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I have read many sentences on Facebook written by Germans and still can't figure out why they are using das instead of dass in such sentences. For example, a joke I just read:

Jedesmal wenn ein Mädchen sagt, das sie durch einen Unfall schwanger wurde, stelle ich mir immer sowas vor.

Is this a colloquial usage, or what? What does das refer to in this sentence? Do people sometimes use das instead of dass in the non-standard written language?

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    Your questions in the last days all deal with the same fact. People simply don't know to write correctly ;-) It's sad, a shame, whatever. But it is true.
    – puck
    Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 18:11
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    Same as "they're", "their" and "there" in English (or "you're" vs. "your"), simply wrong.
    – Dirk
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 8:58
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    Mixing up "seit" and "seid" is also a mistake, that I often see in comments on social media. Some may just don't know how to write correctly, others don't bother proofreading their comments. Result is the same.
    – some_user
    Commented Sep 4, 2018 at 9:00

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No, it is simply wrong. Dass and das can never be exchanged, and I do not really understand the frequency of misspelling. The only reasons I see are, that both words sound very similar and not everybody cares to write correctly.

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    They do not "sound very similar". They sound exactly the same.
    – fdb
    Commented Aug 31, 2018 at 22:52
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    @fdb: In my opinion exactly the same is a subset of very similar. I chose the latter, since due to my knowledge some regions use a voiced s for the article/reflexive pronoun only.
    – guidot ♦
    Commented Aug 31, 2018 at 22:59
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    Regading pronunciation, I would say that in pure theatre and broadcasting pronunciation, das and dass sound exactly the same. However, you may find a slight difference between them in certain regions of the German speaking world (I am not speaking of dialects though). A test is to ask people to pronounce it very slowly. In certain regions the will pronounce "daaaaß" versus "daßßßßß" (the difference being the length of the vowel). As for the writing: this is just negligence or incapability of orthography.
    – Christian Geiselmann
    Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 5:54
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    Unfortunately many people make the mistake of writing 'das' in place of 'dass'. Often they also omit the comma, adding a second mistake and making the first harder to recognize.
    – RHa
    Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 9:32
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    @ChristianGeiselmann. I think these are hyper-correct spelling pronunciations, like when people pronounce the h in gehen.
    – fdb
    Commented Sep 1, 2018 at 13:13

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