I just read this wikipedia article about language fossilization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlangua...silization

Basically fossilization is when a learner of a second language gets stuck with making errors when producing the language. Comprehension can be even native-like but they will still make blatant errors when speaking or writing. Even after many years of using the language.

I haven't found a thread about this on the forum and maybe some discussion would be interesting.

I've thought about this a lot and how to avoid it in the case of Japanese, but I didn't know there was a name to it until now.

Basically I don't know if I believe fossilization as stated in the article simply happens, or if it's lack of something else, maybe effort or motivation to perfect the language or lack of exposure. But there is something hindering learning progress to say the least, I'm sure you all know foreigners in your country who can understand most (or all) of what you tell them but can't produce an error free sentence themselves.

For example the teacher in my Japanese class is a Japanese native speaker who has been in my country and speaking my language for 10+ years. He speaks very fluently and obviously understands everything you tell him, and although his accent is fine, he still produces unnatural sounding sentences very frequently and makes grammatical mistakes every now and then.

So the really interesting question is how does a learner of a second language that learns to speak native-like differ from someone that still makes mistakes after years in the country/learning the language. I'm wondering if in 10 years I'll be living in Japan, but still making errors, probably without noticing.

I'm pretty confident that one can't learn to understand "wrong". It's either I understand this sentence, or I haven't yet learned everything I need to understand this sentence, or anything in between, but the point is, it's pretty obvious what I need to learn. Either I don't know the vocab, or I don't understand the grammar or I can't read the letters. Even if I can't figure out what's missing, I can just ask someone to explain it to me.

But with production there seem to be ways to learn it "wrong". Because there seem to be lots of people who have learned it "wrong". Now I just wonder where they went "wrong". Is it because nobody has corrected them when they made a mistake or did they never care enough to try to learn to speak correctly? I'm thinking about what one can do to avoid getting stuck on mistakes.

What about not speaking until you have good understanding of the language or only using sentences phrases you know are correct. Does that help?

Maybe someone knows of some studies or articles on the topic, I'd be very interested in reading them.

I didn't read the whole thing as I don't have much time right now, but I just wanted to point out that I've seen many cases of people studying for many years (and even teaching like one of the Japanese English teachers at my school who is like 60 something) and still make unbelievable mistakes. I think success in language acquisition after one has acquired one's mother tongue is also related to the level in which you identify and share/understand the values and culture underlying that language. It's not just studying because of reasons A and B, there has to be an emotional deeper connection that is sometimes illogical/unreasonable, like when you fall in love.

It's definitely a real thing. Despite the common mantra on this forum that enough exposure will grant you 100% native level proficiency, that only happens for a lucky few, if at all.

Motivation is surely one of the factors; the further you advance it would be natural to have less motivation to go back and study basics.

I wouldn't consider this to be a defining difference between native and non-native speakers. Native speakers also acquire such characteristics, just to a lesser degree.

Most native English speakers I know have one or two malapropisms they commonly make, thinking a word means one thing when it actually means another. Or unable to avoid repeating the same grammar mistakes, such as saying, "anyways" and "somewheres", or even pronunciation mistakes such as "aks" instead of "ask". I even know some native English speakers who make more of these mistakes than many non-native English speakers. Looking around me, it's a matter of degree.

Mushi Wrote:I wouldn't consider this to be a defining difference between native and non-native speakers. Native speakers also acquire such characteristics, just to a lesser degree.

Most native English speakers I know have one or two malapropisms they commonly make, thinking a word means one thing when it actually means another. Or unable to avoid repeating the same grammar mistakes, such as saying, "anyways" and "somewheres", or even pronunciation mistakes such as "aks" instead of "ask". I even know some native English speakers who make more of these mistakes than many non-native English speakers. Looking around me, it's a matter of degree.

This is very true; it's not like your average native speaker can flawlessly use their native language. There's a reason schools usually have the country's national language as a subject, and (at least in my country) students usually suck at that subject. Educated adults make basic mistakes all the time too, in both speech and writing.

