prescriptive grammar

[Wilson Gray]

On Apr 8, 2005 9:58 AM, Barbara Need <nee1 at midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Barbara Need <nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: prescriptive grammar
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >Everyone has an intuitive knowledge of the grammar of his native
> >language. But to teach the language you have to know its formal
> >structure, and you have to be able to talk about it intelligently.
> >Die Zeit reports on a project run by Wilfried Kürschner, a
> >linguistics professor at the University of Vechta in Niedersachsen,
> >which teaches Latin grammar to aspiring secondary school teachers.
> >The idea is that the teachers will learn to understand and teach the
> >grammar of their own language by comparing and contrasting it with
> >that of Latin. The program is reportedly very popular among
> >teachers. Here's the article:
> >
> >http://www.zeit.de/2005/13/C-Latein-Deutsch
> >
> >I don't suppose most linguists, who are committed descriptivists,
> >would approve of this approach.
> >
> >Paul
> >________________________
> >Paul Frank
>
> I don't know. I will say that any number of speakers of English have
> told me that they did not understand [English] grammar until they had
> taken a foreign language. My response to that has generally been that
> that is because "English" grammar as taught in the schools is really
> not the grammar of English and that learning languages that are
> better fits for that grammar (e.g. French, German, etc.) allows the
> students to see how English translates that grammar.
>
> Barbara
>

--
At the primary school that I attended in the '40's, no attempt was
made to teach the grammar of English until we pupils reached the
fourth grade. The first four years were devoted to learning the
oddities of English spelling. From the fourth grade through the eighth
grade, English grammar was taught as an aspect of Latin grammar. It
was even claimed that Engliah has a Vocative case of the form, "O
[Name]"! When I found out that Irish really does have a Vocative of
almost precisely this form, I had to laugh.

In high school, where we studied Latin for seven hours a week and
Homeric Greek for five, the fact that I had already learned how to
study grammar in the classical manner in primary school turned out be
a real mitzve. I eventually placed in the top twenty in the Jesuits'
International Latin Contest. There was no Greek contest, but I
probably would have scored well in that, too.

-Wilson Gray