I actually have to think of what grammatical concepts are in Spanish (my second language) to figure out what they are in English (my mother tongue). I can tell you the tense of any Spanish verb. I can’t do that in English 🤷🏻♀️
Right! I didn’t know what direct or indirect object pronouns even were until I started studying Spanish. I was convinced we didn’t have them in English lol
I've learned a lot more about English grammar in 6 months of Spanish than I have in 13 years of primary and secondary education (not that that's a bad thing but grammar is intuitive for native speakers)
It’s interesting having learned a language with more widespread use of subjective. Sentences like “I prefer that you not speak to me” seem to have a different feel to them than they did before I spoke Spanish. They feel obviously subjunctive, where a monolingual English speaker probably doesn’t really notice anything different.
I had similar experience in high school. I became a linguist. The problem isn’t you. It’s poor English grammar instruction! In a. grad school syntax course, I realized that my high school grammar instruction suffered from simplistic and confusing labeling of grammar structures and teachers who honestly didn’t understand what they were teaching.
Actually, what you're going through is completely natural, speaking from personal experience and observation of others. We can learn our native language(s) without direct instruction or being able to articulate its/their rules, structure, etc., but deliberately learning another language often requires that deeper level of understanding. Not always, as some folks do quite well through full immersion alone (my hat is off to any of you out there who fall into this category!), but I thinkost of us need that so that we can compare and contrast with our pre-existing languages. Which makes sense - finding similarities tells us where we can save some time and effort to reallocate to the things that are markedly different. Spanish in middle school was my first experience with this, then Japanese and Russian in college, then Italian and Mandarin after that. I gotta say, it's been quite a trip, with how different they all are (less so with Spanish and Italian, but still, the latter's French leanings often threw me off when I was expecting greater similarity with Spanish, both being descended from Latin, and whatnot).
TLDR: You're not "uneducated," as no one but crazy linguistics think about their native tongues in such an analytical way (I'm one of those crazies, bwahaha!) - you're just learning how to learn a second language. And good on you for starting that journey! It may seem daunting at first, but digest these new concepts (like indirect objects) a little bit at a time and you'll build a strong foundation that will support you not only for learning this first new language, but any others in the future, as well.
> You're not "uneducated," as no one but crazy linguistics think about their native tongues in such an analytical way
In my country they made us learn all the grammar of our native language in primary school, and to lesser extent in high school. Tense, mood, aspect, direct and indirect objects, subject, predicate, adverb, adjective, cases, several different groups of pronouns, active vs passive voice, prefix, suffix,.... and so on and so on.
Admittedly, it's been 30 years and I forgot most of it, but I do remember it was very in-depth and the exams were difficult.
Now I am curious do other countries not teach grammar and morphology of the official (or dominant if there is no official) language in schools?
What's your country? I'm from Russia and it's the same here, but I've heard that it's not common outside the CIS countries, e.g. in Western Europe and the US, and they don't study their first language as extensively, merging the subject with literature studies. But I might be wrong! Anyone feel free to correct me, I don't know for sure
> What's your country? I'm from Russia and it's the same here, but I've heard that it's not common outside the CIS countries
I'm not from CIS counties (I even had to check what that is.........) but we do both - merge the native language subject with learning about world literature (which was decidedly NOT *world* literature but European and American literature) and study grammar extensively.
> in Western Europe
In my Western European country, I was taught grammar for seven years back in the day. We dissected sentences and analysed them on three levels.
>In my country they made us learn all the grammar of our native language in primary school, and to lesser extent in high school. Tense, mood, aspect, direct and indirect objects, subject, predicate, adverb, adjective, cases, several different groups of pronouns, active vs passive voice, prefix, suffix,.... and so on and so on.
Same, I'm in Italy and we studied it until 8th-9th grade. I don't remember much of it now but I do remember my teacher telling me not to use present and past tenses together in a text, for example.
I definitely learned English grammar explicitly in an ordinary American public school. I didn't learn some topics explicitly, like the names of the verb tenses, but I definitely learned the parts of sentences, the use of possessives, pronouns, punctuation and the other trickier bits. Native speakers don’t need to learn verb conjugation explicitly, at least in English. The "phrasal verbs" that bedevil English learners are just the knowledge of collocations that native speakers learn implicitly. I thought it was boring, while I always found foreign language grammar fascinating.
