# grammar, how it was learned 'old-style.'



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

grammar, how it was learned 'old-style.'

Currently, there are people with bachelor and master degrees entering the work sector who can not write a simple and legible memo: there is a brisk business in tutoring, paid for by the businesses who hired those college-diploma holding new employees


----------



## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

I remember that we actually tried learning grammar this way once in middle school, but I found it unhelpful and a bit confusing. To me, grammar comes naturally, and I generally don't understand why it's necessary to study it. All you have to do is write in a way that makes sense. But then again, when I read other people's papers...


----------



## Posie (Aug 18, 2013)

I love the sentence structure diagrams. They are like a game to me.


----------



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

PetrB said:


> grammar, how it was learned 'old-style.'
> 
> Currently, there are people with bachelor and master degrees entering the work sector who can not write a simple and legible memo: there is a brisk business in tutoring, paid for by the businesses who hired those college-diploma holding new employees
> 
> View attachment 49641


that looks more obfuscated then it needs to be.


----------



## Guest (Aug 25, 2014)

Mercifully, few of us English teachers teach sentence diagramming these days.


----------



## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

I had to do some sentence diagramming in 10th grade. I didn't like it. Syntax is probably my least favorite branch of linguistics, although I am looking forward to taking classes on syntactic theory  Except the kind of diagrams done in that class make sentence diagramming look like a walk in the park


----------



## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

I not need diagram. I good speak grammar.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

As a teacher, I'm not sure what diagraming sentences is supposed to teach students. Except how to diagram sentences. 

Remember when football coaches thought it was a good idea not to let players drink water during practice? Ah, the good old days. How we've declined since then. I blame inflation.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

English has grammar? who knew...

You don't really need to tear apart the sentences like that to analyze them.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I think it was intended to make the relationships *easier* to understand. It probably does that - once the mechanism is understood. There's the rub.


----------



## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

I think the best way to learn grammar is to (a) read well-written English and (b) write a lot, and have a teacher evaluate it.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

well ever since i learn how 2 rite I dont need grammer honestly its just some elitist junk prevents me from expressing my feelings bout life and stuff luk u guys get me rite im not wrong here.


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Tristan said:


> I had to do some sentence diagramming in 10th grade. I didn't like it. Syntax is probably my least favorite branch of linguistics, although I am looking forward to taking classes on syntactic theory  Except the kind of diagrams done in that class make sentence diagramming look like a walk in the park


Yay! organic chemistry!


----------



## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

I talk good.

V


----------



## ProudSquire (Nov 30, 2011)

My thoughts follow my feelings, that's how I think and write, mostly. But I'l be the first to admit that my grammar skills are very poor and downright atrocious at times, but luckily I hear that Google can fix everything, right? I hope so. :{

Also, Diagrams are cool, but not as cool as Pictograms! I think! (*^_^)


----------



## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Yay! organic chemistry!


That's what my friend said! "It's the organic chemistry of linguistics"


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> well ever since i learn how 2 rite I dont need grammer honestly its just some elitist junk prevents me from expressing my feelings bout life and stuff luk u guys get me rite im not wrong here.


These sentences would be diagrammed exactly the same as their grammatically corrected versions. Someone in this position would need to work on punctuation and spelling, but learning to diagram sentences wouldn't help them at all.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The age of grammar is over. We're now in the age of texting (or more likely sexting) where other skills have more social value. Our educational establishment, as always, needs to catch up. Meanwhile, even the world's politicians are moving forward.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28886305

Did somebody say "attention span"? Can't remember...


----------



## Guest (Aug 25, 2014)

KenOC said:


> The age of grammar is over.


You'll have to pry it from my cold, stiff fingers.


----------



## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> well ever since i learn how 2 rite I dont need grammer honestly its just some elitist junk prevents me from expressing my feelings bout life and stuff luk u guys get me rite im not wrong here.


This is perfectly comprehensible, just not written using our usual conventions. And unexpected, coming from you!


----------



## Guest (Aug 25, 2014)

I can't say with any certainty how I learned to write English the way I do. The process began so long ago and I'm sure had so many contributory components that it would be almost impossible to separate out each strand ("30% of what I learned came directly from the teaching of my 4th form teacher, Mr Jenkins and 10% from reading Sir Ernest Gowers' _Complete Plain Words_ for a start.")

