Bad writing and speaking habits?
When verbs in the preterit tú form, why do people add a s on the end?
Por ejemplo...
¿Hablastes con tu novia?
¿Me extrañastes?
Does anyone know where or how this started? Does anyone see or hear this too? I always find a few to speak or write like this.
Also when writing people tend to switch b and v.
Por ejemplo...
Espero que estés vien. o Ya me boy.
GRR...
7 Answers
Nikki, this seems to be universal, especially the s at the end of the past...that is soooo common in Spain, and you correct a guy, like I do all the time, jeje, teacher all around the clock
, and they think you are crazy or something...they have been saying this all their lives and don't even know this is wrong.
another mistake, very common in Madrid:
to call a taxi, people will call:
¡¡taxis! (meaning only one of course!)
Really excellent question. I have always presumed that the "b/v" mixup is either careless spelling or a bonafide spelling error. In my experience, it's not that uncommon to see things like "iva" instead if "iba" etc. The adding of an "-s" on the "tú" preterite seems to be common in some casual regional speech. I saw a show on it on Univisión about 15 years ago, and that was the gist of it.
It happens in English all the time too. One of the biggest problems with native English speakers is the breaking of the double negative rule. The "I ain't got no... or Nobody don't want..." It's pretty annoying. I know people who come from a language that finds that totally acceptable that can follow the no double negative rule better than our native speakers. Kudos to them!
As for Spanish, I'm glad that we at least focused on writing correct Spanish. Spanish I-IV was pretty much that(though I wish they had taught us how to actually speak and listen in Spanish!) In Spanish V, it's a mixture of Spanish natives and non natives. Often times, we correct their written papers while they correct our speech.
When verbs in the preterit tú form, why do people add a s on the end?
Por ejemplo...
¿Hablastes con tu novia?
¿Me extrañastes?
I'm not completely sure but I would guess that this is due to the fact that the preterit tú form of a verb is the only tú form in any tense or mood (disregarding compound tenses, like present perfect, pluperfect, etc.) that doesn't end in "s".
For example...
The tú forms of Hablar
Hablas, Hablabas, Hablarás, Hablarías, Hables, Hablaras/Hablases
Maybe natives get so used to having the tú form of a verb end in "s", that they just add an "s" on in the preterit. 
Hi Nikkis
According to my "reverse order" dictionary there are 1390 words that end in - IZE and only 125 that end in - ISE. I must say that surprised me when I looked it up.
Even one of my ex boyfriends, when he would write letters, he would switch the b and v and c with s.
I cannot even begin to explain how annoying that was
English we do similar things too, such as replacing s with z.
I've wondered the same thing about the "s" on the end of the preterit verb. I saw someone write that way in a post today.
