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Back to Basics Send the manager to this table immediately," demanded the diner in the restaurant. When the manager appeared, the diner railed, "This is the worst vanilla ice cream I've ever had." "I'm sorry, sir," said the manager. "That's not vanilla ice cream. That's butter pecan." "Oh," said the customer, suddenly placated. "For butter pecan, it's okay." This chapter on the basics of grammar should be read in that spirit.
"French verb changes are inaudible through the singular of the present tense." "The Spanish auxiliary verb `to have' is completely different from the verb `to have' implying possession." "The Scandinavian languages, Romanian, and Albanian are among the languages that place the definitive article after the noun." "Chinese has no case endings or verb inflections, and adjectives do not have to agree with nouns." Do you understand all of the above, or most of it? If so, you don't need this chapter, though some of it may come as a welcome refresher. This chapter is offered as catch-up for all of you who didn't pay attention in English class. Now you want to learn another language and you realise suddenly that your teacher was right, you were wrong, and here you are unable to understand the English you need to take command of another language. I, like you, sat smugly through grade school English convinced that ignorance of all those silly terms that went zipping by me would never interfere with any of my future endeavours. Nothing reforms the student who's apathetic towards English like a sudden desire to learn other languages. I could have learned foreign languages more easily from the outset had I sat down to learn just these bare bones I serve you now.
What
follows is a rundown of some of the terms you'll need to know to
advance easily through another language. The synopsis may be
misprioritised and incomplete, but on the other hand it is friendly,
nonjudgmental, brief, blunt, and, I hope, helpful.
NOUN A noun is a person, place, or thing — either a tangible thing, like a block of ice or a head of cattle or your mother in law, or an intangible thing, like a concept or an emotion.
PRONOUN The dictionary tells us that pronouns are words that serve as substitutes for nouns. If that's confusing, ignore it and let's get right down to the pronouns. In English they are I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them, my, mine, your, yours, his, hers, its, our, ours, their and theirs. In addition, we have INTERROGATIVE pronouns (who, what, which) for asking questions. We also have RELATIVE pronouns (who, whose, which, that) for explaining and describing the nouns we use. In the sentence "Who owns that house?" the pronoun who is used in interrogative form. It's asking a question. In the sentence "The man who owns that house is nice," the pronoun who is used in its relative sense. You're not asking anybody a question, you're identifying the man. "The man whose house...," "The house, which I visited...," and "The house that I visited..." all demonstrate the use of relative pronouns.
VERB A verb is an action word — to do, to go, to want, to think. Chances are that any word that sounds right after the word to (provided the to doesn't mean "toward" or "in the direction of') is a verb. English verbs are so consistent (unchanging), it's easy for the English speaker to get overwhelmed when tackling a language whose verbs INFLECT (change forms), as all the Romance, the Slavic, and many other languages' verbs do. When we follow a verb through all its forms (Igo, you go, he goes, we go, they go, in the present tense, past tense, future tense, etc.) we are CONJUGATING that verb. You'll feel less bewildered if you stop to realise that our own English verbs inflect just enough to give you the idea of changing forms. The present tense, third person singular form of the English verb (the he form) usually adds an s (I give, you give, but he gives).
