What don't teachers tell you about learning English grammar?

Answer 1

This question is right up my alley as a Bachelor's of Science English major. English is a Germanic language, specifically, a Saxon language, yet the first English primer was written in, get this, Latin! In Latin the infinitive is one word, so it is impossible to split. This is not so with the German language The German language can also end with a preposition, if the verb requires it. Your teacher may also tell you that English grammar is prescriptive, meaning there are specific rules we must follow. The truth is that English is such a mutt of a language that we can only describe it with its strange rules and even stranger exceptions to the rules. These rules and exceptions are not something handed down from on high, but they are how English makes sense. Without grammar, no language is intelligible. There is a rhyme and reason governing every language, therefore, but in English those governing reins are about as loose as one could get! In many languages, especially the romance languages which derive from the Latin, the infinitive and participle are almost interchangeable, such as the English sentence, "I like to swim." This means the same as "I like swimming." This is an exception, rather than a rule, but not so in most languages. All the parts of speech in English also come from the Latin. An adjective means "throw toward," and modifies a noun. An adverb means "away from word" and modifies the main word, the verb, of the sentence. It can also modify an adjective. A "verb" means "word" in Latin. An "interjection" means something we "throw between" We throw it usually between two sentences, as a word of exclamation. The Latin word "conjunction" literally means "joining together," such as "and" and "but" that splice two phrases together. All of these monikers, or, names for English parts of speech are anything but Germanic! "Preposition" means "place before", for example, as it comes before the indirect object or another kind of noun. All these things make English harder to learn, in many ways, but thank goodness English isn't like modern German languages that have definite articles that change. The irony is that Latin has no definite articles whatsoever, but, like German, it has special endings for different cases, such as our English "who" and "whom," and "they" and "them!"

These are just some things that your English teacher might not be telling you, so, soldier on, as they say! Just write English the way you speak it, and it won't be as hard a slog!