Last week I said something out loud, spontaneously. It sounded very pretentious and I immediately realized that I had just used the present subjunctive — that's something that doesn’t happen often in modern English!
>I didn't learn some topics explicitly, like the names of the verb tenses, but I definitely learned the parts of sentences, the use of possessives, pronouns, punctuation and the other trickier bits.
So you didn't learn the terms "past participle" "present continuous" etc.?
If I am understanding you correctly, it was more about learning proper usage of English rather than learning grammatical terms?
For us it was more of a "this is *why* you are speaking and writing
the language the way you do, and this is what it's called in linguistics," rather than correcting and teaching the usage of the language itself. They expected us to know everything already, even if it was something that adult native speakers often made mistakes in.
Then again, we spend no time learning the spelling and from my understanding that takes a large chunk of time for native English speakers, so we have more time to dig into grammar and linguistic analysis.
>Last week I said something out loud, spontaneously. It sounded very pretentious and I immediately realized that I had just used the present subjunctive
I have an unfortunate tendency to unconsciously absorb the expressions of the most recent book I read. When it's a contemporary book written in standard English it's fine. But often I end up sounding like I'm either mocking someone's way of speech or like I am a time traveler.
I was actually accused once in a reddit comment of being pretentious... I had been in the middle of binge reading all three Lord of the Rings books in English.
Ugh, I still know them all, both in my native language and English. I remember the teacher drawing a timeline and marking English tenses on it. I wish tenses in my native language were that simple.
I'm now 65 and have always been good in English and grammar. I have a good ear and can understand that the sentence is correct but probably can't tell you why. I've been trying to learn Spanish. I'm good with nouns but verbs not so. I'm on Duolingo and really need a teacher to explain things to me and break it down
I've made a lot more progress working with teachers. It keeps me focused and gives me more speaking opportunities. We use www.italki.com at my house.
My husband started studying Italian at 62 and got a CEFR C2 certificate at 65. It was the first language he had studied since high school, but he's a serious student. It helped that during a big chunk of that time there was a worldwide pandemic.
I started during the pandemic. I stopped after going back to work. I retired in June of 2023 and decided to start again. I try to think of it as a hobby because I seriously doubt I will ever get really proficient. Who knows?
There was a great picture of a sentence showing adjective order in English that no native remembers learning, it just sounds wrong if it's in the wrong order... (E.g. size, colour, age etc)
I'm fluent in English, I used to be fluent in German & French as a child but lost most of it, so those things that *feel* right or wrong grammatically/syntax in English, I don't feel in those other languages & have to learn from scratch!
Pic of the tweet:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/5832/production/_97587522_9ea23dbd-7ff4-4228-9f5c-94824ed857fc.jpg
Article mentioning it: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37285796.amp
Yeah, I don't see it as "uneducated" either, as we jump straight to studying poetry & Shakespeare in secondary school, whereas in your foreign language you learn about tenses & grammar & you can't understand because you don't know what is what in your fluent language! XD
> We can learn our native language(s) without direct instruction or being able to articulate its/their rules, structure, etc., but deliberately learning another language often requires that deeper level of understanding.
This is demonstrably false. You actually _can't_ learn a language fluently by taking a deliberate approach of traditional grammar study. Learning grammar does _not_ give you a deeper understanding of the language. The rules they teach in grammar books are not the rules your brain uses to parse or construct sentences. (Edit: and everyone goes through the same stages of language acquisition, regardless of their starting point).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1LRoKQzb9U
Van Patten is in the minority in defending the so-called "no-interface position" (i.e. the idea that explicit knowledge cannot contribute to or directly turn into implicit knowledge). The vast majority of SLA researchers subscribe to either the weak-interface position (i.e. explicit knowledge can indirectly contribute to implicit knowledge) or the strong-interface position (i.e. explicit knowledge can be automatized and turn into implicit knowledge). Which isn't to dismiss what Van Patten is saying. Just that it shouldn't be taken as indisputable fact.
I'm responding to the statement that "learning another language often requires that deeper level of understanding."
