It can be hard to say, since things can get wildly complicated depending on language semantics (especially when type inference is involved). But yeah, there is often a tendency in compilers to react very poorly to a typo and freak out over what comes after it instead of going, "hmmm, this doesn't look complete". In some languages, this can be because the typo is actually ambiguous with something that's fine, just not in the context of the code that follows. But every compiler and language is different, so it's hard to say.
