Subject: Re: Grammar
From: Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Date: Tue Jan 25 2000 - 15:20:18 EST
Hey Will!
I can certainly identify autobiographically with what you say:
I think many students don't learn
>English grammar well until they learn to speak another language and see
>how grammar really works....
I remember HATING "grammar" when what it meant was putting squiggly lines
under the verbs and using square brackets to surround the subordinate
clauses (or whatever it was that we were supposed to do)!
Then I got to high school, and took five years of Latin. Suddenly, it all
made sense. More than that, suddenly grammar became truly beautiful.
Latin--I suppose--is more logical than English, but the cross-over benefits
were wonderful. (It didn't hurt the old English vocabulary either.... Nor
French, for that matter.) (...and while I'm hard-selling "sum, esse, fui",
let me say that Catullus offered a fabulous form of sexual sublimation for a
randy teenage boy! Bob Guccione eat your heart out!!)
So I'd honestly say that the best way to learn grammar is to study
Latin--which probably further solidifies my image, here, as pre-Cambrian man...
Cheers,
Paul
OSR--I'd always ascribed Fanny's lack of "literacy" to her somewhat
distraught emotional state.
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