I’m not a native speaker and I started English classes in school later than everyone else, so I started in 4th grade when everyone else has already 3 years of learning the basics, and since these are really basic words I never learned them in class
So, please, how do I know when to use each one? I can get by a bit as evidenced in this post, but a lot of times I get it wrong
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To make it more confusing, even native speakers can use them differently depending on where they grew up. For example, in parts of the US, you when you are “queuing” (to use British English), you are waiting “on line”. That sounds completely wrong and foreign to me, because, in my part of the US, we wait “in line”. But technically both are correct, but one will sound very wrong to someone if they grew up with the other.
As someone who speaks a foreign language, it’s definitely hard. Practice and exposure is really the only way to get it right, and even then you’ll probably still mess it up (I still do in German, even after decades of speaking it). As long as people can understand what you meant, that’s all that really matters.
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