Grammatical mistakes

[Richard Robin]

Just look at the Q-A section of gramota.ru!

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 1:43 PM, George Kalbouss <kalbouss at mac.com> wrote:

>        This question stems from frustrating experiences I've had with
> people
> in the Columbus area whose grammar is positively atrocious.  I'm not
> speaking
> of word mispronunciation or spelling mistakes.  I'm speaking of people who
> seem
> totally incapable of forming a past tense (i.e. "we wuz here," "I seen it
> yesterday,"
> "he has came here,"), as well as other variances from the norm.  There
> should
> be no excuse for this, for the most part the speakers are from the working
> class,
> but are virtually all high school graduates.
>
>        The question I have is this:  "do Russians make grammatical errors?"
>  When
> I think of all the interactions I have had with Russians, both in Russia
> and emigres
> in the US,  I cannot recall ever encountering one who made a grammatical
> error.
> (I'm excluding so-called "heritage speakers,"  persons of other ethnic
> backgrounds
> for whom Russian is a second language, or people who mispronounce words).
>     When
> I think about the various dialogues I've read in Russian literature and
> drama,  I can recall many
> instances of "dialect" Russian which was usually expressed with alternate
> pronunciations,
> but not really errors in grammar.
>
>        A few years back, I was taking a seminar in the Finnish language in
> Finland.
> After going through practicums in incredible rules of grammar,
>  declensions, exceptions, etc.,
> one of the participants in the group asked the instructors the same
> question, i.e.,
> "do Finns make grammatical errors?"  The instructors seemed visibly lost in
> answering
> the question,  their first inclination was to say, "no they don't" -- yet
> an answer like
> that seemed positively silly.
>
>        If I am right (or leaning in that direction),  what is it about
> English that seems to invite
> people into making these mistakes when Russian and Finnish (and other
> languages)
> where there are many more rules and variances, for people to speak
> correctly?  Perhaps
> at least we can agree that errors in grammar seem to abound more with
> native English speakers
> than they do with native Russian speakers.
>
>        I'd appreciate any musings on this subject!
>
> George Kalbouss
> Assoc Prof (Emeritus)
> The Ohio State University
>
>
>
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-- 
Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
Director Russian Language Program
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-7081
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Russkiy tekst v UTF-8

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