However, I'm sure that the other languages I studied at school - Latin, German, French and Spanish - did improve my understanding of the structure of English.

The diagram in the OP is an amusing puzzle for those who like that sort of thing. Whether it is effective as a teaching tool for newcomers to grammar is another matter.


----------



## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

KenOC said:


> The age of grammar is over.


Imagine the despair of all the non-native English speakers who have spent endless hours drilling English grammar only to discover that!


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Imagine the despair of all the non-native English speakers who have spent endless hours drilling English grammar only to discover that!


For ESL speakers, the old rules are easier than the new games.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

PetrB said:


> grammar, how it was learned 'old-style.'
> 
> View attachment 49641


Looks like we've got the makings of a decent subway network here heh heh...


----------



## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Anybody feel like doing that with a De Quincey sentence? --

Already, in this year 1845, what by the procession through fifty years of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the earth, what by the continual development of vast physical agencies, steam in all its applications, light getting under harness as a slave for man, powers from heaven descending upon education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might seem, but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces of destruction, the eye of the calmest observer is troubled; the brain is haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us; and it becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be retarded (a thing not to be expected), or, which is happily more probable, can be met by counter forces of corresponding magnitude, forces in the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely human, left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy, for others to a regency of fleshly torpor.​
If I were an English teacher I'd assign misbehaving children a simple assignment: break down a single sentence. The length of the sentence would vary of course. If I really hated them, it'd be time to break out Faulkner.

Just exactly like Father if Father had known as much about it the night before I went out there as he did the day after I came back thinking Mad impotent old man who realised at last that there must be some limit even to the capabilities of a demon for doing harm, who must have seen his situation as that of the show girl, the pony, who realises that the principal tune she prances to comes not from horn and fiddle and drum but from a clock and calendar, must have seen himself as the old wornout cannon which realises that it can deliver just one more fierce shot and crumble to dust in its own furious blast and recoil, who looked about upon the scene which was still within his scope and compass and saw son gone, vanished, more insuperable to him now than if the son were dead since now (if the son still lived) his name would be different and those to call him by it strangers and whatever dragon's outcropping of Sutpen blood the son might sow on the body of whatever strange woman would therefore carry on the tradition, accomplish the hereditary evil and harm under another name and upon and among people who will never have heard the right one; daughter doomed to spinsterhood who had chosen spinsterhood already before there was anyone named Charles Bon since the aunt who came to succor her in bereavement and sorrow found neither but instead that calm absolutely impenetrable face between a homespun dress and sunbonnet seen before a closed door and again in a cloudy swirl of chickens while Jones was building the coffin and which she wore during the next year while the aunt lived there and the three women wove their own garments and raised their own food and cut the wood they cooked it with (excusing what help they had from Jones who lived with his granddaughter in the abandoned fishing camp with its collapsing roof and rotting porch against which the rusty scythe which Sutpen was to lend him, make him borrow to cut away the weeds from the door-and at last forced him to use though not to cut weeds, at least not vegetable weeds-would lean for two years) and wore still after the aunt's indignation had swept her back to town to live on stolen garden truck and out of anonymous baskets left on her front steps at night, the three of them, the two daughters negro and white and the aunt twelve miles away watching from her distance as the two daughters watched from theirs the old demon, the ancient varicose and despairing Faustus fling his final main now with the Creditor's hand already on his shoulder, running his little country store now for his bread and meat, haggling tediously over nickels and dimes with rapacious and poverty-stricken whites and *******, who at one time could have galloped for ten miles in any direction without crossing his own boundary, using out of his meagre stock the cheap ribbons and beads and the stale violently-colored candy with which even an old man can seduce a fifteen-year-old country girl, to ruin the granddaughter of his partner, this Jones-this gangling malaria-ridden white man whom he had given permission fourteen years ago to squat in the abandoned fishing camp with the year-old grandchild-Jones, partner porter and clerk who at the demon's command removed with his own hand (and maybe delivered too) from the showcase the candy beads and ribbons, measured the very cloth from which Judith (who had not been bereaved and did not mourn) helped the granddaughter to fashion a dress to walk past the lounging men in, the side-looking and the tongues, until her increasing belly taught her embarrassment-or perhaps fear;-Jones who before '61 had not even been allowed to approach the front of the house and who during the next four years got no nearer than the kitchen door and that only when he brought the game and fish and vegetables on which the seducer-to-be's wife and daughter (and Clytie too, the one remaining servant, negro, the one who would forbid him to pass the kitchen door with what he brought) depended on to keep life in them, but who now entered the house itself on the (quite frequent now) afternoons when the demon would suddenly curse the store empty of customers and lock the door and repair to the rear and in the same tone in which he used to address his orderly or even his house servants when he had them (and in which he doubtless ordered Jones to fetch from the showcase the ribbons and beads and candy) direct Jones to fetch the jug, the two of them (and Jones even sitting now who in the old days, the old dead Sunday afternoons of monotonous peace which they spent beneath the scuppernong arbor in the back yard, the demon lying in the hammock while Jones squatted against a post, rising from time to time to pour for the demon from the demijohn and the bucket of spring water which he had fetched from the spring more than a mile away then squatting again, chortling and chuckling and saying 'Sho, Mister Tawm' each time the demon paused)-the two of them drinking turn and turn about from the jug and the demon not lying down now nor even sitting but reaching after the third or second drink that old man's state of impotent and furious undefeat in which he would rise, swaying and plunging and shouting for his horse and pistols to ride single-handed into Washington and shoot Lincoln (a year or so too late here) and Sherman both, shouting, 'Kill them! Shoot them down like the dogs they are!' and Jones: 'Sho, Kernel; sho now' and catching him as he fell and commandeering the first passing wagon to take him to the house and carry him up the front steps and through the paintless formal door beneath its fanlight imported pane by pane from Europe which Judith held open for him to enter with no change, no alteration in that calm frozen face which she had worn for four years now, and on up the stairs and into the bedroom and put him to bed like a baby and then lie down himself on the floor beside the bed though not to sleep since before dawn the man on the bed would stir and groan and Jones would say, 'Hyer I am, Kernel. Hit's all right. They aint whupped us yit, air they?'-this Jones who after the demon rode away with the regiment when the granddaughter was only eight years old would tell people that he 'was lookin after Major's place and *******' even before they had time to ask him why he was not with the troops and perhaps in time came to believe the lie himself, who was among the first to greet the demon when he returned, to meet him at the gate and say, 'Well, Kernel, they kilt us but they aint whupped us yit, air they?' who even worked, labored, sweat at the demon's behest during that first furious period while the demon believed he could restore by sheer indomitable willing the Sutpen's Hundred which he remembered and had lost, labored with no hope of pay or reward who must have seen long before the demon did (or would admit it) that the task was hopeless-blind Jones who apparently saw still in that furious lecherous wreck the old fine figure of the man who once galloped on the black thoroughbred about that domain two boundaries of which the eye could not see from any point.​
Good thing I'm not a teacher.