However, I've observed that the kind of mistakes natives and non-natives make are usually very different. In my native language, there's a bunch of language pitfalls that natives fall into so often that many don't even consider it incorrect, and yet a Dutch language learner probably wouldn't ever express something in such a way. Conversely, non-native speakers often express things in a weird way that would feel intuitively wrong to any Dutchman.

apirx Wrote:So the really interesting question is how does a learner of a second language that learns to speak native-like differ from someone that still makes mistakes after years in the country/learning the language. I'm wondering if in 10 years I'll be living in Japan, but still making errors, probably without noticing.

From my own experience, the answer to this is forsaking your operating language. Assume L2, L3… is your only language, express yourself in that language, actively force yourself to operate on that language only, then you may get somewhat far.

Mushi Wrote:I wouldn't consider this to be a defining difference between native and non-native speakers. Native speakers also acquire such characteristics, just to a lesser degree.

Most native English speakers I know have one or two malapropisms they commonly make, thinking a word means one thing when it actually means another. Or unable to avoid repeating the same grammar mistakes, such as saying, "anyways" and "somewheres", or even pronunciation mistakes such as "aks" instead of "ask". I even know some native English speakers who make more of these mistakes than many non-native English speakers. Looking around me, it's a matter of degree.

Those aren't mistakes, they're dialect differences. It's not the same thing as the mistakes made by second-language learners.

This is one of the problems I'm currently facing. I lack a little in vocabulary, but other than that, I can read and listen to English easily. But when it comes to production, I feel that my output level is 25% of my input level. For example I'm certain that I use the word "that" way too much, and misuse the tenses.

To be honest, it's worrying me, because no matter how much input I get, my output is still very far from advanced and natural.

About conversing, I've recently started talking in English, but I often find myself in the middle of a wrong sentence (lol), and because it's not an education environment, I don't get the chance to think about and correct my mistakes.

Although I can't try it now, I think language partners (Lang-8 and Skype) might be a way to solve this.

What is your L1 undead_saif?

EDIT: But you write very well…

Savii Wrote:

Mushi Wrote:I wouldn't consider this to be a defining difference between native and non-native speakers. Native speakers also acquire such characteristics, just to a lesser degree.

Most native English speakers I know have one or two malapropisms they commonly make, thinking a word means one thing when it actually means another. Or unable to avoid repeating the same grammar mistakes, such as saying, "anyways" and "somewheres", or even pronunciation mistakes such as "aks" instead of "ask". I even know some native English speakers who make more of these mistakes than many non-native English speakers. Looking around me, it's a matter of degree.

This is very true; it's not like your average native speaker can flawlessly use their native language. There's a reason schools usually have the country's national language as a subject, and (at least in my country) students usually suck at that subject. Educated adults make basic mistakes all the time too, in both speech and writing.

However, I've observed that the kind of mistakes natives and non-natives make are usually very different. In my native language, there's a bunch of language pitfalls that natives fall into so often that many don't even consider it incorrect, and yet a Dutch language learner probably wouldn't ever express something in such a way. Conversely, non-native speakers often express things in a weird way that would feel intuitively wrong to any Dutchman.

As a linguistics student, I must say this isn't exactly true. Yudantaiteki is right and I'd like to expand on his post.

Even before a person is born (babies can already listen to conversations while in their mother's womb), they have constant contact with what's going to be their native tongue. The early years of their lives is the critical period of language acquisition; that means the way they deal with language is very different from an adult, as they have the ability to "notice" the way their language works, what can happen and what cannot happen in their tongue; the sounds the language uses or not, etc. This means there's no way a native speaker could make a mistake when speaking their own tongue, because they have a complete understanding of how it works.

This is different from learning how to write your language. Writing is a formal convention and there is indeed a right way to write, because society has invented writing and made solid rules for it, so everyone writes the same way, regardless of dialectal differences. But the rules for talking aren't invented by society, they're formed naturally by interaction and learned by babies. Those rules aren't "regularized" like what we learn at school; instead, they're a social convention, being something a group of people consider a possible way to communicate.

