When people hear fossil, the usually think about dinosaurs, but did you know there might be fossils in your English too?
I learned how to speak Spanish from TV, so I have a lot of fossilized errors in my grammar.
That means mistakes that I make have become very hard to fix.
When I was a kid, I never wanted to go hunting for dinosaur bones. It’s not that I didn’t think it would be cool, but it looked kind of difficult to spend hours digging up the bones of a creature that’s not alive anymore. Fossilized errors can feel like that too.
For a while I was volunteering with an organization called EcoStewards that runs in Stanley Park. (I'd highly recommend it if anyone likes to work outside!) We went and removed invasive species to give more space to the local flora and fauna to grow. It was a cool organization. I learned a lot; the correct way to remove ivy from trees, to chop down blackberry bushes or to carefully pull specific weeds.
If we look at fossilized errors as weeds to be pulled out, maybe the process isn’t quite so tough. Instead of digging up old bones, you’re finding room for new growth. Removing the invasion of bad habits that weren’t supposed to grow old.
You see, rooting out an error, especially one that’s stuck in there, can be terribly slow, but you discover a lot about its surroundings if you carefully work it out.
What kind of fossilized errors do you make in English?
