PEOPLE who learn English as a second language tend to write with a “foreign accent”. Now software can examine a piece of written English and make a pretty good guess at the writer’s mother tongue.
The system works by looking for grammatical quirks that are characteristic of different languages. For example, people who speak Czech tend to omit the word “the”, while infrequent use of infinitive verbs, such as “to go” or “to do” is indicative of Spanish speakers. French people often create non-standard adverbs by adding the suffix “-ly” to various words.
Moshe Koppel, Jonathan Schler and Kfir Zigdon…