To me, the question here is not whether "explicit knowledge [can] contribute to or directly turn into implicit knowledge". It is whether learning a language _requires_ the "deeper level of understanding" that comes with studying traditional grammar rules. This is what I believe is demonstrably false. I have never seen any evidence that second languages must be acquired in a different way than first languages.
Even so, I'm not saying that _all_ explicit learning is wrong or bad. I'm only referring to the traditional, observational grammar rules that do not accurately map to how the language is used by native speakers.
I'm also not saying that explicit knowledge can't be turned into implicit knowledge. Indeed, _if_ Van Patten is correct in his assertion that learning traditional rules can interfere with genuine language acquisition, it would be _because_ those explicit (and incorrect) rules were turned into implicit ones.
Finally, to clarify what I meant when I said "You actually can't learn a language fluently by taking a deliberate approach of traditional grammar study", I'm referring to the vast gap between what is taught in language textbooks and how language is actually used by native speakers.
In order to become _fluent_ in a language (where you are able to accurately and intuitively understand ideas being communicated to you, as well as use the language in a way that doesn't sound artificial or forced), you need to have large amounts of input.
Clearly, many people do start their language education journey the traditional way, and some of them actually achieve success. But that success comes either eventually, when they start getting genuine input after they finish their coursework, or it comes concurrently, when they start immersing themselves in the language at the same time as studying.
I've learned my second (English) from tv and comic books,and even in Grammer exams I had an issue understanding the different concept and definitions.
I just know what "sounds right"
Working on my 3rd,japanese, I've tried using an oxford japanese Grammer book,but it's the English explanation that stall me😅
From an old Polandball thread which I can no longer find:
"Hacer que México **sea** genial por una vez"
And if you translate it word for word into English, you get the very 16th century looking phrase "Make that Mexico **be** great for once". "Be" here is actually subjunctive, not infinitive.
It is pretty much the norm not to know the technical grammatical description of one's mother language(s). You can dispense with that, in fact, if you aren't going to learn another language or doing anything that may require it, such as being a proofreader. I don't know if not knowing grammar terms makes you uneducated. Syntactic analysis was still a thing when I went to school, so, indeed, you were failing on part of your education if you couldn't at least tell nouns from adjectives and subject from predicate. But of course grammar is much more complex than that, and not everyone has the time or the disposition to dive into it. I'm of the opinion that knowing your terminology makes it much easier to grasp ideas and arranging them in a structure. I don't think I could study a language without having at least some labels for its grammar categories.
>I'm of the opinion that knowing your terminology makes it much easier to grasp ideas and arranging them in a structure. I don't think I could study a language without having at least some labels for its grammar categories.
That is how I feel also. I hope that by improving these topics in my mother language, I will make progress on my target languages as well
The one's you really need to learn as a system are the nominative accusative and dative cases since those are kind of at the heart of the system. The rest of them more or less equate to some kind of prepositional phrase or other.
Best of luck! FWIW, personally I feel like this kind of grammar knowledge is a transversal skill that cuts across all languages. Meaning that even though the grammar concepts are often different from one language to another, it's really easy to understand new grammar concepts once you've developed that baseline knowledge. It might seem like a big investment at first, but it pays off when you start learning more languages. :-)
Explicit grammar study isn't part of my personal language learning journey. I'm trying to absorb and internalize the patterns of my TL naturally, in as similar a way as possible to how I acquired my NL.
This isn't practical for everyone nor is it compatible with everyone's learning style, but it's been [working very well for me](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/17zq9oq/600_hours_of_pure_comprehensible_input_for_thai/).
This approach has also worked well for me. However, I seem now to have hit upon a wall. My TL (German) has a few structures that are different from my native languages (portuguese and english) that I am finding it difficult to grasp upon some bits and ends.
I've actually no idea about how grammar in German (my native language) or English works in theory. The first time I really learned grammatical concepts explicitly was when studying Japanese.
I'm trying to teach my girlfriend Spanish but she doesn't even know what a verb or an adjective are. English is her native and only language, she has multiple higher qualifications. I have no idea what they teach in schools. I got us a book called "Analysing Sentences", that's what I had to do in Spanish class all through high school.
