Grammar fascination

General discussion about learning languages

Your relationship with Grammar

Grammar and I fell in love the first time we met.
23
36%
Grammar grew on me.
29
45%
Grammar and I never really kicked it off.
12
19%
 
Total votes: 64

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luke
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Grammar fascination

Postby luke » Wed Sep 08, 2021 11:54 pm

Curious if you've ever gotten intimate with grammar.
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Le Baron
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby Le Baron » Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:50 am

On/off relationship. Sometimes she upsets me, then she says something funny and we make up. I enjoy her in small, but intense doses.
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby einzelne » Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:41 am

La grammaire? C'est une femme d'un certain âge ou d'un âge certain? (just an examples when I find grammar explanations fascinating and indispensable)
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby jmar257 » Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:45 am

I voted grew on me; I'm still by no means a grammar nerd but it's more fun to learn the nuances when you already have seen them in practice.
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lingua
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby lingua » Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:31 am

I also voted "grew on me" because I've learned to enjoy grammar study while learning languages. I hated English grammar back when I was forced to take it in school as I didn't see the point. Especially sentence parsing. I believe I learned more English grammar while learning Italian than I ever did as a child.
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby Iversen » Thu Sep 09, 2021 8:29 am

I have found grammar both interesting and practical since I started learning languages in the early 60s (partly by home study), but I don't think I read a single grammar book or article between 1982 and 2006 - at most I had a peek in some of the small language guides, which of course have tiny grammar sections. However I have used them consistently and assiduously since I refueled my longtime interrupted language learning project, and now I enjoy reading grammar books.

That being said, the word 'love' has for me some connotations of insanity, sentimentality and mania which I don't see in grammar - grammar is for me an intellectual endeavour rather than a love affair.
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby Vordhosbn » Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:14 am

My principal interest in languages has always been a desire to think in patterns that are not native to me. I remember one lunch time long ago in high school sitting in the library reading through a book called "Languages of the World", and marveling at the different ways in which humans across the planet structure their thoughts. Soon after I got grounded in German, I became curious to know how French worked in comparison. Now it's extended well beyond the Indo-European family itself, whose various branches hold intrinsically less interest for me than the likes of Korean, Georgian, Greenlandic etc.

I've come to realize, however, that long term one needs more than just grammatical curiosity to go beyond the intermediate level, since by that point the language's most superficial secrets will have been revealed to you. What was once novel soon becomes habit, so a deep cultural interest is ultimately necessary to carry on towards mastery.
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby Cavesa » Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:17 am

Which one?

The French grammar and I fell in love immediately, and it lead to me hating the teachers teaching it badly or hiding it away (with bad consequences for the learning process). But they couldn't stop me, I got better sources and worked independently.

The Spanish and Italians grammars and I fell in love too, but I've neglected the relationship at times (especially the Italian one!), due to relying too much on the ressemblances with French. But I've learnt my lesson, I'll give them the needed attention again and really make the relationship grow.

The English grammar and I had hated each other for years. Then it became my path out of hell, and I learnt it (a summer with a grammar book). I somehow got used to its weird ways. I don't like it, I could do with refreshment of some bits, but I am a proficient user of it and could even explain it pretty well.

The Latin grammar and I, that's a sort of a one sided admiration. I like it, but it was simply not a good moment years ago, I was too lazy to give it the attention and hard work it deserved, therefore the basics crumbled easily after exams. I still tell myself at times "and how about restarting Latin?".

The German grammar and I might be living a sort of a Stockholm Syndrome situation now. I write about the current teaching/learning project in my log. And while my hate for most things German (vast majority of the culture, country, behaviour of the people, the way the language is promoted or sounds) stays unchanged, I am beginning to strangely enjoy the grammar.
....
But in general, I love learning the grammar. It makes the overall learning much faster, much more efficient. I think people avoiding it (often due to teacher caused traumas) are mostly doing themselves a bad service, getting rid of a major advantage of an adult brain. The ability to think logically and abstractly, to understand and apply patterns.

It needs to be taught differently than what many teachers or tools do, and we need to get rid of the false dichotomy grammar vs. immersion. Most learners will simply not succeed with only one of the two parts.
6 x

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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby Random Review » Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:30 pm

Depending on how broadly you define grammar (e.g. if you include phonetics and semantics), I study languages out of an interest in grammar rather than vice versa. The exception to that is German (which I always loved).

It's really more of an interest in how our minds work for me.
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Re: Grammar fascination

Postby gsbod » Thu Sep 09, 2021 5:03 pm

For me the turning point came when I stopped thinking of grammar as an arbitrary set of rules that must be memorised and obeyed (or else incur the wrath of my rather unpleasant sixth form French teacher), and came to view it as an attempt to systematise patterns of usage (insofar as there are patterns that can be systematised), and as such is there to actually help you learn the language.

It also helped to learn acceptance that different languages do things differently, and that a certain amount of redundancy seems to be a built in feature to any language, although the form of that redundancy varies, which is also part of the fun I suppose.
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