

Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone know the reason? I don't know any Spanish really, so I'm not sure if there is some sort of cross over from Spanish to English.

I suppose it's grammatically correct, but as an English native speaker I would never begin a sentence with "For me".

As to other common errors, prepositions ("those little words") get dropped a lot, nobody is quite sure which words need an "s" suffix, "s" is usually pronounced es, as in esports and estudents and short vowels and double consonants are tricky.

Almost everyone seems to begin sentences with "For me..."
Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone know the reason?

You didn't describe the whole context, but usually what is meant is "To me, ..." or "In my opinion...", "From my perspective...".

esports and estudents

LMAO, i tell people to join the last word with the 's' word to get rid of this. As in it's a greats-port.
But it's as hard as making Germans pronounce the 'w' as 'u' lol

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I'm spanish, so I think I know the reason. In spanish, many verbs that aren't reflexive in english, are reflexive in spanish.

For example :

In english, you say "I fell".....in spanish you say "I fell myself" (me cai)
In english, you say "He died".....in spanish it's "he died himself" (se murio)
In english "they got married".....spanish "they married themselves" (se casaron)

etc.

If you look at the translations for each phrase in brackets above, each one starts with me or se, which means myself or himself / themselves.

That could be the reason. When they're saying "for me" it could be that they're trying to replicate the word "me" (myself, me, to-me), thinking that it works the same in english, when of course it doesn't. I'm guessing that they read somewhere that me (spanish) means "to / for myself" and they've stuck with it.

I could tell you more, but I'd have to charge you...for myself.

Johnny1975 wrote:I'm spanish, so I think I know the reason. In spanish, many verbs that aren't reflexive in english, are reflexive in spanish.

For example :

In english, you say "I fell".....in spanish you say "I fell myself" (me cai)
In english, you say "He died".....in spanish it's "he died himself" (se murio)
In english "they got married".....spanish "they married themselves" (se casaron)

etc.

If you look at the translations for each phrase in brackets above, each one starts with me or se, which means myself or himself / themselves.

That could be the reason. When they're saying "for me" it could be that they're trying to replicate the word "me" (myself, me, to-me), thinking that it works the same in english, when of course it doesn't. I'm guessing that they read somewhere that me (spanish) means "to / for myself" and they've stuck with it.

I was going with Xongmao and Droid till I read your post. I think you nailed it.

I could tell you more, but I'd have to charge you...for myself.

+1