"Their for a chances"?
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Here's an odd error from a recent Washington Post article ("Pope Leo visits a polarized Spain where conservatives are turning on the church", 6/6/2026):
On Thursday, Leo will visit Spain’s Canary Islands, a hub for Latin American migrants and major landing point for those arriving by sea from the African coast. The waters around the islands have become a graveyard for those who lost their for a chances to resettle in Europe.
Errors like this are usually the result of an attempted revision that left fragments of two versions in place, and I can usually guess what the inputs probably were. In this case, it's clear that what the failed migrants lost was their lives, as a result of failed attempts to resettle in Europe. But I'm puzzled about the source of the sequence their for a chances — any ideas?
The obligatory screenshot:
Jack said,
June 6, 2026 @ 3:15 pm
Perhaps “… those who lost their fair chances to resettle…”?
JimG said,
June 6, 2026 @ 3:40 pm
It looks like a fairly simple editing error that the newspaper's AI failed to catch. I'm not sure which of two versions would have been first. The writer or editor was seeking to switch from one to the other:
The waters around the islands have become a graveyard for those who lost a chance to resettle in Europe.
or
The waters around the islands have become a graveyard for those who lost their chances to resettle in Europe.
Ross Presser said,
June 6, 2026 @ 3:44 pm
My guess is that the intended text was "lost their lives for a chance to resettle in Europe." drop the word lives accidentally and you have what is printed.
Garrett Wollman said,
June 6, 2026 @ 3:45 pm
I'm guessing something like "a graveyard for those who braved the crossing for a chance to resettle in Europe".
Brett said,
June 6, 2026 @ 5:40 pm
As Ross Presser indicates, "… graveyard for those who lost their…," strongly suggests a missing "lives" at the end of the quote.
Rick Rubenstein said,
June 6, 2026 @ 6:35 pm
I can imagine an earlier draft being "lost their lives for a chance to […]", although "risked their lives" would seem more apt in that case. Possibly the author was testing out "chances" in the belief it should agree with "their"? Although "a chances" really makes that "s" seem like a simple, unrelated typo.
I feel like there should be a term for these sorts of "botched surgery" errors. Do newspaper folk have one already?
JPL said,
June 6, 2026 @ 6:52 pm
"… those who lost their quest [or "way"] for [or "in"] a chance to …."
"… those who were pursuing their chances to …."
"lives" seems redundant after "graveyard". "You lost your chance because you're dead" is St. Peter's view, but probably not the point of view of the writer.
John Swindle said,
June 6, 2026 @ 10:21 pm
One version had "their chances." Another had "their lives for a chance." Somehow parts of both were included when the article went to press. Even with the garbrled outcome It's nice that this appears to be human error rather than an error introduced by AI.
nhan hong said,
June 7, 2026 @ 3:10 am
If it goes " graveyard who lost theirs (possessive pronoun) for chances to resettle in Europe ", then it means …they escaped possible deaths and were lucky to resettle. ( not any grim fate at all )
Jerry Packard said,
June 7, 2026 @ 6:59 am
Viewed In terms of speech production, I think Ross Presser’s analysis prevails: the noun ‘lives’ is dropped but the -s persists, attaching to the noun ‘chance.’ In speech production error analysis it is much more common for inflections and other closed-class functional elements to persist and for open-class items like nouns and verbs to move around or be deleted.
Jay Sekora said,
June 7, 2026 @ 10:02 am
I would guess the original was “who lost their lives to resettle in Europe”, and an editor (or the author) decided that that implied that surviving the journey would mean definitely resettling in Europe, and wanted to clarify that surviving the journey would only mean a chance at resettling. But instead of clicking after “lives” to insert “for a chance”, somebody accidentally selected “live” and typed “for a chance”, leaving the “s” at the end.
David Marjanović said,
June 7, 2026 @ 10:52 am
Not unlike the infamous "cdesign proponentsists".
Xtifr said,
June 7, 2026 @ 1:11 pm
If it weren't for "a chances", I'd accept a simple omitted word as the answer, but the mismatch between the singular and plural makes me think it's more likely to be an incomplete attempt at rephrasing, which included changing "a chance" to "chances" or vice versa.
"Confused AI slop" is another strong possibility. But a simple missing word error just doesn't seem like an adequate explanation.
Michael Robertson said,
June 8, 2026 @ 12:58 pm
Isn't it just erroneous automatic speech recognition for "who lost therefore chances to resettle in Europe" ?