That is why adults make mistakes when learning second languages: their critical period of language acquisition is long over. They do not and cannot in any possible way learn the same way a native did, because the way the brain works is very different from a baby's.

I hope my post made sense. English isn't my first language so I could have made some mistakes myself, haha

[Zgarbas]

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Mushi Wrote:I wouldn't consider this to be a defining difference between native and non-native speakers. Native speakers also acquire such characteristics, just to a lesser degree.

Most native English speakers I know have one or two malapropisms they commonly make, thinking a word means one thing when it actually means another. Or unable to avoid repeating the same grammar mistakes, such as saying, "anyways" and "somewheres", or even pronunciation mistakes such as "aks" instead of "ask". I even know some native English speakers who make more of these mistakes than many non-native English speakers. Looking around me, it's a matter of degree.

Those aren't mistakes, they're dialect differences. It's not the same thing as the mistakes made by second-language learners.

I've always wondered why when a language learner makes a mistake(even when it's intentional) it's a mistake, but when natives make it it's a regional/dialect thing. It doesn't seem fair. If you consider all dialects to be correct, then there is no right or wrong pronunciation, and grammar loses its meaning*. If a native can't separate correct English from his regional variation, doesn't that make his English flawed?

*there are enough regional variations in the English language to safely assume that almost all pronounciation and grammar variations are used.

@Unexpected. That's Chomsky taken to the extreme now, innit. Chomsky's nativist theory is only one of many language acquisition theories and imho the most discouraging. If it were true, then we'd never have people become fluent in any language that they start learning after the age of 10, and new forms of grammar would be incomprehensible (so a Japanese man would never grasp the concept of the future tense as a separate tense from the present). Also, people wouldn't be able to adapt to new dialects in their own language if they had the slightest grammar variations (which, as any person who moved to a different side of his country can tell you, is not true).
Also, natives do make mistakes and change the language along with them, as seen in the fact that languages change over time via simplification which is often caused by natives not "getting" it. Or have you never heard "swimmed" used by a native, to give a common example? This goes against Chomsky's theory that native children grasp all irregular verb use by the time they're 7. Saying that they are unable to make mistakes is about the same as saying that you can't trip when you walk because you've been doing it all your life.

apirx Wrote:What about not speaking until you have good understanding of the language or only using sentences phrases you know are correct.

This is pretty much what I did. Not intentionally - it was just that by the time I decided that I should interact with Japanese people and try to make friends, I had already been studying for over two years and passed N2. All that time, I was just listening to native material - so I only heard things that were correct and didn't fossilise incorrect things via production at a non-proficient level.

I don't think that production is important, until you are already proficient to some level with the language. I think that the skills that production helps to develop are things like being able to organise one's thoughts faster, getting your mouth used to producing the shapes necessary to pronounce words correctly, etc., which I don't think are yet important for a beginner or intermediate learner. What's important at that stage are grammar and vocabulary. Once you've passed that stage, then I think it's time to start thinking about taking production seriously. It also means that when you do start speaking, your pronunciation is great - because you've never learned how to pronounce things incorrectly.

Zgarbas Wrote:I've always wondered why when a language learner makes a mistake(even when it's intentional) it's a mistake, but when natives make it it's a regional/dialect thing.

It's just the way language and dialect are defined. If enough speakers are using the form, it's a dialect feature.

Quote:It doesn't seem fair. If you consider all dialects to be correct, then there is no right or wrong pronunciation, and grammar loses its meaning*. If a native can't separate correct English from his regional variation, doesn't that make his English flawed?

Only when viewed from the standpoint of a dialect. There's no such thing as "correct English". There's a particular dialect that's considered the educated, standard dialect. So you can have a "mistake" when viewed from that dialect.

Quote:there are enough regional variations in the English language to safely assume that almost all pronounciation and grammar variations are used.

Not even close. There are a large number of mistakes that foreign learners consistently make that are not common to any dialect of native speakers. In English, the mistakes that many foreigners make with articles and prepositions are found in no dialect of English.