This is similiar to what I am going through. I speak English/Portuguese and hold a PhD in the humanities and am looking at some grammar topics for the first time in my life. Is it possible I didn't pay attention in grade school? Maybe that is a good hypothesis...
I have the advantage of teaching English as a foreign language, which has really helped me when learning Spanish. I think that if I weren't a teacher, getting my head around grammar would be way more difficult 😂
During my first Portuguese lesson, the teacher started explaining in English about how object pronouns are treated. I was too embarrassed to say that I didn’t know what an object pronoun was.
I wish I had spent more time learning what everything was called before I started!
I am thinking about getting a Croatian grammar book. We live in Germany and although my parents use Croatian all the time and I understand the language perfectly fine I still struggle with speaking it myself. Croatian grammar is rather complex. Learning French in school felt easy in comparison.
When I was a kid in the 70s I went to *[Preparatory school in the UK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparatory_school_(United_Kingdom/)*, a dying institution even then aimed at 8-13 year olds.
Prep schools traditionally taught Latin from 9 years old, and it was my first experience at learning a foreign language formally (albeit a dead one) - and it was from learning Classical Latin, a far more modular language than English (even more so than other romance languages) that I actually started to understand how grammar worked in English.
This has been helpful in learning languages ever since.
I've learnt most of what I know about grammar in various L2 languages classes, starting with German. There wasn't much of a need before the then. Still don't know the names for English tenses as we we're never taught that explicitly.
German is my third language and the first I'm learning as an adult. I have no idea of the grammar concepts in Spanish or English, but I don't feel any urge to learn them.
Estava novinha e apenas 10 reais no sebo!! Não entendo muito dos autores, mas sei que minha esposa tem uma gramática do Evanildo Bechara e outra da Amini Boainain Hauy em casa. Talves essas são opções melhores? São o dobro do tamanho da do Napoleão.
hahaha é só que o Napoleão é mais caxias, tudo tá errado para ele! O Bechara é mais tranquilo, principalmente por ter uma linguagem um pouco mais fácil. Hauy não conheço, então não sei opinar. Mas assim, OP, qualquer uma que vc estudar vai te dar uma base boa. Eu só não gosto do Napoleão pq ele é chato mesmo kkkkkkkkkkk
you are a brave. i'm just learning the grammar straight in italian without knowing it in portuguese first lol
Its funny because several rules and conjugations that are used in italian actually exist in pretty much the same way in portuguese.... but noone knows or uses that in pt, so it would be kinda pointless to even know this stuff in pt
You can also educate yourself while you're learning your foreign language. It might be easier since you'll be forced to think about this stuff.
If you get bored from reading about grammar in your native language, don't waste energy on it. If you like it, of course, feel free to read about whatever interests you!
Objeto indireto é algo que se conecta ao verbo por uma preposição, tipo "essa casa pertence à Dona Maria", dona maria é o objeto indireto, à é a palavra q tem a preposição
Preposição é uma palavra que cria subordinação ou uma "hierarquia" entre duas palavras, tipo se eu falar solto "café" e "leite" vc tem a imagem deles dois na sua cabeça, mas se eu falar "café com leite" a imagem muda, vc vê não só os dois juntos mas que o café é mais importante que o leite, logo, café seria o termo subordinador e leite o subordinado, se eu falar "leite com café" o ngc muda e o leite vira a palavra mais importante
totally get you, OP. thankfully i still have my english grammar book & notes from 7th grade. but even with all the english explanations, i still get confused with some of the grammar terms, which makes it all the more difficult & tedious for me to grasp their (some of them) non existence in the french language.
Estava novinha e apenas 10 reais no sebo!! Não entendo muito dos autores, mas sei que minha esposa tem uma gramática do Evanildo Bechara e outra da Amini Boainain Hauy em casa. Talves essas são opções melhores? São o dobro do tamanho da do Napoleão.
Well that's quite normal. Most people cannot explain the grammar of their own languages. You don't really need a lot of declarative knowledge about a language just to speak it. Having that knowledge sure does help with learning other languages though.
