Understanding Grammar

Question

I've been told that I am an excellent writer (in English) yet I know almost nothing about the actual grammatical structure of English. I don't know a dangling participle from a gerund.

Before studying Spanish grammar, I had no idea what a preterite was much less how to explain an imperfect subjunctive. Despite my lack of formal grammar knowlege I've helped write Ph.D. level papers and I maintain a blog where I regularly write about politics, economics and social policy. I've had nothing but praise for my writing abilities from people who don't hand out such compliments lightly.

Learning Spanish grammer has been quite a challange for me so far because I'm also being forced to learn the formal English rules as well. At times this is daunting because I feel like it takes twice the effort to learn things I should already know. It's not as if when I'm speaking or writing in English that I think about whether I'm using reflexive prounouns or what the direct object is. I'm not even close to this point with Spanish though so I get very confused at times because I have to figure out the part of speech, then conjugate the verb properly and account for irregularities. Honestly, there are some days I just want to give up because I feel like I'll never catch on.

I won't give up though. I've learned learned a lot other subject in my life that seemed very complicated and I manged to get through thouse so I'll keep plugging away at Spanish and I know I'll get it. My goal is to become conversational by the end of the year. I just began studying in earnest earlier this year.

I don't have a question, I mainly just wanted to vent a little bit and encourage others who are struggling to keep at it!

Answer 1

James,

I did a little digging on this issue because:
A: I hate not knowing the answer to something that there might be an answer readily available for
B: I hate to think I'm right and really be wrong.
C: I don't really like being wrong.

In this case, my instincts proved me correct though my explanation was convoluted. I guess it goes back to not really knowing all the actual rules of grammar.

I found this book on line:http://www.scribd.com/doc/2190255/Basic-English-Grammar-Book-2

On page 79 (according to the number at the top, not the actual page numbering):
"To talk about facts n the future or plans that will not change, use the simple present tense."

Examples given:
Tomorrow is Sunday
Summer vacation ends on Friday.
The new library opens next week.
We fly to Paris on Wednesday.

Also in my research, I found that there are some grammarians that don't believe that English grammar actually has a future tense. They're not saying there is no concept of the future, just not a specific tense for it. I'm not in a position to agree or disagree because I didn't really dig in to the arguments. On the face of it though, I understand the reasoning since any expression of the future is explained by a modifier. "We will go." I realize though that the word "tomorrow" only refers to a future time but as far as I know, that's the only single word expression of the perfect future we have in English. An imperfect future word is "later." I'm only searching my memory, not a dictionary, so feel free to add more if I've missed something.

Language is complicated and fun. But I always enjoy a challenge.

Answer 2

"To talk about facts in the future or plans that will not change, use the simple present tense."

But that merely codifies the rule, and doesn't make it logical. For it to be logical, we would have to use the present tense for all future events. That is what we do in Japanese, which has no future tense. And I partially agree with those who say that English has no real future sense, since adding "will" is just stating that it is my wish or will that something happen. In BrEng, many people differentiate between "will do" and "shall do," the former implying volition, and the latter a simple indication of a future tense. That is, whereas in AmEng we might say "We will remember that," a speaker of BrEng might say "We shall remember that." I understand that this form may be dying out. "We will remember that" would imply that we are determined to remember it.

But I wholeheartedly agree with you that the complexity of language is what makes it so fun.

I have a theory that language is what makes humans special compared to all other animals. Without it, I believe we would not have been able to accomplish any of the many wonderful (and horrible) things that we have done. How would you begin to build a pyramid or a skyscraper without language'

Answer 3

Wasn't it all those evil moneychangers in Babylon that started all this? Otherwise, we would at least be speaking the same language.

Answer 4

Heheh. I guess there are those who believe that. But the trend is toward a single language. A graph of the number of world languages points steadily downward. There used to be tens of thousands of human languages, but the number today is about 6800. The number with enough native speakers to survive much longer is about 600. The number is predicted to decrease by at least 50% during the 21st century.

Perhaps in a few hundred years we humans will all be able to talk to each other, and will look back with derision at the time when that wasn't true. That's my bet, anyway.

Answer 5

But that merely codifies the rule, and doesn't make it logical.

Logical? Who said anything about logic? I just wanted to find out whether there was an applicable rule. So many things about English don't seem logical. Every language borrows from other languages of course, but I think the problem with English is that what it has borrowed is so recent. I also suspect that English has borrowed from more languages than most of the others have.