Quote:Also, natives do make mistakes and change the language along with them, as seen in the fact that languages change over time via simplification which is often caused by natives not "getting" it.

Languages change over time, but not "via simplification", they just change. All languages are equally complex (this is a fundamental linguistic "law"). A language with fewer irregular verbs is only simpler in a superficial sense; the number of irregular verbs has nothing to do with what you can do or express with the language.

Quote:Or have you never heard "swimmed" used by a native, to give a common example? This goes against Chomsky's theory that native children grasp all irregular verb use by the time they're 7.

You don't really understand Chomsky's theories if you're using this as a counterexample.

fakewookie Wrote:

apirx Wrote:What about not speaking until you have good understanding of the language or only using sentences phrases you know are correct.

This is pretty much what I did. Not intentionally - it was just that by the time I decided that I should interact with Japanese people and try to make friends, I had already been studying for over two years and passed N2. All that time, I was just listening to native material - so I only heard things that were correct and didn't fossilise incorrect things via production at a non-proficient level.

I don't think that production is important, until you are already proficient to some level with the language. I think that the skills that production helps to develop are things like being able to organise one's thoughts faster, getting your mouth used to producing the shapes necessary to pronounce words correctly, etc., which I don't think are yet important for a beginner or intermediate learner. What's important at that stage are grammar and vocabulary. Once you've passed that stage, then I think it's time to start thinking about taking production seriously. It also means that when you do start speaking, your pronunciation is great - because you've never learned how to pronounce things incorrectly.

I've had a very similar experience, minus taking N2.

You should be able to work on the bad habits of pronouncing certain words incorrectly over and over again, if you know and are used to the exact ways they're pronounced. If you can think of the way the word is supposed to sound, you should be able to correct yourself little by little every time you try to pronounce it. If you're not sure how it's supposed to sound then aren't you just playing a guessing game every time you say it yourself? If you keep that guessing up it's only logical that you'll lose track of what you're guessing and what you're sure of, therefore creating bad habits.

There's a common attitude saying that you become better at things by simply doing them. In the case of language learning it's often "If you want to become better at speaking, SPEAK." It can't be completely true; if you aren't used to the way things are supposed to sound, how do you figure you'll teach yourself to sound right by simply saying them over and over again? Learning a language is essentially imitating its native speakers, you'll need to know what you're trying to imitate before you can gain perfectly from doing it.

When there's a case of a foreigner that's been living here for very long but still has quite bad pronunciation, I don't think anything of it because the way I see it, there's a very likable possibility that the person has in fact managed to avoid being attentive to exposure to the language, and is mostly up in their own language when in the comfort of their own home. With the idea that all the practice is in using the language, they might not care so much about paying attention to the way native speakers talk and so they don't much develop an ability in noticing patterns. Unlike how other people that have the focus-on-speaking approach (i.e. the FluentInThreeMonths guy) actually do because they flood themselves with the language by constantly interacting with native speakers and care about the way they talk.

I've been studying Japanese now for over five years, lived in Japan on exchange for one of those years, worked in a Japanese company emailing and using the phone in Japanese, talk and chat daily with friends via skype etc using Japanese, passed N2 and recently sat N1, and this year I am training to become a Japanese teacher and I still make mistakes. Generally I would say I make mistakes with particles, not because I don't know how or when to use を vs が vs は or whatever, but because when I am thinking and speaking Japanese simultaneously, I am concentrating on what it is that I am trying to say and trying to keep the whole communication process going rather than to pre-construct every sentence in my head before I say it. If a sentence comes out with awkward grammar or a wrong particle etc, I know because it sounds incorrect as I am saying it. Generally most of the time I would say the other person understands what I am saying and if they don't I'll take a second to think about it to make sure it is correct and repeat myself.

