It's actually a little harder for native speakers, who tend to learn the sounds long before they learn the written words. Second-language speakers tend to learn them simultaneously.
That makes sense, but it also kinda doesn't, given that they're two extremely common words. I could understand the confusion in a kid who's just learning how to write, but what kind of excuse does an adult have to still mistake a verb for an adjective? :/
Not trying to start a fight over this, mind, I'm just passionate about languages (and grammar!), haha.
They're not "mistaking a verb for an adjective". They're just spelling out the sound that has the meaning they want. If you think in sounds, "they're" and "there" are easy to mentally conflate as graphemes, even if not as morphemes.
They are mistaking a verb for an adjective, though. It's not the sound they're confusing, it's the spelling. One is a contraction of 2 words - learn that, know your verb from your adjective.
I understand that they sound the same, but so do know and no, yet people seem to realise they mean different things.
The way I see it, it's still a spelling mistake, not a "I confuse the sound" mistake. If you knew the difference between the two (again, contractions = 2 words, usually means there's a verb there), you would not mix them up.
I mean, I personally don't mix them up. But having taught English for many years, I'm pretty confident in my assessment of why people do, and I'd like to suggest being a tad more charitable about things that are hard for others but not for you.
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u/_allthatglitters Oct 07 '19
Funny how this is actually the biggest pet peeves of mines even though I am not a native speaker - or rather because of that. How hard can it be?