A reader asks:
I discovered virtually all of the grammar I nonetheless know from Latin, French and German the place these constructions needed to be extra explicitly defined: Declension and conjugation from Latin, subjunctives from German, and so on. My query is, am I uncommon on this respect or did you acquire a greater command of English by evaluating (it) with different languages?
Learning Latin and the opposite languages helps, however I wouldn’t overemphasize this. English has the subjunctive temper. We don’t say, “If I used to be king.” or “Joe needs he was taller.”
We don’t have conjugations of verbs, however we have now greater than our share of irregular verbs, which I might argue earns our language what it’s recognized to be: a beast to study.
One can obtain a strong command of English grammar with none publicity to something past.
The difficulty is caring. My household cared an ideal deal, as did the non-public college my brother and I attended. Once I come throughout folks with poor grammar I understand: nobody cared. That’s unhappy, particularly contemplating that the typical European highschool pupil turns into fluent in at the very least two languages, and typically 4 or 5.
When my children had been younger, I informed them, “Nobody can look into your thoughts and skim your ideas. For that cause, these round you’ll hearken to what you say or learn what you write and kind their judgements as to your intelligence accordingly. In the event you don’t need to be considered an fool, put in a little bit of effort and nail down the fundamentals of our language.