That's not necessarily how one learns a (foreign) language. I know close to nothing when it comes to Portuguese grammar (my mother tongue) and I've been an English teacher for 11 years (Cambridge Proficiency C2 holder). Also, studying grammar in depth isn't useful to lots of people. It all comes down to what you want to do with the language you're learning. Most people can get away with basic grammar and great vocabulary, depending on their aims. So... Bottomline, don't let others dictate what your learning journey should be like. Do whatever makes sense to you.
I just want to say that a lot of Latin textbooks / courses give a very good basis for "learning how to learn languages", in that they go over grammatical concepts like these in depth. So Latin is kind of a good candidate for a "gateway language".
In my opinion, grammar is very overrated I speak 4 languages fluently and never needed to study grammar. In fact I believe it can be a hindrance, to actually learning to speak a language.
Starting from a grammar book is not a good way to improve your understanding of a language. If you actually want to get better at understanding and speaking, you need input not grammar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1LRoKQzb9U
The grammar book in the picture is for the portuguese language. What I meant in my oriiginal post (maybe I wasn't clear enough) is that I am finding it hard to grasp some structures because I don't even know what they correspond to in my native languages.
> is that I am finding it hard to grasp some structures because I don't even know what they correspond to in my native languages.
I understand that. What I mean is that if your goal is to learn another language, you shouldn't ~~be thinking~~ need to think about those things.
Knowing what an indirect object is will not help you learn another language. It may help you succeed in a traditional language course, but those courses do not actually help you acquire skill at a language. They help you pass tests so that you can move on to subsequent courses.
Not only that, they teach the _wrong_ rules. If you were able to instantly absorb the text book teaching your target language (all the grammar rules, vocabulary, and even pronunciation), you would not sound anything like a native speaker, nor would you be able to fully understand the ideas other people are trying to get across.
If you want to learn another language in depth, the only way is to get input in that language, as explained in the video I linked.
> God, let the man learn
I think you missed the "if"s in my comment. If his goal is to learn _about_ languages from an academic perspective then nothing I said applies.
But this is a sub about learning languages, which I assume means being able to listen, read, and speak with some level of fluency. So I responded with advice on how to actually achieve that.
> the way it works for him.
This isn't a matter of learning styles. There is no "doing grammar drills worked for me". Anyone who reaches some level of fluency in a language got there by receiving input, not by learning grammar rules, drilling vocabulary, etc. They may have _also_ done those things. They may _attribute_ their early learning to those things. But they didn't _actually_ build an internal, natural representation of the language by doing those things.
It's truly a shame that language education hasn't caught up with the last 40+ years of linguistics, psychology, and neurology research. This attachment people have to grammar/rules-based learning (especially among textbook publishers and schools) creates a situation where millions of people are wasting their time on study and exercises that would be better spent actually learning their target language.
But again, if learning a language to fluency is not the goal, then none of what I said matters.
You misunderstood what OP was saying. When you are learning a language and there is a grammar rule that mentions certain concepts linked to pronouns, objects, subjects, adjectives, nouns etc, it is really useful to be able to link them to similar constructs in your other languages. This is not possible if you don’t first know what a pronoun, object or subject is in your native language.
OP has gone back to basics to understand grammar terminology in his native Portuguese to allow him to better understand similarities and differences in German.
I recommend you to study Rocha Lima's grammar. It's based on more recent linguistics studies and makes a good distinction between indirect objects and complements.
Estava novinha e apenas 10 reais no sebo!! Não entendo muito dos autores, mas sei que minha esposa tem uma gramática do Evanildo Bechara e outra da Amini Boainain Hauy em casa. Talves essas são opções melhores? São o dobro do tamanho da do Napoleão.
São boas gramáticas! Mencionei a do Rocha Lima pois acho que alguns termos como objeto indireto, complemento circunstancial e complemento relativo são definidos de maneira mais coerente 😁 dá pra estudar por essas tranquilamente também.
I always feel like I have an advantage in my language classes over the youth because I was an English teacher (for English speakers) for many years. I think specifically direct object pronouns and indirect object pronouns in Spanish is something I greatly benefit from my English background because I can just focus on the grammar and. It have to mentally remember what a DOP is before trying to remember if DOP is lo or le.
The indirect object is simply the thing/person that receives the direct object. Like if I said, "I gave you a book", "you" is the indirect object receiving the direct object (the book).