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

I cannot remember being taught grammar. 
I do remember being confused when learning Latin and French (at what was euphemistically called a Grammar School) because I did not understand the grammatical terms that were used in those languages (or the functions of such things as the pluperfect or even an infinitive). We weren't taught such things, we were just expected to know them. 
Fortunately, the standard of teaching has improved a lot in British schools since the 1970s.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Clearly Faulkner's middle school English teacher failed.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

science said:


> Clearly Faulkner's middle school English teacher failed.


And I thought whichever one of the James boys it was had that sort of thing nailed!


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I'm wondering if 'us English speakers' are maybe the only ones whose primary school studies do not include the formal study of the grammar of our native language. Europeans, it seems, are routinely taught the formal grammar of their native languages, usually starting in primary school.


----------



## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> I cannot remember being taught grammar.
> I do remember being confused when learning Latin and French (at what was euphemistically called a Grammar School) because I did not understand the grammatical terms that were used in those languages (or the functions of such things as the pluperfect or even an infinitive). We weren't taught such things, we were just expected to know them.
> Fortunately, the standard of teaching has improved a lot in British schools since the 1970s.


And that is the reason why grammar is taught. To make it easier to learn other languages. I still think it is difficult to know these terms despite having learned them in school. It went in to one ear and out of the other.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Meanwhile, in our present day:


----------



## Guest (Sep 4, 2014)

This article about correct usage of the comma (The Panda bear : eats, shoots and leaves) might be worth a read :
http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2014/sep/04/mind-your-language-commas


----------



## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

My mother was an English major and a poet, so I grew up with her insisting I speak correctly, sometimes to the point of distraction. I never did understand the diagramming of sentences, not even when Bernstein explained them in the first few Norton Lectures [Unanswered Question].


