For a 2nd language speaker making these homophonic mistakes is actually a sign of fluency. It means that you just transcribe a mental flow of words instead of consciously constructing the language.
The first time I wrote "your" instead of "you're" in English I thought it was quite a milestone!
Yes. I noticed this. When I was younger, I thought how can you mix up 'their, they're, there' people you do this must be the opposite of smart. This lasted for 4 years living in an English speaking country....
As an “english as a second language” user, I can’t see myself writing e.g. “should of” instead of “should have”, however fluent I am. I think you don’t make that kind of typo unless you have learnt english before grammar.
I also wouldn't do this one, but that's because in my English accent I simply wouldn't pronounce them the same way. Also the word sequence "should of" is extremely uncommon in proper English, so it catches the eye more easily I think.
"You're/your", "their/they're", "its/it's" and the like are a different story, because I do pronounce those the same and they're all very common.
> For a 2nd language speaker making these homophonic mistakes is actually a sign of fluency.
I kinda disagree because while the homophony works in (spoken) English in written it stands as a sore thumb. So yeah you will make it if you only heard it but doesn't know the written form.
(And in their native language it's probably two unrelated words, so that might intensify the feeling of wrongness)
I mean, my native language is French where "your" is "ton" and "you're" is "tu es", yet it (rarely) happens that I mix them up in English. If I proofread I'll spot it almost every single time, but if I'm just typing my "stream of consciousness" my brain's speech-to-text module sometimes messes up.
meh, plenty of (intelligent!) native english speakers do not know all the canonical grammar rules. english contains a lot of what could be considered error correction bits, so it doesn't usually impede understanding. syntactically perfect english with weird/misused idioms (common among non-native speakers with lots of formal education) is harder to understand in my experience. I imagine this is true of most natural languages.
The first time I wrote "your" instead of "you're" in English I thought it was quite a milestone!