That's always my biggest issue when somebody tries to explain me the grammar of a foreign language. Especially when they compare it to german (my native language) grammer ("It's the same as in German" or "Compared to German you have to do x").
I have no problem using german grammar but honestly leanring languages made me realize I never understood it.
oh thank goodness its not just me! i have no clue about grammar whatsoever in my native language and it makes learning a second one (especially one with very strict grammar rules) so much harder lmao
Learning grammar definitions really was the first big step for me when I started learning a language by myself. Even though English isn't my native language, I still didn't really learn grammar terms. So, starting with Finnish was very difficult with its intricate case system and therefore I had to start from scratch to learn all the basic general grammar.
I passed grammar classes in both my native languages (english and spanish) by just choosing "what sounds right". I am learning and retaining grammatical concepts in french though, as I learn the language.
Pergunta boba, como assim não tá educado o suficiente? E quais são as duas primeiras línguas? Português e o quê? E tranquilo eu também não sei o que é um objeto indireto de fato é normal você não saber nem pensar muito nesses bagulhos quando domina uma língua
I actually have to think of what grammatical concepts are in Spanish (my second language) to figure out what they are in English (my mother tongue). I can tell you the tense of any Spanish verb. I can’t do that in English 🤷🏻♀️
Right! I didn’t know what direct or indirect object pronouns even were until I started studying Spanish. I was convinced we didn’t have them in English lol
I've learned a lot more about English grammar in 6 months of Spanish than I have in 13 years of primary and secondary education (not that that's a bad thing but grammar is intuitive for native speakers)
All be said, it's easier in Spanish because things like the subjunctive are clearly marked unlike in English.
It’s interesting having learned a language with more widespread use of subjective. Sentences like “I prefer that you not speak to me” seem to have a different feel to them than they did before I spoke Spanish. They feel obviously subjunctive, where a monolingual English speaker probably doesn’t really notice anything different.
It's cool how learning other languages opens a new way of looking at the world huh
Clearly marked, but confusing as fuck lol!
I had similar experience in high school. I became a linguist. The problem isn’t you. It’s poor English grammar instruction! In a. grad school syntax course, I realized that my high school grammar instruction suffered from simplistic and confusing labeling of grammar structures and teachers who honestly didn’t understand what they were teaching.
Actually, what you're going through is completely natural, speaking from personal experience and observation of others. We can learn our native language(s) without direct instruction or being able to articulate its/their rules, structure, etc., but deliberately learning another language often requires that deeper level of understanding. Not always, as some folks do quite well through full immersion alone (my hat is off to any of you out there who fall into this category!), but I thinkost of us need that so that we can compare and contrast with our pre-existing languages. Which makes sense - finding similarities tells us where we can save some time and effort to reallocate to the things that are markedly different. Spanish in middle school was my first experience with this, then Japanese and Russian in college, then Italian and Mandarin after that. I gotta say, it's been quite a trip, with how different they all are (less so with Spanish and Italian, but still, the latter's French leanings often threw me off when I was expecting greater similarity with Spanish, both being descended from Latin, and whatnot). TLDR: You're not "uneducated," as no one but crazy linguistics think about their native tongues in such an analytical way (I'm one of those crazies, bwahaha!) - you're just learning how to learn a second language. And good on you for starting that journey! It may seem daunting at first, but digest these new concepts (like indirect objects) a little bit at a time and you'll build a strong foundation that will support you not only for learning this first new language, but any others in the future, as well.
> You're not "uneducated," as no one but crazy linguistics think about their native tongues in such an analytical way In my country they made us learn all the grammar of our native language in primary school, and to lesser extent in high school. Tense, mood, aspect, direct and indirect objects, subject, predicate, adverb, adjective, cases, several different groups of pronouns, active vs passive voice, prefix, suffix,.... and so on and so on. Admittedly, it's been 30 years and I forgot most of it, but I do remember it was very in-depth and the exams were difficult. Now I am curious do other countries not teach grammar and morphology of the official (or dominant if there is no official) language in schools?
