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Non-English speakers are more likely to get away with grammatical errors, says study�
As contrasting as it seems, a new study found that people with a foreign accent are more likely to get away with grammatical errors than English speakers.
English is one of the most spoken languages in the world and there are multiple accents of it. Although a non-English speaker might worry about getting judged for common grammatical errors, they don’t get judged so much as a British English speaker.
Grammatical errors are more obvious in English speakers
A new study by the University of Birmingham, in collaboration with Cardiff University and the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) found that grammatical errors are more noticeable among English speakers.
Whereas, people with foreign accents get away easily, although they tend to make obvious errors.
When 60 British English speakers were made to listen to 40 recordings of short passages in English with and without grammatical errors in British or foreign accents, the researchers found that article errors (wrong usage of “the” or “a/an”) were more detrimental in the British accented speech than in the Polish accented speech.
Furthermore, the personality trait of the listener influenced the judgment too. “The more conscientious you are, the less acceptable you find foreign-accented speech, regardless of the presence of grammatical errors,” states the study.
Researchers think British English speakers are more tolerant of grammatical errors made by foreigners as they understand English isn’t their first language. They make exceptions as long as they can understand what’s being said.
Why our brain autocorrects spellings
In a different study conducted by New York University, it was found that our brain automatically fixes spelling errors, thus convincing us that a certain sentence or word reads right.
As our brain processes information quite rapidly thanks to the digital era defined by short texts and notifications, the “at-a-glance approach” causes us to overlook obvious errors.
The rapid response results in small errors going unnoticed and in only around 400 milliseconds the brain appears to correct the mistake and read it as if it were fully grammatical.
This suggests that the brain not only quickly recognizes phrase structure but also automatically corrects small mistakes, said NYU graduate student Nigel Flower.
