My Grammatical Problem
I've got a grammatical problem: my son, who began Junior High School in April, has started learning formal English grammar in ernest, and suddenly I'm being called upon to explain the ins and outs of past perfect, present progressive, subjunctive mood, and tense agreement to him. Back in my ESL (English as a Second Language) days, I was quite adept at teaching the rules of grammar either in English or Japanese, but it's been ten years since I was called sensei, and a lot of that knowledge escapes me now. The Japanese take English grammar seriously, and during Junior High and High School spend six years learning it in great detail, of course always discussing it in Japanese rather than, you know, English, since it's mostly considered a test subject for university entrance examinations anyway. The biggest question students usually ask is why, why do sentences like "He will have been to Kyoto five times" or "If he had gotten the job, he would have been happy" need to exist. Due to the simpler construction of Japanese sentences, most of these linguistic twists aren't needed and can't even be easily expressed, which was a real boon to me, coming from the other direction.
posted by Peter in Japan at 8:25 PM
13 Comments:
that's the odd thing about English: one can learn all those strange tenses and use them properly, but it has been nearly 40 years since I've studied grammar, and I could never explain it now. It is as if the knowledge is "internalized", but not easy to retrieve.
2:00 AM
Yep. And "why" is always a hard question to answer. "Because" is not what they want to hear.
2:11 AM
I'm probably at my peak right now with grammar, what with still being a student. And most likely, I'll forget it all too.
I think the main thing is, English gives each way you can express an idea a unique grammatical form, for greater precision and detail at the cost of ease of use.
That's my theory, anyway.
3:49 AM
Well, we have it because the Romans had it, why Latin needs the ability to express such things I don't know.
I have been watching episodes of an old show called The Electric Company. In a couple episodes they have one characters ask "Why do we have ea and ee, two spellings for the same sound?" "Why two pronunciations for the letter c?" and this pedagogical pioneering show says "Because."
8:32 AM
One of my friends was an ESL student from S. Korea, and she asked me one day to explain the difference between I wish and I hope. It is challenging to take your native language, dissect it, and then make it seem simple for someone who is studying it from a different mindset. I think it would be really difficult to answer your son's grammar questions! Good luck with the next few years, I bet you cannot wait for the college entrance exam days:D
2:10 PM
Yes, and it's said among us ESL types that Koreans will really take you to the mat if you are a teacher and can't explain stuff to their satisfaction. Japanese will just shrug but Koreans will get in your face until you give them the answer they want. This is why Koreans speak English better than Japanese. ^_^
6:00 PM
then there is the whole issue of slang in language. when I'm in the machine shop, I use a coarse sort of English that I would not use with family members, for example. And when I speak to my Mexican co-workers, I use a simple, clarified sort of speech, along with a little Spanish, to ease communication. Maybe nihongo is like this, too.
8:30 PM
Oh yes, there's standard (boring) Japanese from Tokyo, the dialect called Edokko of people who have lived in Tokyo since back when it was called Edo, silly young person slang, polite Japanese for job interviews. I speak politely to my mother in law for example, and the other day I was doing that and my daughter said, why are you talking like that? She's your mother, so just talk normally to her. But she's my mother in law, so I don't just talk to her as if she were my age. Language is difficult.
10:39 PM
I actually speak worse, more informal English with my immediate family than with my friends(but not extended family).
Let me try to take a crack at that "I wish" and "I hope" disparity:
"I wish" is for when you know the thing you wish for is not true/does nto exist, and its unlikely that it will be true, but you are expressing your desire for it to be true.
"I hope" is for when you do not really know your chances, or when there is a relatively plausible chance for what you desire to be true actually being true. It's nto just idle musing like when you wish for something knowing it isn't to be, it's a more genuine expression of desire for something that could be true.
The difference is still very small, that's why I'm thankful it's all intuitive when you grow up around English.
tudza: good call on Romans an Latin, I can't say why it was decided to make Latin like that either.
3:23 AM
A lot of it is internalized; we speak how we hear things. As for why sentences like "He would have been happy if he had gotten the job" exist, my college grammar teacher would have been able to explain that. It was a very analytical class, analyzing and diagramming sentences down to the last detail. There was a whole class on "to be" and "to have" and how they help verbs along. Each instance of the words stands for its own verb helping along the others. For example, "He would have been happy" breaks down something like this: "would": past tense of "will," as in something is going to happen. "Have" is a helping verb for "been," but I can't remember why. "Been" is a form of "be", meaning a state that you're in at the current moment. There were also long lessons about sentences within sentences (I think on the final, there were about 10 in one sentence!). It was the most interesting class I had that semester, believe it or not.
3:22 PM
A lot of it is internalized; we speak how we hear things. As for why sentences like "He would have been happy if he had gotten the job" exist, my college grammar teacher would have been able to explain that. It was a very analytical class, analyzing and diagramming sentences down to the last detail. There was a whole class on "to be" and "to have" and how they help verbs along. Each instance of the words stands for its own verb helping along the others. For example, "He would have been happy" breaks down something like this: "would": past tense of "will," as in something is going to happen. "Have" is a helping verb for "been," but I can't remember why. "Been" is a form of "be", meaning a state that you're in at the current moment. There were also long lessons about sentences within sentences (I think on the final, there were about 10 in one sentence!). It was the most interesting class I had that semester, believe it or not.
3:22 PM
A lot of it is internalized; we speak how we hear things. As for why sentences like "He would have been happy if he had gotten the job" exist, my college grammar teacher would have been able to explain that. It was a very analytical class, analyzing and diagramming sentences down to the last detail. There was a whole class on "to be" and "to have" and how they help verbs along. Each instance of the words stands for its own verb helping along the others. For example, "He would have been happy" breaks down something like this: "would": past tense of "will," as in something is going to happen. "Have" is a helping verb for "been," but I can't remember why. "Been" is a form of "be", meaning a state that you're in at the current moment. There were also long lessons about sentences within sentences (I think on the final, there were about 10 in one sentence!). It was the most interesting class I had that semester, believe it or not.
3:22 PM
If it's plu, it's less than perfect in my opinion.
We won't even go into the troubles involved in sentence structures for time travel. "He will have going to been happily." In this system, it is improper to split an infinity.
Or my newly invented "cake" grammar. "past tense, screw the past tense, let's have some cake!"
3:40 PM
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