I'm not necessarily sure you can say that making mistakes is through the influence of my L1 (English), as English doesn't have any particles like Japanese as such. But without a doubt it does effect how I might say something, which could come out in unnatural Japanese. My brain is 'hardwired' to English and no matter how much I cross my fingers and wish, that is not going to change. What's more I make mistakes in English all the time - and this is definitely not a result of not knowing how English grammar works. Sometimes people just get tongue tied and the words don't come out as correctly as they should. Mistakes happen. Unnatural sentences happen. It really isn't a huge deal. Granted if the mistakes are so bad that it impedes on understanding then there is a problem, but the whole point of language is to communicate with other people, not construct 100% perfect sentences every single time you speak.

I think it's important to not have unrealistic absolutes here. Native speakers can have ingrained mistakes not found in any dialect, and second language learners may coincidentally make 'mistakes' associated with a pidginized or otherwise different dialect from the target L2 dialect.

I think there are only a few types of real mistakes that native speakers make.

Spelling mistakes, forgetting to type words, or a sentences comes out wrong because the speaker changes what he wanted to say while he was writing/saying it and didn't adapt the rest of the sentence.

Leaving spelling aside because not every native speaker can spell everything correct, I think the main difference is, a native knows when he made a mistake. A native can reread a sentence he wrote and find the mistakes in it.

When it comes to language I believe, since grammar rules where made after language was already there, that a mistake is no longer a mistake if it's used by a large group of people.

For example, if you every read reddit, you have surely read "I could care less..." and then the response "It's 'I couldn't care less...'". My opinion is that the phrase is widely used among native speakers, widely enough for everyone to recognize what it's actually supposed to mean. So both parties know the intended meaning of the phrase, however #2 has to correct #1 because "it doesn't mean what you think it means". Well yes it does. Because you are thinking it too. So I don't really consider this a real mistake.

I'll try to define what a mistake is now:

A mistake is when you are speaking in a way that is not recognized as a way of speaking by natives of the dialect you are trying to speak in.

For example there might be a dialect somewhere where people leave out the third person "s" or use only dictionary forms (as in "He be very kind to me."). However, when trying to speak standard English, this would still be a mistake.

edit:

Quick edit. The thing that concerns me most when learning Japanese is how to not get stuck on incorrect readings. For example, reading いる where it's supposed to be はいる.

[Zgarbas]

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's just the way language and dialect are defined. If enough speakers are using the form, it's a dialect feature.

Only when viewed from the standpoint of a dialect. There's no such thing as "correct English". There's a particular dialect that's considered the educated, standard dialect. So you can have a "mistake" when viewed from that dialect.

I think you're confusing standard language with a dialect. All languages have a standard, correct form, and English is no exception. No matter how many people say "If I was you" it is still incorrect.

Quote:Not even close. There are a large number of mistakes that foreign learners consistently make that are not common to any dialect of native speakers. In English, the mistakes that many foreigners make with articles and prepositions are found in no dialect of English.

Are you sure? English has a gargantuan amount of variation. Granted, there are mistakes foreigners alone will make since it an equally gargantuan amount of learners (thus aside from having a large amount of native variation, it has a large amount of non-native variation). It's bound for a few of these mistakes to not coincide, but saying that the mistakes native speakers make are automatically correct, and ignoring the fact that foreigners learning the language can make the same mistakes for the most part is a bit silly.

Quote:Languages change over time, but not "via simplification", they just change. All languages are equally complex (this is a fundamental linguistic "law"). A language with fewer irregular verbs is only simpler in a superficial sense; the number of irregular verbs has nothing to do with what you can do or express with the language.

Simplification is just one of the main ways in which languages change. When something is too much of a drag to use it stops being used. Just because some things get easier does not mean you can express less with it =/. Dropping things which are needlessly irregular/complicated/etc is done throughout all languages. Sure, sometimes it raises other issues (see the mess that is English/French spelling). The fact that language complexity is a constant does not mean that changes do not happen thanks to people trying to simplify manners.

"Thanne wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood. "
Then would he speak, and cry as he were wood.
(Chaucer, from the Canterbury Tales)
Aside from the archaic use of "wood", is this change not a result of attempts to simplify spelling?

Quote:You don't really understand Chomsky's theories if you're using this as a counterexample.