INFINITIVE An infinitive is a verb in neutral gear. In English the infinitive is the form we talked about above — to go, to do, etc. The infinitive form of the verb go is therefore to go. That doesn't tell you who's going or when he's going or, in case he's already gone, when he went. The infinitive is just hanging there, ready to express any and all of the above possibilities when the proper INFLECTIONS, changes, are applied. The gears that neutral infinitives can shift into involve PERSON, NUMBER, and TENSE. We'll tackle them in that order. PERSON
I am FIRST PERSON. You are SECOND PERSON. He, she, or it is THIRD PERSON. The fussbudget grammarian wants to blow the whistle right here and remind us that we, you, and they are also first, second, and third person. Don't rush me. We're getting to it. NUMBER Number, in English and most other languages, is either SINGULAR or PLURAL. (In Russian and other Slavic languages there's a third one. They have singular, plural, and really plural. Be grateful!) I, the first person, am only one individual. Therefore I am first person singular. You, by yourself, are second person singular. He, she, and it are third person singular. We are more than one person; therefore we are first person plural. You, meaning two or more of you, are second person plural. Second person singular and second person plural in English happen to look and sound identical. That's not so in all languages. They are third person plural. The one English word they covers as many he's, she's and it's as anybody can possibly throw at you. Again, not all languages are so obliging! TENSES Even those who didn't pay much attention in school shouldn't have difficulty with tenses. I am is PRESENT tense. (To give it its full name and rank we'd have to say I am is the present tense, first person singular of the verb to be.) You were is PAST tense, or, more fully, the past tense, second person singular (in this case it could be plural too) of the verb to be. He will be is FUTURE tense, or the future tense, third person singular of the verb to be. The PERFECT tense is another form of the past tense that expresses not I was but rather I have been. (Perfect here just means "finished.") This tense is more important in English than in many other languages, and more important in French than in English. The PAST PERFECT (also called PLUPERFECT) tense is I had been. It takes place before the "regular" past. The IMPERFECT ("unfinished") tense is I was being, I was walking, I was going, doing, etc. The CONDITIONAL tense is I would be. There are more tenses, and they may vary from language to language, but that's enough to give you the hang of what tenses are. As the name suggests, auxiliaries are words that help you accomplish something. In English, the verb to have serves as the auxiliary that helps us form the perfect tenses (I have been, I had been). The verb to be serves as the auxiliary that helps us form the imperfect tense (I was going). NOUN CASES Just as ice, water, and steam are merely different forms of the same thing, I, me, my, and mine are merely diifferent forms of the same word. You pick the form according to what CASE you need. (Yes! You already do this in English.) Let's advance on case now and destroy its mystery before it destroys your enthusiasm. Noun (and pronoun) cases turn more people away from learning languages than boot camp turns away from joining the marines. And the same reason underlies both. Those who've been there enjoy boosting their own glory by exaggerating the difficulties involved to the intimidated uninitiated. "Wait until those drill instructors at Parris Island get a hold of you!" is essentially the same comment as "Wait until you run into all those noun cases!" You may recall with distaste the trouble you had with Latin's six noun cases. Russian also has six noun cases. Serbo-Croatian has seven. Other languages have even more. Anyone studying a language bristling with noun cases knows the sinking feeling of leaving warm, shallow water and running into wave after wave of charts showing nouns that change their endings for no apparent reason! You can ride those waves. Those nouns, in fact, change for very good reasons, reasons that are easy to catch on to provided you're not labouring under the spell of a showoff know-it-all who tells you, "Finnish! Forget it. They have fifteen noun cases in the singular and sixteen in the plural!" Fortunately, English has just enough of what we call noun cases to prove they're nothing to fear. Let's play with the word house. "The house is large." "The exterior of the house us green." "Let's go to the house." "I see the house." In all of those sentences, the form of house remains mercifully (for anybody learning English) the same. If there were any reason to strain a point and prove that plain English nouns can have case too, we could confect the sentence "The house's exterior is green," and point out that house's is the genitive case of house. To get a fuller example of case, we have to go to our English pronouns. "I have a pen." "My pen is good." "Give the pen to me. " "Do you hear me? " Look what happened to I as it changed roles in the various sentences. In the sentence "I have a pen," I is the subject of the sentence. In the sentence "My pen is good," I has changed to my to express the concept of possession. In the sentence "Give