Jon Pretty

Question for fluent non-native English speakers: did you explicitly learn this at any point, or did you just pick it up?https://twitter.com/propensive/status/916681012368855040 …

I never learned this in school, developed a bit of an intuition later. Still don't know whether I'm doing it right.

It's the sort of thing any native speaker would feel petty correcting you on.

I get this, but I'd really love to be corrected. How else would I learn the nuances?

I think most English speakers would be able to say “that sounds off” without being able to articulate why.

In a conversation rules don't help that much. Having to think a few seconds before every word will be worse then sounding off.

That was the precise moment when I started becoming fluent: caring much less about sounding off.

I think that really is the trick. Language is about communication, not prescriptive adherence to the rules.