error vs. mistake

[sultanee]

hi everyone
hope you are well
can anyone answer this question please?
what is the difference between errors and mistakes?
our linguistics teacher said: native speakers make mistakes sometimes
but they never commit errors when they speak.However, foreign learners commit both errors and mistakes while speaking.
so, what is the difference?
and can anyone give me some examples?

[konungursvia]

They are the same, but since "error" is French, and "mistake' is Anglo-Saxon, the former is used in academic contexts, the latter generally in daily speech.

E.g. "Error Analysis in Native Speakers of Farsi."
E.g. "Sorry, I made a mistake."

[Soup]

Originally Posted by sultanee

hi everyone
hope you are well
can anyone answer this question please?
what is the difference between errors and mistakes?
our linguistics teacher said: native speakers make mistakes sometimes
but they never commit errors when they speak.However, foreign learners commit both errors and mistakes while speaking.
so, what is the difference?
and can anyone give me some examples?

Mistake (you know it's wrong)
For example, you know how to spell the words they're and their, but in writing an email one day you type "Their nice people." It's grammatically wrong, of course, and you know that, but you don't realize it's wrong at the time because you are busy typing and thinking, and not focused on spelling.

Error (you don't know it's wrong)

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by sultanee

hi everyone
hope you are well
can anyone answer this question please?
what is the difference between errors and mistakes?
our linguistics teacher said: native speakers make mistakes sometimes
but they never commit errors when they speak.However, foreign learners commit both errors and mistakes while speaking.
so, what is the difference?
and can anyone give me some examples?

Soup is right. As specialist linguistics terms (Corder, 1967), errors result from lack of knowledge, while mistakes are performance phenomena, such as writing it's for its.
The terms are used to differentiate these concepts.
1. He go to school. (Error. The student has not learnt the 3rd person form)
2. He goes to scool. (Mistake. The student knows the correct spelling, but wrote it wrongly)

kon: it's a mistake if, once it's pointed out to you, you immediately realise you've made a mistake.

However, in colloquial English, a mistake is an error.

[sultanee]

Originally Posted by Soup

Mistake (you know it's wrong)
For example, you know how to spell the words they're and their, but in writing an email one day you type "Their nice people." It's grammatically wrong, of course, and you know that, but you don't realize it's wrong at the time because you are busy typing and thinking, and not focused on spelling.

Error (you don't know it's wrong)

Thank you a lot for your clarification
I got it now

[konungursvia]

Thanks, I was unaware of that. My formal education was in French, where that English-language usage is not present.

[Barb_D]

Do you agree that native speakers never make errors?

Surely not everyone has mastery of nuances of his/her native tongue? Or would that then simply be considered a dialect/colloquial?

[konungursvia]

I have only ever thought of them as we were taught, in terms of performance vs competence (the Port-Royal terminology adopted by Chomsky).

I agree with Barb that native speakers make errors fairly often. (If I follow her correctly.)

[Barb_D]

I'm thinking, for example, of "lie/lay."

Many native English speakers say "I laid there" for "I lay there" -- and they don't know it's wrong. Or "Him being there was a comfort" instead of "His being there..." Or they use a plural verb for an X of the Ys subject... or... well, there are tons of mistakes people make that if you told them what the problem was, they wouldn't say "Oh yes! how silly of me!" They would say "Huh??"

[konungursvia]

Yep. And it's a competence issue.