was she trying for irony?

[cellio]

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation sounds like a great book for grammar nerds, but I am put off somewhat by the 1.5 punctuation errors in the title. (One is debatable and might be excused by context (it refers to a joke containing the phrase); the other is clearly wrong.)

Comments

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

I hate to admit it, but I finally got a solid grasp on English grammar by learning French and Latin. I knew how to construct proper sentences, but didn't know all the parts of speech till I got into Latin 2 and 3.

I tutored freshmen in English 101 when I was a senior in college, at the prof's request. I was absolutely shocked that these kids had been allowed to graduate from high school with such poor language skills. The worst part was, they didn't care. They figured that as engineers, they'd never have to bother writing anything. Poor saps. I hope they got a clue after I graduated, because they seemed pretty clueless as freshmen... but then, most freshmen do.

[cellio]

I hate to admit it, but I finally got a solid grasp on English grammar by learning French and Latin.

I don't see anything to be ashamed of there. Learning a second instance of a skill family -- any skill family -- forces you to learn general concepts, whether the domain is language, programming, cooking, etc. Knowing one language is sort of like knowing how to cook one kind of cake -- you may do it very well, but you probably don't really understand the roles of baking soda versus baking powder just from that, so you have to either study it explicity or learn a second cake.

Sadly, while I have a very, very good intuitive grasp of grammar (beefed up with some formal education, of course, and I'd argue that things like symbolic logic are also relevant), I have a poor vocabulary for describing it. So when somebody says something like "past perfect tense", I don't immediately remember which one that is (I'm referring to the "perfect" part, not the obvious "past" :-) ). Declension? That has something to do with nouns. I can look all this up as needed, of course, but it's not already in the neural cache. At least I explicitly understand conjugation from high-school Spanish and binyan (I don't have an English equivalent for this) from Hebrew. It's a start. I wish we'd had Latin available when I was in school; it would have taught me a lot more at a time when it would have done broader good.

[anisodragnfly.livejournal.com]

which is why i think all high school students should be required to take a semester of Latin. nothing teaches you English grammar like declensions. plus, great for vocabulary.