prescriptive grammar

[Mark A. Mandel]

Barbara Need <nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU> writes:
>>>
 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.
<<<

On brief reflection: The way I was taught French was very much in the Latin
mode. True, that was in the 60s, and I don't know how it's taught now. My
German, in the 70s, did seem to have more that COULD have been fitted to
actual English-- perhaps not surprisingly, considering that German is much
closer kin to English than French is.

-- mam