the pen to me, " I becomes the indirect object of the giving, and in the sentence "Do you hear me? " I becomes the direct object of the verb hear. If I wanted to discourage you instead of inspire you, I would say, "We have now met the NOMINATIVE case, the GENITIVE case, the DATIVE case, and the ACCUSATIVE case, and we're all going to stay right here and not come up for air until you can decline (give me the lineup of) 189 nouns in all those cases in the language you'd like to learn!" Instead I say let's move forward and learn how to say things and read things and understand things in the language. You can learn about noun cases and other grammatical complexities exactly the way you leaarned your uncles and aunts when you were a baby — one hug, one kiss, one lollipop at a time. When we carry the noun through all its cases we say we're DECLINING that noun. Noun cases tip you off to the role oof the noun or pronoun in a sentence. Many languages need them to tell you who is doing what to whom. Approach them with a good attitude and you will feel the wisdom of Mark Twain's little sermon, "Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was there." ADJECTIVES Adjectives are words that describe nouns. In the phrase "the green pen," green is the adjective that describes pen. You'll encounter some fuss about them because in many languages adjectives have to AGREE WITH (appear in the same form as) the nouns they MODIFY (refer to). In those languages adjectives must agree with the nouns in gender and number (and sometimes case). A little Spanish will quickly make it clear. El libro es rojo ("The book is red") shows the adjective rojo ("red") in masculine singular form to agree with libro ("book"). La pluma es roja ("The pen is red") shows the adjective roja ("red") in feminine singular form to agree with pluma ("pen"). Los libros son rojos ("The books are red") shows the adjective rojos ("red") in masculine plural form to agree with libros ("books"). Finally, Las plumas son rojas ("The pens are red") shows the adjective rojas ("red") in feminine plural form to agree with plumas ("pens"). ADVERBS Adverbs describe verbs — they tell how. "He mastered the easy parts of the language easily." Easily is the adverb telling how he mastered the easy parts (Easy, of couse, is the adjective.) PREPOSITIONS Prepositions are words that precede nouns and pronouns to form phrases (groups of words) that can act as adjectives or adverbs. Prepositions show relationships among nouns; they often indicate position or direction, and they are often short words: to, at, by, for, with, from, toward, on, over, behind, between, etc. DEFINITE ARTICLE The definite article in English is the word the. INDEFINITE ARTICLE The indefinite article in English is the word a or an. English has both the definite and indefinite article. Some other languages also have both. Some have one but not the other. Some have neither. SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT
Words like these symbolise the grade school "nerve gas" which deadens the desire to proceed through grammar and parts of speech, and diagramming sentences, and all related yawn provokers that once seemed to float too far over our heads ever to zoom down and give us discomfort. Those concepts may have seemed like distant enemies in the eighth grade when you had no intention of becoming an English teacher, but they're close friends and necessary allies when you're learning another language.
Briefly, in the sentence "He hits the ball," the word
he is the
SUBJECT,
hits is
the
VERB,
ball is
the
OBJECT,
the ACTIVE The verb is ACTIVE or in the ACTIVE VOICE if the subject is performing the verb action. In "He hits the ball," the verb hits is in the active voice because the subject he is the one (the AGENT) doing the hitting. PASSIVE The verb is PASSIVE or in the PASSIVE VOICE if the subject receives or is subject to the action of the verb. Thus in "The ball is hit by him", the subject ball doesn't do any hitting. Rather, it gets hit. Therefore, we say that the verb hit is in the passive voice because the subject ball is not performing the action of the verb but is rather having that action performed upon it. REFLEXIVE The verb is reflexive when its action bounces back upon itself. In the sentence "I dress myself," the subject I both performs the action and has it performed on itself. IMPERATIVE The imperative is the command form of the verb. The imperative of the verb to go is go! The imperative of the verb to watch is Watch! COMPARATIVE AND SUPERLATIVE Though not as flighty and volatile as verbs and nouns, English adjectives and adverbs can't sit entirely still. Good, better, and best are really the same word in escalating degrees. Good is the simple, the base form of the adjective. Better is the comparative form. Best is the superlative form. Good-better-best is an example of an irregular comparative-superlative construction. If it were regular, it would be good, gooder and goodest, like the regular neat, neater and neatest. The comparative and superlative of adverbs in English is formed with more and most: "He progressed rapidly. He progressed more rapidly. He progressed most rapidly. " CARDINAL AND ORDINAL NUMBERS Cardinal numbers are one, two, three, four, etc. Ordinal numbers are first, second, third, fourth, etc. FORMS OF ADDRESS English is deceptively easy