Grammer help

I survived two kids in fifth grade english. It helps to have a wife who was an english major.

I'm up to Seventh Grade now!

RealMiniDriver wrote: Now that I've applied some WD40 to my rusty grammar, "fast" is a multi-use word. Fast as an adjective: He is fast. Fast as an adverb: He runs fast. Fast as a verb: He will fast for Lent. Fast as a noun: He survived the Lenten fast.

It was right about here in 5th grade when I decided "berkeley it - I refuse to learn any more of this retarded set of rules. I'm just going to try to not talk dumb and see how far that gets me."

It's worked out OK so far.

foxtrapper wrote: And unfortunately, blows my sons (son's? sons'?) a good bit as well.

sons mind = incorrect.
son's mind = the mind of my single son.
sons' minds = the minds of my multiple sons.

I think.

DILYSI Dave wrote:

foxtrapper wrote: And unfortunately, blows my sons (son's? sons'?) a good bit as well.

sons mind = incorrect. son's mind = the mind of my single son. sons' minds = the minds of my multiple sons. I think.

Correctamundo.

That's another sticky point - you do not make words that end in a vowel (or a consonant, for that matter) plural by adding apostrophe s. That's only for contractions and possessives, like Dave correctly points out.

foxtrapper wrote: Here's some of my questions that I can't quite figure out. "He runs fast". Runs is the verb, and fast is the adverb, right?

Yes, "runs" is the verb and "fast" describes the verb (how he runs) = the adverb.

"He's fast". What's fast now? Is it still an adverb, with a verb implied? Or did it become a verb?

"He's fast." = "He is fast." He=noun is=verb (passive) fast=adjective (describes the noun)

"He's a fast runner". Runner is noun (I think), so fast is now an adjective?

"He's a fast runner." = "He is a fast runner." He=noun is=verb runner=pronoun (a substitute noun) fast=adjective (of the pronoun, in this case).

Hope this helps!

foxtrapper wrote: I can follow math just fine. I can read music. There are rules and conventions and they are applied consistently, no matter how complex the math or music. The vagueness and loopiness of english grammar though, and the 999 exceptions to each rule, just blows my mind. And unfortunately, blows my sons (son's? sons'?) a good bit as well.

Trouble is, English is a Germanic language that grew up out of Celtic. It then got influenced strongly by Latin, then a whole bunch of cross-breeding royals brought a bunch of French into the mix. Then, during the past couple of centuries, it got taught as though it were a romance language despite it being Germanic because everyone knew Latin was the greatest language ever even though no one spoke it anymore

And for the most part, it's consistent in terms of basic Grammar structure. Word use and conjugation gets changed (due to the like, four languages it's derived from), but structure is pretty solid.

conjugation smongulation

Fox, I think your basic problem here is that you don't recognize the rules of grammar, not that there are a lot of exceptions that are confusing you.

You never learned the basic rules of contractions, parts of speech (noun, verb, etc), and possessives (His, sons', son's), and that's beating you up. The rules are actually pretty straightforward, they are just complex and can be difficult to learn if you don't learn them at an early age.

If you start thinking English is full of contradictions and you have to memorize all the exceptions you'll never get anywhere. Start with the rules, worry about exceptions later. I mentioned Strunk and White earlier but that's probably a bit advanced for what we are talking here. Buy a "for dummies" kind of book or visit a website built for kids your son's age.

This one's pretty good: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/

PS For commonly confused words, e.g., there/their, this site is terrific: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

I feel like updating this thread.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves just came in the mail the other day. My wife pounced on it and I haven't had a chance to read it. Judging by how feverishly she keeps clutching it, I'd say it's pretty good.

SchoolHouseRock. I've had their DVD set for years. Been watching it with my son, particularly the gramar stuff. We stop it and review things, and I pose questions and ask him for clarification. He's loved being able to teach his father. Some of it has been staged, but a whole lot of it hasn't. He quite regularly will do a SHR jingle while figuring something out.

Gramar Dragon and Gramar Ninja on the phones. Think interactive SchoolHouseRock video game. Simple, but you learn gramar quickly, in spite of yourself. If I challenge him to a dual, he's hot to beat me. These days, its a dead heat who will win, and only because he flusters watching the clock count down.

For Christmas, the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves has a few kids books that look good on specific gramar points, and don't cost much. She mentions a kids gramar book that I think I'll check out as well.

My first wife was a professional proofreader and my second is every bit as good with the English language. I just ask them.

"You got a 'D' in English? Bobby, you speak English."

Your grammar can't be that bad. You didn't title this question "learn me grammar"...