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Meanwhile, in our present day:
> View attachment 49857


It makes me wonder whatever the hell prompted your eminence to open this thread; not that I care enough to expect an answer.


----------



## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)




----------



## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Grammar is outdated and useless, because you cannot make money with it. Ditto history, philosophy, classic academics etc.


----------



## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Xaltotun said:


> Grammar is outdated and useless, because you cannot make money with it. Ditto history, philosophy, classic academics etc.


No, sir, grammar is outdated and useless because its rules are too strict and authoritarian for a modern liberated egalitarian society.


----------



## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

For starters, you're spelling it wrong. It's _grandma_. Pfft.


----------



## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Now, Is that true that American students graduate from high school without ever being taught what a noun, an adjective or an adverb is?


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Now, Is that true that American students graduate from high school without ever being taught what a noun, an adjective or an adverb is?


I learned those things in Elementary School. I'm only 23 so it's probably not that different but maybe it is. Or maybe my school district was unusually good.


----------



## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

Grammar isn't important, as long as you get your point across.


----------



## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Meanwhile, in our present day:
> View attachment 49857


If smiley face emotions were good enough for Walt Whitman, they are good enough for me!

I went to a UK comprehensive and was taught no grammar at all, and precious little of anything else either. As far as one's own language goes, there are worse teaching approaches than benign neglect: kids learn by ear and most of what they learn is tolerably correct, whereas if they had to stare at those terrifying diagrams they might lose all confidence and decide to stick with a system of gesticulation and grunting, since the formation of sentences is clearly a task too complex for people of ordinary intellectual abilities!

I still can't punctuate to save my life though. I should probably buy another copy of 'Mind the Stop', which I've lost, and stay away from Walt and his experimental punctuation


----------



## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Study shows young adults in the US aren't any better (worse?) than their elders when it comes to grammar:

http://today.yougov.com/news/2014/11/11/one-in-five-grammar-nazis/

In article form (it headlines the "grammar Nazi" finding, which is less interesting, IMO):

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/uby68mm0k2/tabs_OPI_grammar_nazi_20141021.pdf

The article ends by stating that Americans aren't any worse than the British, although it doesn't source it.


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

When I was in school, I was always in the honors classes, so I didn't think I needed "bonehead English," i.e., grammar. I even got on the college honor society. Then I entered court reporting school. In my first English class, I got my teeth kicked in. It turns out I needed bonehead English after all. Diagramming of sentences, punctuation, verbs, and all those things has ended up getting me in a career which has put a roof over my head. 

I have a friend who wanted to be a writer. Once he submitted a story to me for my opinion. I spent all my time correcting his poor grammar. This, of course, irritated the young artiste, who commenced to tell me that John Grisham does this and Rowling does that. He enrolled in college and took writing courses. It's funny; he's not doing the things I marked him up for anymore, but it's a shame that it cost him significantly more than I charged him.

It would be nice if we all learned to communicate effectively and could speak proper English without being considered a snob. But then again, it would be nice to see pigs with wings.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

PetrB said:


> I'm wondering if 'us English speakers' are maybe the only ones whose primary school studies do not include the formal study of the grammar of our native language. Europeans, it seems, are routinely taught the formal grammar of their native languages, usually starting in primary school.


I have always thought the English are excellent at language. Just imagine, at three or four years of age they can already speak English!


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

brianvds said:


> I have always thought the English are excellent at language. Just imagine, at three or four years of age they can already speak English!


One never hears the English saying "you know", when they speak. Only Americans. We really butcher spoken English. One would think it's ESL. Disgraceful.


----------



## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

hpowders said:


> One never hears the English saying "you know", when they speak. Only Americans. We really butcher spoken English. One would think it's ESL. Disgraceful.


I think you are giving the English too much credit (no offense to them). Of course, when Americans think of the typical Brit, we tend to think of Laurence Olivier rather than some footballer or rocker.


----------



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> well ever since i learn how 2 rite I dont need grammer honestly its just some elitist junk prevents me from expressing my feelings bout life and stuff luk u guys get me rite im not wrong here.


"Rite"...as is Stravinsky?


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

hpowders said:


> One never hears the English saying "you know", when they speak. Only Americans. We really butcher spoken English. One would think it's ESL. Disgraceful.


You know what? I hear English people speak like this a lot ... almost everyday that I'm not in the cave


----------