in forms of address. Everybody in second person singular and plural is you. Your spouse is you. Your four year old child is you. Your interior decorator is you. The President of the United States is you. Your cocker spaniel is you. In almost every other language, speakers differentiate, sometimes sharply, between the FAmiLIAR form of address (French tu, German du) and the FORMAL form (French vous, German Sie). The usual rule is that you use the familiar form of address only when addressing (talking to) intimates, children, and animals. All others take the formal form. There comes a moment in the affairs of humans when someone who started out formally as a stranger or casual acquaintance becomes, with time and congeniality, so familiar that the formal form of address seems almost stilted and even offish or insulting. In some countries – Norway, for instance – the tension is broken by the suggestion Skal vi drikke dus? ("Shall we drink to a new era in our friendship?" one in which we'll address each other as the familiar du rather than the formal De?) That's a speak-now-orforever-hold-your-peace moment in the relationship. If there's no objection, the two friends take a glass and toast their graduation from formal to familiar with their drinking arms intertwined! DIMINUTIVES A charming trick almost every language has is this "shrinking" of someone or something you like by the use of diminutives. The diminutive of Charles is Charlie. The diminutive of William is Billy. The diminutive of star is starlet. The diminutive of pig is piglet or piggy. The Olympics of diminutives is won hands down by the Italians, who have literally dozens of different forms of the diminutive, each conveying its own special nuance of feeling for the noun undergoing the shrinking. IDIOMS Idioms are expressions that may not make sense but have clear and specific meanings anyhow because the speakers of the language have "agreed" that, rules notwithstanding, those particular words shall have a particular meaning. An idiom has a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meaning of its elements. In English, we say "Let's take a walk!" What are you taking? In Spanish, that becomes "Damos un paseo, " which literally means "Let's give a walk!" What are you giving? Neither makes much sense but both are correct. Both are idioms. Some English idioms, at random, are: at first blush, at one's wits end, axe to grind, beat around the bush, break the ice, chip off the old block, crack a joke, fit as a fiddle, forty winks, get in one's hair, give apiece of one's mind, keep the wolf from the door, red tape, and with flying colours. All languages have idioms. They're fun and enriching and they illustrate differences and similarities among cultures. How philosophically distant is the Norwegian who says about a dim witteed person, "Han er darlig utstyrt i oeverst etasje " ("He's poorly equipped on the top floor"), from the American Southerner who says, "He's three pickles shy of a barrel"? Learn to diagnose idioms in English and make sure you never try to translate them literally into any other language. If you try to tell a Spanish friend, "I'm on a roll," do not say "Estoy en un panecillo. " He will look under your feet for signs of crumbs without any comprehension that what you really meant to express is that things are going extremely well for you at the moment. Likewise, be attentive to idioms as they come at you in other languages. The German who tells you to "break your neck and your leg" is really wishing you luck. So is the Italian who seems to be sending you "into the mouth of the wolf'! The foregoing is by no means the whole of the mechanical vocabulary you'll need to conquer every other language on earth. You've got some dandies waiting for you inside whatever language you choose to tackle. In French and other languages you'll meet the double negative. In Finnish, it's worse: you'll meet the inflecting negative! German will be watching to see if you can handle its double infinitive. Russian can't wait to hit you with its perfective and imperfective verb aspects. Gender in Hebrew is so complex you have to know the sex of a dog before you can command it to quit biting you. These are not monsters in the woods. The lovely people who speak all those languages descend from people who found every single one of those Bermuda Triangles of grammar utterly logical and useful, and they've never felt the need to change. The old school grammarians, the ones who assassinated the desire of young Americans to learn foreign languages, were right in their insistence that knowledge of grammar is vital. They were wrong, however, to insist that all grammar must be learned here and now before we take our first step into conversation and the fun of learning another language. Again, grammar is best attacked from the rear. When you read the rule in your grammar book you may say to yourself, "Oh, so that's the reason I've been saying it that way all along, the way I learned from my phrase book, my cassettes, my newspaper, and my Italian friend at the pizzaria!" When you come upon an explanation of a grammatical wrinkle and you don't understand all the terms in English, pick up a dictionary (not a language dictionary, but an English only dictionary). You've got to know something of your own language before you can efficiently learn another. |