You don't have to know grammar to obey grammar. If you obey grammar from the outset, when you turn around later and learn why you should say things the way you're already saying them, each grammatical rule will then become not an instrument of abstract torture disconnected from anything you've experienced but rather an old friend who now wants you to have his home address and private phone number.

When the grammatical rule come first, followed by its pitiful two or three examples in the textbook, it seems to the student like an artificially confected bit of perversity rolled down upon his head like a boulder.

When the grammatical rule comes after you've got some of the language in you, it becomes a gift flashlight that makes you smile and say, "Now I understand why they say it that way!"

So, you are right now and forevermore warned not to bridle or to question, "Why is the word for `go' in this French sentence vais and in the very next sentence alley? " Simply embrace the faith that both sentences are correct and learn them like Catholic children in strict parochial schools learn the Baltimore Catechism.

The more shaken you become by grammatical storms, the more tightly you must hug the faith. I vow it will all become clear. And in this world. You won't have to wait for any other.

It's easy to reason, "Who am I trying to kid? They'll always know I'm a foreigner. They'll excuse my mistakes. So forget about all those rules. I just want to get by. Gimme some words and phrases and get out of my way. As long as they understand!"

That's an attitude to be resisted. When you learn another language, you will be accepted as an honoured volunteer into the culture of another people. Do you want to be accorded a low rank or a high rank? Learn the language properly, which means (eventual) conquest of the grammar. Don't be a buck private when, for a few minutes of extra concentration, you can be a general.

Look at it this way. Grammar is not a marathon run in which, if you tire, falter, or fall, you fail. Grammar is an edifice you must build on your property. But it doesn't have to be done all at once. At the appointed moment in your studies, I will advise you to master the first five lessons in your grammar book. (Some call it a textbook or a workbook — it's the book they'll give you at the bookstore if you ask, "Have you got anything that teaches you French?") After that, you will advance through reading, conversation, comprehension, and real world contact with the languages in addition to the grammar.

As I grappled with the complexities of grammar in Russian, Finnish, Hungarian, and, to a lesser extent, German, I had visions of those people way back when they were wandering tribes. I imagined the tribal elders squatting around campfires consulting with soothsayers who warned them, "In the mid twentieth century a child will be born to the Farber family in a place they'll call America. He will try to learn our language. At present it's too simple. Get back to work and come up with some more grammar. Let our noun endings mire him up to his hips. Let the felsh of his face feel the thorns of our verbs. Flay his back with exceptions to our rules and let his hair get caught in our inflecting negatives and perfective aspects.

"Hurry!" the soothsayer concludes. "We haven't got a century to waste. Get in there right now and mess our language up so that poor guy will never get it!"

Now let the adult mind enter and make peace. Obviously, no language tries to be hard just to keep you out. Whatever rules you find perplexing in your target language, that language came by them naturally and organically. Grammar does change, but so slowly you'll never have to worry about it. Approach the grammar with a smile and your hand extended. That which you understand, take and keep. That which is confusing, return to again and again. That which seems impossible, return to again and again and again, until it becomes merely confusing. It will ultimately become clear. Meanwhile, however, you will be speeding ahead in your command of the language as you keep returning to those stubborn fortresses of grammatical resistance.

I can honestly say I came to like the study of grammar. Once you finally approach grammar with the right attitude, it becomes both a map that shows you the pathways through a language and a rocket that takes you there faster.

A paleontologist can find lifetime fascination with a fossil a child might ignore, kick, or toss into the lake just to hear the splash. Likewise, the grammar of various languages throws off some laughs and insights nonlinguists never get a chance to marvel at.

In German, for example, a woman doesn't achieve feminine gender until she gets married. The word for "girl" (Mddchen) and "miss" (Frdulein) are both neuter gender. In Russian, the past tense of verbs acts like an adjective; it doesn't shift forms according to person and number as verbs normally do, but shift according to gender and number as adjectives do. In Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish the definite article ("the") follows the noun and is attached to it. Therefore, "a field" in Norwegian is en mark. "The field,", however, is marken. Romanian and Albanian, completely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages, do the same thing.

In Finnish, the word for "not" is a verb. (At least it behaves like a verb.) Finnish, alone in all the world, has an inflecting negative. In every other language in which verbs conjugate, the form of the verb changes according to person and number, whether the verb is positive or negative. Thus, in Spanish the verb meaning "to want" goes yo quiero, to quieres, el quiere. If you wish to say "I don't want", you keep the verb forms the same and throw the word for "not", no, in front of it (yo no quiero, to no quieres, el no quiere).

In Finnish, and this is pure believe-it-or-not to anyone who's looked at a lot of different languages, it's the word for not that does the changing! Thus, "I want," "you want," "he wants" in Finnish goes, (mina) haluan, (sind) haluat, (hdn) halua. In the negative, however, the verb for "want" becomes halua in all persons and the word for "not" changes from person to person. Thus, "I don't want," "you don't want," "he doesn't want" becomes (mina) en halua, (sind) et halua, (hdn) ei halua.

I think my most impossible to top discovery is the fact that in Hindi and Urdu "tomorrow" and "yesterday" are translated by the same word. Once, a Pakistani cab driver actually seemed irked that I found that to be at all strange. "We have verb tenses to tell us which is which" was his testy explanation.

American feminists have mounted crusades to convert sexist terms that have over the years insinuated themselves deeep into the language. We've all abandoned chairman, for example, for the cumbersome but less provocative chairperson, manhole for maintenance hole, and so on.

It's strange that the most blazing example of language sexism has gone unreformed, even though it occurs in some countries with active and successful feminist movements.