I took 2 years of Latin in high school. I was not too good at grammar before that, just muddling through. After 2 years of taking sentences apart to translate them, I got real good at it. I was surprised when I took the SAT. They had a whole section on just taking apart sentences. It was so easy.

It helps a lot to draw lines under the various parts of the sentence. Subject, verb, predicate, use arrows for adverbs pointing to the verb, adjectives pointing to the noun they modify, etc. Just practice drawing them out.

I'm going to resurrect this thread, on purpose.

At the time, I was very worried about my inadequacies as a parent with regards to grammar. I was afraid my own limits would hurt or hinder my son.

Fast forward to today. Not literally today, but more generally. My son loves English and grammar. He excels at it. To the point of staying after class to ask his teacher grammar questions and debate points of syntax and such. He freelances as an editor for various wikis and such. At the ripe age of 13.

His surpassing my abilities have not only not hindered him, but give him great pleasure. Not the snotty type (though there is some). But the elation of excelling at something all on his own, far beyond the abilities of both his parents.

I know there are plenty of parents on this forum that already know this, and are reading this going "well duh". But hey, I was wringing my hands, as I'm sure at least a few other parents are wringing their own hands. Be it english, math, gym, whatever. I just want to say it really is ok, and your kids will delight in excelling all on their own, way beyond where you can go.

And I can still smoke him in math. Though not for much longer.

Linking verbs!

Taste feel smell sound look appear become seem grow remain stay!

How the berkeley did I remember all those from 5th grade until now?!

English makes perfect sense:

Mouse - Mice

House - Houses

Moose - Moose

Trans_Maro wrote: English makes perfect sense: Mouse - Mice House - Houses Moose - Moose

This is why people think English grammar is tough, and are totally wrong. Those are not examples of grammar. Those are examples of vocabulary.

If you want difficult grammar, try German where word order can completely change the meaning of a sentence. English grammar is absurdly easy. (Accurate punctuation can be confusing, but no more so than any other language.)

Are you sayin' I aint got no good grammar?

Don't worry, nobody cares about grammar or spelling anymore, by the time your son grows up it'll be about as useful as Latin.

GameboyRMH wrote: Don't worry, nobody cares about grammar or spelling anymore, by the time your son grows up it'll be about as useful as Latin.

You have to know Latin to get the good drugs.

bastomatic wrote:

The personal language peeves of a lone English teacher whose student decided to make a book out of those peeves. Many of the "rules" in this one are now largely ignored with no ill effects--ending a sentence in a preposition or splitting infinitives, for example.

It's a fine book to learn the basics, but as soon as you understand the rules well enough it's time to start breaking some of them. Remember that it's okay to break more or less any rule that leaves a sentence a mess.

The classic example is Churchill's secretary chiding him for ending a sentence with a preposition, to which he replied "This is the sort of petty pedantry up with which I shall not put" to illustrate just how bad following that rule can sound.

bravenrace wrote: Your grammar can't be that bad. You didn't title this question "learn me grammar"...

True, but he misspelled grammar.

Does that count?

I ask my wife, or I pay attention to the little squiggly green line. After that, I don't care too much (am I allowed to say that?)

Salanis wrote: I took two grammar classes in college (English major, and transferred schools). In one of them, we talked a lot more about Modifiers than adjectives or adverbs. A modifier is a word or phrase that provides additional information about another word or phrase. So, that includes adjectives, adverbs, and articles ("the", "a", "some", etc.). If the word or phrase being modified is a noun or pronoun, than you have an adjective or article. If the word or phrase being modified is a verb, adjective, or adverb, than the modifying word/phrase is an adverb. If you're wondering what I mean about phrases acting as adjectives take this example: "The car with a busted headlight ran the stop sign." "...with a busted headlight..." tells you about "the car", so the whole phrase is acting as an adjective. Mostly this stuff is superfluous if you don't need to know why it's wrong, or to help you know where you're supposed to put commas. But no one really notices if commas are in the wrong place. I suppose it could be important for writing legal documents where you want to be sure there is no ambiguity.

isn't with a preposition ? therefore "with a busted headlight" would be a prepositional phrase … ? would that prepositional phrase then be acting as an adjective ?

wlkelley3 wrote: In reply to novaderrik: That's what I mean. Too many exceptions to the rule. I wondered about that when I typed that but spellcheck has spoiled me. It seemed right when I typed it. Oh well. What are the odds of getting spellcheck added to this? I know ALL of us need it sometimes.

with my Mac, spell check is automatic … for anything I'm writing … on any forum, e-mail, text edit … etc ...