Why? Chomsky does claim that thanks to kids' language organ they master irregular verbs by the time they're 7, without having to rote memorize them (since rote memorization of grammar would go against his theory, and Chosmky hates things that go against his theory). Using regularization one way to show that knowledge of irregular forms is taught rather than instinctively figured out. If native speakers still accidentally regularize instead of using the correct irregular form after being exposed to the term so much, then they are not using their language organ to learn irregular forms, they are learning it via rote memorization enforced by exposure.

In other words:
1. If a native regularizes an irregular form, then they are either making a mistake, or are simplifying an aspect of the language which in time will become the norm. If a foreigner makes this mistake, why would it be considered a undoubtedly a mistake?
2. If regularizing irregular forms is not a matter of simplification, then what do you want to call it?
3. If Chomsky's nativist theory is correct, then kids should automatically figure out irregular forms. However, irregular forms are irregular forms because they cannot be figured out instinctively. Thus, either they automatically drop the irregular forms to simplify the language by making it more uniform, or simply memorize irregular forms. Swimmed is a common enough example as it is a common verb which is commonly mistaken. Once you get to octopi, two moose, etc. then I wonder how many natives could actually correctly use them. Which brings me to...
4. Since there are both foreigners that use the language correctly and natives that make mistakes, isn't it a bit silly to say that natives are automatically superior because they get "my mistakes are not really mistakes because it's mylanguage" perks?

Quote:Because you are thinking it too. So I don't really consider this a real mistake.

Where does it stop being a mistake and starts being an acceptable way of speech? It is easy to get the meaning from an incorrect utterance, but that doesn't make it any more correct.
That being said, making a mistake mid-sentence because you changed your mind about what you were about to say is not a language mistake.

Quote:A mistake is when you are speaking in a way that is not recognized as a way of speaking by natives of the dialect you are trying to speak in.

Twice now I've had native speakers not understand the word "coherent". Does that mean the word "coherent" is incorrect because the natives that heard it at the time did not recognize it?
There are quite a few natives who genuinely do not know that what they are saying is grammatically incorrect, nor why it is so. Does that mean that standard grammar is a mistake?

I said I'll try to define what a mistake is, so don't hang me up on it.

My defense of the definition would be that you weren't trying to speak their particular dialect, because the dialect they were natives in didn't include the word coherent. Also, if you knew beforehand that they wouldn't understand the word coherent, I would probably consider it a communication mistake if you still used it.

Now for "If I was you". Sounds correct to me. Probably because I've heard a lot. I'm pretty sure I've heard it in sitcoms or movies too. So it seems widely used. I don't see the point in labeling it as incorrect if it's widely used and understood.

apirx Wrote:Now for "If I was you". Sounds correct to me. Probably because I've heard a lot. I'm pretty sure I've heard it in sitcoms or movies too. So it seems widely used. I don't see the point in labeling it as incorrect if it's widely used and understood.

I hear that a lot also, particularly in my experience, from English language learners from India. Many of the ones I know would never say "If I were you", but "If I was you" instead. Maybe it's a feature of a dialect in India (I think it's one of their official languages), but I'm not sure.

Quote:

Quote:Languages change over time, but not "via simplification", they just change. All languages are equally complex (this is a fundamental linguistic "law"). A language with fewer irregular verbs is only simpler in a superficial sense; the number of irregular verbs has nothing to do with what you can do or express with the language.

Simplification is just one of the main ways in which languages change. When something is too much of a drag to use it stops being used. Just because some things get easier does not mean you can express less with it =/. Dropping things which are needlessly irregular/complicated/etc is done throughout all languages. Sure, sometimes it raises other issues (see the mess that is English/French spelling). The fact that language complexity is a constant does not mean that changes do not happen thanks to people trying to simplify manners.

Languages that simplify in one area usually create more complexity in another area to compensate. Languages that lack case systems, like Chinese and English, have stricter word order rules than languages that use case systems, like Latin and Old English. Languages where the verb is inflected for person/number, like Spanish, can often drop subject pronouns; English can't.

