Mine is people who separate words when they write. I’m Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct...
It's not so much a feature of English as it is a recurring bug in the way people use the language...
If you write "of" instead of "have" or "'ve" you need to be taken out back and beaten with a dictionary, preferably until you can apologize to your ancestors in person for the effort they wasted in passing down the English language to you.
Incidentally, when did people start saying "on accident"? It's by accident! Has been for ages! Why this? Why now? I hate it.
With that out of the way... English isn't a language, it's five dialects in a trenchcoat mugging other languages in a dark alley for their loose grammar.
Edit: With regards to OP, "a cookbook" and "to cook the books" are similar phrases in English, too, but have, eh, wildly different meanings. XD
18+ What irritates you the most with your own language?
Mine is people who separate words when they write. I’m Norwegian, and we can string together words indefinetly to make a new word. The never ending word may not make any sense, but it is gramatically correct...