Thread: Good grammar without the grief "I'd love you to love me"?)

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Good grammar without the grief - Opinion - smh.com.au

There are schools of grammar, and I belong to none of them. Among the schools are traditional grammar, modern grammar and what is sometimes called transformational-generative grammar, the scientific-sounding grammar linguistics students learn these days.
I'm uneasy with the diction of this (dominant) school of grammar - it's hard going for a writer on deadline - and I'm uncomfortable with its claim to "correct" the "errors" of older traditional grammar.
I'm more comfortable with the commonsense and plain-spokenness of modern grammar. Like others, I look at what the postmodern grammarians have to say, and I look back to the ancients, and I look in the middle, to acknowledge disagreements and developments, to discuss differences of view, and in the end to come as close as I can to a clear and useful description of everything important.
The larger part of grammar isn't especially mysterious or contentious. But there are controversies, and there are areas where even now the scholars are trying to agree how best to make sense of usages that have been in the language since Chaucer's April showers. (How do we properly understand the infinite phrase, for instance, in "I'd love you to love me"?)
Grammar doesn't construct language; it describes the way it goes. Grammar tries to explain how language works, so that we might use language, especially on paper, with some insight and consistency, and in doing so keep it strong.
Because grammar scares some of us witless, even though we practise it most of the moments of our waking lives, talking or writing, and because there's a school of thought that looks on grammar as a kind of tyranny imposed on our creativity by a cardigan-wearing cadre of joyless pedants, I offer you this metaphor for grammar.
Grammar is the rules of democracy, which regulate and perpetuate this imperfect paradise of ours. It's the bundle of shared values, etiquettes, codified or inherited rights and obligations, along with a certain amount of governance infrastructure, all of which helps keep us in the freedom (of speech) to which we are accustomed.
Now, as someone has said - with the activities of the CIA in mind - democracy can be overdone, and so can grammar. But we need some rules if we want what democracy allows us, if we want to prevent anarchy and tyranny. And we want some rules and we need to practise them if we want meaning to abound.
The rules of grammar are the rules for paradise. The institutions and articles of democracy manufacture and conserve freedom. The rules of grammar manufacture and conserve language, with its power to make and share meaning. Grammar is the system inside the language; it is the constitution of the tongue. And if we want a community of sense - if we want to continue the vigorous and sometimes absurd and sometimes glorious conversation about ourselves and our world that we carry on in literature and government and everyday speech - then we'll need to know and observe our language's bill of rights: we'll need to learn and practise our grammar

Now, I don't care for undue formality, the kind that pedantic insistence on grammar can foster. Grammar, like democracy, can be overdone. I like intelligent informality. We need a diversity of styles; each of us needs to find our unique voice and native syntax. That's the kind of democracy I'd fight for. I'm drawn, in particular, to the beauty of authentic vernacular, and some of that disobeys grammar.
If you're writing, though, you'll need to obey more rules. Readers demand it; if they're to follow you without your waving arms and your twinkling eyes and the acts that accompany speech, readers need you to take more care with the words and how you lay them down. But you don't have to sound pompous. Good writers sound like good talkers - but a little tidier.
My point is this: getting your grammar down shouldn't make you sound like the Queen of England. Correctness doesn't entail formality. Sound sentences needn't sound stilted.
Indeed, such writing will fail. It's a lapse of taste, a want of cool, no matter how correct it is. So, relax your diction, but straighten your syntax. Stay cool; write like you speak, only better. The "better" is where the grammar comes in.
The poet Mark Tredinnick is the author of The Little Green Grammar Book.

If you buy a grammar text published today it was written last year. That makes it out of date. Just as old bald rich men write history, anal out-of-touch, phat-assed academics write grammar texts. Even if you spoke perfect English with whom, who, would you speak it to, with, at?

Great post refuse!! A green for you...

Originally Posted by timjack

Grammar is the creator of slang, the more it gets shoved down our throats the more slang emerges. Grammar does not teach you to talk. Just think when a child is three and mum says "come back here Johnny" often enough, its not long before Johnny understands "Mum wants me to come to her." Grammar has nothing to do with it.

Grammar is what is holding back Thai Students, they are too scared to make a mistake. The Thai teachers are experts in enforcing this by applying Thai thinking from their language which is strict unlike English. (where's the old "i" before "e" rule gone for the word their) or the plural rules except for the words like sheep or fish.

Just my two cents worth.

Grammar is just one thing holding back Thai students. Throw in the mix multi choice exams, no exposure through displays to English, no questioning and the fact that Thai teachers can't teach and then you find the problem. Thai students for me are often not scared to make a mistake. some are but most for me simply have no knowledge a rsult of a system that didn't teach them to read English at Pratom level.

Grammar is the creator of slang, the more it gets shoved down our throats the more slang emerges.

Err, no. Slang has a whole lot of origins. The biggest is probably from a group, as an identity. And then there's the notion words and phrases you hear too often need a new face. Then there's jargon. Then the phenomena of shortening up words and phrases for the sake of brevity. Like in a hospital .. OD, DOA, ER, CPR, etc. These are the terms which turn into verb forms. A lot of nouns turn to verbs, Mickey Mouse, dog, buffalo, etc.

A lot of it is born in institutions as well, prisons, schools, work places. Some of the slang last for decades, some die out quickly. Seems to depend on how well the word or phrase serves the community.

Now don't I sound like a guy who wrote a book on the subject? I did.

Originally Posted by jonny danger

Err, no. Slang has a whole lot of origins. The biggest is probably from a group, as an identity. And then there's the notion words and phrases you hear too often need a new face. Then there's jargon.

Yes you are spot on, maybe I could of worded it better, "Idioms" is probably a better word in this case, in Thailand it's a real hard sell for the students and teachers to get a grasp of idioms in general as they vary so much from the major English speaking countries.

Thanks for the input on this matter jonny.

Cheers.