A transference error is a type of error made by people speaking a foreign language, occuring when they try to use some phrase or grammatical feature from the first language in the target language.

[edit] Common errors made by Korean speakers using English

This is an incomplete list of common transference errors made by Koreans speaking English. This does not include pronunciation errors.

• "Make a girlfriend/boyfriend": A literal translation of the Korean phrase, where native speakers would say "get a girlfriend/boyfriend".

• "Mind" is often used when "heart" is meant. The Korean words 마음 and 심 cover both English meanings.

• "Play with" is often overused, even by adults, in situations where native speakers would say things like "hang out with" or "have fun with". This is because in Korean the word 놀다 covers all of these cases.

• "Expect" is often used to mean "anticipate" or "be excited/nervous for", as in "I expect the test next week."

• "Exactly" is often used to mean "definitely" or "absolutely", as in "I exactly will do that." The difference in meaning is blurred in the Korean word 꼭.

• Confusion of "until now", "by now", "so far", and "up to now", due to their essential sameness in Korean (지금까지)

• Many people overuse the word "catch" when trying to say that they can't understand or get the point of something. This is due to the word 파악.

• Answering negative questions correctly tends to be difficult, because in Korean, one might answer the question "You don't have a girlfriend?" with "Yes"; in English of course, the answer would be "No".

• Beginning students may tend to use explicitly Korean grammar structures, producing constructions such as "I hamburger eat" or "Bill Gates is you more than rich." A particularly common example of this is "Teacher, pencil no."

• Present tense might be used in situations that call for past tense, such as in "Yesterday I meet friends and drank beer." In Korean the first verb -- meet -- would be rendered present tense, but of course in English it must be past tense.

• Using "no" instead of "not", as in "No pen, I mean pencil."

• Saying "sharp" instead of "mechanical pencil", and "Swiss" instead of "Switzerland".

[edit] Common errors made by English speakers using Korean

• Have - the word 가지다 is the Korean word 'to have' but its meaning is closer to hold, or to have something on you right now. To say "I (don't) have a cat / girlfriend / car" etc. one uses the verb 있다 or 없다, to exist and to not exist.