'Proper' grammar 1

[bekibutton]

I've just started studying Latin and Ancient Greek, and I'm totally puzzled by most of the new grammatical terms that I've been introduced to.

Seems that (in the UK at least), the older generations were taught a whole lot more about grammer than I was (I'm in my mid-twenties). We basically did verbs ('doing' words), adjectives ('describing' words) and nouns ('naming' words), even at secondary (high) school that was as complicated as it got.

Now I've been introduced to adverbs, pronouns, prepositions... Also 'cases' of nouns - nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative. Oh, and those things in Latin called declensions, which are completely eluding me at the moment...

I'm no idiot, and I consider my English skills to be very good, but I'm currently frustrated by how little I was taught of the 'rules'. I'd have liked to know the rules in order to understand how to break them and how to use English properly.

I'm just wondering what people's educational experiences with English grammar are like. I know a lot of you here have done 'the rules' thoroughly, are there any other people who never learnt them?

Becki

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I was gonna take over the world but got distracted by something shiny

 

[Stella740pl]

I know a lot of you here have done 'the rules' thoroughly

I did all of those things thoroughly, including declensions, and many, many other interesting things - but in my first language, Russian, and also in my second, Ukrainian.

English was the third language, or the foreign language, that I studied in school, starting about fifth grade - and for the rest of the school, plus a few semesters into higher education.

Here we did much less of the rules, more of conversational expressions, reading, and vocabulary - but even with this we learned what verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs, pronouns and prepositions are (NOT 'doing', 'describing' or 'naming' words ). Because we already knew those terms in our first language, it was much easier - we basically had to know how they translate into English and how to recognize them in English.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

This reminded me of this old thread. It took me a while to dig it up, but I finally did.

The OP in that thread links to this article (which is, thankfully, still available at Washington Post's website).

In the 70's there was apparently a push to stop teaching grammar in favor of a more holistic view of language.

I was born in the early 70s and was taught grammar (eg we did sentence-diagramming, but not very much and not for very long), but I've learned through talking to slightly older folks that things were already changing when I was in school.

The consequence of this is that we wound up with English teachers - possibly including yours, Becki - that were never taught 'proper' grammar themselves.

Luckily, things seem to be swinging the other way now. (Well, according to the year-old article to which I linked.)

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[2ffat]

Hmm...From the other side of the 70's, I was taught all about the rules of grammar, e.g., sentence diagramming, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, etc. I was taught it from the first grade through college. I consider my English to be very, very poor. I hated English. Every year we had to "relearn" the rules, either because the current teacher thought thought the previous teacher was an idiot or the current teacher thought we were idiots.

I became very frustrated with English. Especially when the rules seemed to exist only so they could be "broken." To this day, I have a major problem with speaking and writing. I alternate between complaining about others English and my own. I'm English bipolar. ;-)

I can see why they stopped teaching the "rules."



James P. Cottingham
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[sha76]

Thankfully I had an old fashioned primary school, so I got a good grounding in the basics, but that's where any education on grammar stopped.
If my local college were to run a course on grammar I'd certainly sign up - I just guess I'd probably be the only one! (I don't enjoy learning from books, otherwise I'd have probably done something about it by now)

"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert

 

[SantaMufasa]

Most of what I learned about English grammar, I learned in 7th grade (U.S. = age 12-13) from a teacher named Mrs. Dippe (pronounced "Dippy")...and, boy, did she fit her name...she was nuts, but I absolutely, positively appreciate the anal-retentive care she took in teaching us sentence diagramming (which implies all parts of speech that you mentioned above, Becki), Latin and Greek roots, et cetera.

I should track her down and tell her of my appreciation, but she would probably be near 90 years old if she was still alive.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[KenCunningham]

Being at secondary school throughout the first half of the seventies (ages 12-18), we were never taught the parts of language, nor grammar.

I think it was probably a fall-out from the laizzez-faire attitudes of the late sixties, but it certainly did us no favours when it came to learning more grammar-bound languages (at least in my experience) such as French.

I want to be good, is that not enough?

 

[RCorrigan]

Oh Gawd ....Memories of "amo amas amat amamus amatis amant" & "sum es est sumus estis sunt" and a tall, bald, kiwi repeatedly striking the blackboard on each repetition (I pretty sure the front row of the class now all suffer from Chalk Dust Syndrome )

<Do I need A Signature or will an X do?>

 

[KenCunningham]

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Indeed!

I want to be good, is that not enough?

 

[2ffat]

Here's an interesting story about one writer and her grammar.



James P. Cottingham
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[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[gbaughma]

Becki:

Most of those exist in the english language. I know that I've studied latin and greek, and a smattering of spanish and french. Then, you get into the germanic languages, and those get *really* confusing, because they're germanic, and we're used to roman-based languages. All the rules change then.

I think that, as pointed out in other posts here, there's not as much focus on proper grammar. Or, for that matter, on handwriting.

My mother had *beautiful* handwriting. And it was kind of funny, because I remember having horrid handwriting, and watching a "Little Rascals" episode, where the teacher was making them do loops... clockwise, from the bottom of the line to the top of the line, then counter-clockwise. I did pages and pages of those, and now my cursive writing is quite nice. But it comes down to discipline. I'm sorry to say that many teachers aren't going to go to those lengths any longer, and if you want to improve yourself, it needs to come from a desire to do so, and the initiative to make it happen yourself.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Indeed!

Besides irrigation, indoor plumbing, modern government, to name a few? ;-)



Just my 2¢
-Cole's Law: Shredded cabbage

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[risby]

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Life of Brian

Conjugate the verb "to go", come on!

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

==========================================

abjure hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia

 

[harebrain]

Memories of "amo amas amat amamus amatis amant"

Sang that to the tune of "The Mexican Hat Dance." (Somewhere, someone is laughing his/her butt off.)

 

[philhege]

What have the Romans ever done for us?

History of the World, Part I?

Phil H.
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A virtual machine ate my accounting data. I transferred it to a physical box, then I beat it to smithereens with a sledgehammer. I feel better.

 

[GwydionM]

The purpose of speaking or writing is to be understood. All of the people who were worrying about their grammer were entirely clear. It is possible to be correct in your grammer and also dense, very hard to follow.

Gramaticus Cloaca Est

It's not like programming, where a mis-use of terms will result in the wrong thing being done.

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An old man who lives in the UK

 

[SantaMufasa]

It's not like programming, where a mis-use of terms will result in the wrong thing being done.

Right...how about the father teaching use of tools to his son:

Son, I'll hold the nail...you hold the hammer, and when I nod my head, you hit it.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[2ffat]

Or for an example of punctuation...

Let's eat, Grandpa!

vs.

Let's eat Grandpa!

James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[AnotherHiggins]

The Panda eats, shoots and leaves

vs.

The Panda eats shoots and leaves

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

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[2ffat]

<off-topic>
John,
[tab]That was a good book, BTW.
</off-topic>


James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[SantaMufasa]

...Or perhaps:

The angry woman left instructions to send a knife through the male.

...versus...

The angry woman left instructions to send a knife through the mail.

So, yes, I believe "a mis-use of terms will result in the wrong thing being done."

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]