Ali,
I agree with you. However, I found "these kind of plural nouns" in a work by an obscure writer of your country.
"These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness harbour more craft and more corrupter ends than twenty silly ducking observants that stretch their duties nicely." (William Shakespeare, "King Lear", Act II, Scene ii, 1605)
saya
If "mistake" could be made to sound uncountable or abstract then "These kinds of mistake" would sound OK to me. For that reason, "these kinds of (plural noun)" typically rings truer.
To Achab: No, I'm not a native English speaker, but thanks for the compliment anyway (the fact that you even thought I was). :-)
I've seen sentences like "These kind of ....." in chat rooms and they were often written by native speakers.
You've seen them because it's common in colloquial speech (I'm sure I say it too). Chat rooms reflect spoken language more than written language. It obviously goes back a long time...note the Shakespeare quote above.
Or, mjd, 'mistakes of these kinds'?
Sorry, mjd, the answer above was to your comment on the previous page (I hadn't seen 'next page' at the bottom of the screen!).
Saya, I'm afraid I don't think we can look to Shakespeare for hints on current accepted usage. For example, can you imagine any educated person saying 'more corrupter' these days and getting away with it?
The same goes for chat rooms, too. As mjd says, chat rooms reflect spoken rather than written language. They are also peopled by a wide variety of participants, not all of whom are highly literate. As a student of English, I expect that your ultimate goal is to use English in a similar way to an educated native speaker? If so, I would certainly note interesting problems, as you are doing, but I wouldn't try to use everything I read in such a situation.
Ali
Thank you for your kind advice. I know grammar books says that "these kind of Xs" is incorrect and we have to say "these kinds of Xs". But it is also true many native speakers say "these kind of Xs" in the colloquial speech. What the grammar says is that "these" modifies not "Xs" but "kinds". However my guess is some native speakers take the phrase "kind of" per se as an adjective and they feel they are saying "these <kind-of> Xs".
(reference:)
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001049.html
saya
Once I said "this kind of ....." in a chat room and a native English speaker corrected me and said "these kind of .......". LOL :)
>>As mjd says, chat rooms reflect spoken rather than written language. They are also peopled by a wide variety of participants, not all of whom are highly literate.<<
The five most common examples of chatroom and forum illiteracy:
1/ "it's" for "its"
2/ "their" for "they're" (or vice versa)
3/ "who's" for "whose"
4/ "these" for "this" (or vice versa)
5/ "wierd" for "weird"
etc., etc., etc.
The most common spelling and grammar mistakes in English, made by native speakers (and not only in chatrooms and forums, because even educated people make them) are:
1.) "definately" for "definitely"
2.) "seperate" for "separate"
3.) "grammer" for "grammar"
4.) "suprise" for "surprise"
5.) confusing "it's/its", "to/too", "there/their/they're", "who's/whose",
"then/than", "you're/your"
6.) misuse of apostrophes
Oh, yes, and "wierd" for "weird" and a lot of other spelling mistakes.
I often see that people have written 'your' (possessive) when they mean 'you're' (you are).
Often in this chat room.
There's a vey slight difference in pronunciation but you hardly ever hear it in normal conversation.
I just remembered a few more common spelling mistakes made by native speakers: "embarass" for "embarrass" (that's the most common, even though I've seen a lot of worse versions....LOL), "dissapear" for "disappear", "dissapoint" for "disappoint", "occassion" for "occasion"...
I also see "tommorow" for "tomorrow" pretty often. (*shocked*)