Quote:

Quote:You don't really understand Chomsky's theories if you're using this as a counterexample.

Why? Chomsky does claim that thanks to kids' language organ they master irregular verbs by the time they're 7, without having to rote memorize them (since rote memorization of grammar would go against his theory, and Chosmky hates things that go against his theory). Using regularization one way to show that knowledge of irregular forms is taught rather than instinctively figured out. If native speakers still accidentally regularize instead of using the correct irregular form after being exposed to the term so much, then they are not using their language organ to learn irregular forms, they are learning it via rote memorization enforced by exposure.

Steven Pinker's book "Words and Rules" is a really good book that covers irregular verbs from a more-or-less Chomskyist point of view. In his view, we don't "rote memorize" irregular verbs any more than we have to rote memorize any other aspect of our native language vocabulary; it's just that we have to learn them as *words*, rather than learning them as rules that can be applied to any verb.

So, usually when you want to put a verb in past tense you just put an "-ed" on it and you're done. But if it's an irregular verb, then as your brain is applying that rule, it gets interrupted -- "Wait! We have a dictionary entry for that!" -- and the irregular past tense gets applied instead. When people fail to apply the irregular form, it may be because they don't know it, or it may be because there's a failure in the interrupt mechanism -- for example, if the verb is rare enough that you don't find the dictionary entry before you put on the "-ed", and rare enough that "swimmed" doesn't sound weird to you. ("Swim" is pretty common, and I have no idea whether the person who said "swimmed" made a random processing error or what, but there are plenty of verbs in English that have become regular, or are in the process of becoming regular such that both the irregular form AND the regular form sound kind of weird -- "tread," for example.)

Interestingly, there's actually been research done on how fast people can locate the correct past tense form for verbs. They're faster at locating common irregular forms than uncommon irregular forms, and faster at locating common irregular forms than regular forms in general -- but all regular verbs, common or uncommon, take the same amount of time. That's pretty consistent with the theory.

[Zgarbas]

In other words simplification does not exist because language-level simplification is not possible, it is not rote memorization if a native does it, and it is my fault for using a common word because i as a foreigner should know that natives don't bother with vocabulary and should dumb it down in case their poor vocabulary is 'a dialect'. oh and also mistakes only exist on a foreigner's side.

that's not silly at all.

Just skimmed the thread.... but according to Khaz (alljapaneseallthetime) there is research that points to the reason for this being language production too early.

Ie. Language listening/reading should be done for a long time before attempting language production

Why so antagonistic?

[Zgarbas]

Because it's a demeaning to say that a native is allowed to make mistakes and have poor vocabulary, whereas a foreigner should carry the burden of always being wary of who he's talking to and perfectly adapt his speech (to the point where one should magically realize that they're talking to someone with such poor English that they don't know the word "coherent"). Also, calling mistakes a dialect, when a dialect is much more complicated than that; there's no dialect called "I have poor vocabulary".
Why should a foreigner bear such responsibility, when natives don't adapt their vocabulary or accents when talking to another native from a different area. I'm supposed to instantly adapt to every dialect whereas a native only knows one and still the native is considered to be of a higher level? It's absurd. What is even the point of learning a language beyond the level of "John see cake. John like" if you're going to get this treatment anyway?
It's similar with accents. People who have even the slightest foreigner accent are going to be instantly judged, whereas I don't see anyone telling the folks in Black Country that they're not natives; this despite the fact that you can actually understand what the foreigner is saying.

It's just such a prick attitude that serves nothing but to make foreigners seem like inferiors, of course I'm antagonistic. Even when I bring such a painfully common example of a mistake such as "If I was you" (which I've heard natives from different areas use), someone is quick to link it to a foreigner's attitude.

Also I really hate it when people throw Chomsky as if he were an undisputed god of linguistics; partially because Chomsky also does that, which is why I can't take him seriously. His reaction to an opposing theory is to cover his ears and say "I can't heaaar you", and he conveniently ignores anything that might so much as modify his theories.