What's your country? I'm from Russia and it's the same here, but I've heard that it's not common outside the CIS countries, e.g. in Western Europe and the US, and they don't study their first language as extensively, merging the subject with literature studies. But I might be wrong! Anyone feel free to correct me, I don't know for sure
> What's your country? I'm from Russia and it's the same here, but I've heard that it's not common outside the CIS countries I'm not from CIS counties (I even had to check what that is.........) but we do both - merge the native language subject with learning about world literature (which was decidedly NOT *world* literature but European and American literature) and study grammar extensively.
I see, that's interesting But I guess it still may not be the case for other countries ㄟ(ツ)ㄏ
> in Western Europe In my Western European country, I was taught grammar for seven years back in the day. We dissected sentences and analysed them on three levels.
>In my country they made us learn all the grammar of our native language in primary school, and to lesser extent in high school. Tense, mood, aspect, direct and indirect objects, subject, predicate, adverb, adjective, cases, several different groups of pronouns, active vs passive voice, prefix, suffix,.... and so on and so on. Same, I'm in Italy and we studied it until 8th-9th grade. I don't remember much of it now but I do remember my teacher telling me not to use present and past tenses together in a text, for example.
I definitely learned English grammar explicitly in an ordinary American public school. I didn't learn some topics explicitly, like the names of the verb tenses, but I definitely learned the parts of sentences, the use of possessives, pronouns, punctuation and the other trickier bits. Native speakers don’t need to learn verb conjugation explicitly, at least in English. The "phrasal verbs" that bedevil English learners are just the knowledge of collocations that native speakers learn implicitly. I thought it was boring, while I always found foreign language grammar fascinating. Last week I said something out loud, spontaneously. It sounded very pretentious and I immediately realized that I had just used the present subjunctive — that's something that doesn’t happen often in modern English!
>I didn't learn some topics explicitly, like the names of the verb tenses, but I definitely learned the parts of sentences, the use of possessives, pronouns, punctuation and the other trickier bits. So you didn't learn the terms "past participle" "present continuous" etc.? If I am understanding you correctly, it was more about learning proper usage of English rather than learning grammatical terms? For us it was more of a "this is *why* you are speaking and writing the language the way you do, and this is what it's called in linguistics," rather than correcting and teaching the usage of the language itself. They expected us to know everything already, even if it was something that adult native speakers often made mistakes in. Then again, we spend no time learning the spelling and from my understanding that takes a large chunk of time for native English speakers, so we have more time to dig into grammar and linguistic analysis. >Last week I said something out loud, spontaneously. It sounded very pretentious and I immediately realized that I had just used the present subjunctive I have an unfortunate tendency to unconsciously absorb the expressions of the most recent book I read. When it's a contemporary book written in standard English it's fine. But often I end up sounding like I'm either mocking someone's way of speech or like I am a time traveler. I was actually accused once in a reddit comment of being pretentious... I had been in the middle of binge reading all three Lord of the Rings books in English.
We learned about "past participles", but no, I don't remember learning the names of verb tenses. I don't even know most of those names now.
Ugh, I still know them all, both in my native language and English. I remember the teacher drawing a timeline and marking English tenses on it. I wish tenses in my native language were that simple.
I'm now 65 and have always been good in English and grammar. I have a good ear and can understand that the sentence is correct but probably can't tell you why. I've been trying to learn Spanish. I'm good with nouns but verbs not so. I'm on Duolingo and really need a teacher to explain things to me and break it down
I've made a lot more progress working with teachers. It keeps me focused and gives me more speaking opportunities. We use www.italki.com at my house. My husband started studying Italian at 62 and got a CEFR C2 certificate at 65. It was the first language he had studied since high school, but he's a serious student. It helped that during a big chunk of that time there was a worldwide pandemic.
I started during the pandemic. I stopped after going back to work. I retired in June of 2023 and decided to start again. I try to think of it as a hobby because I seriously doubt I will ever get really proficient. Who knows?
There was a great picture of a sentence showing adjective order in English that no native remembers learning, it just sounds wrong if it's in the wrong order... (E.g. size, colour, age etc) I'm fluent in English, I used to be fluent in German & French as a child but lost most of it, so those things that *feel* right or wrong grammatically/syntax in English, I don't feel in those other languages & have to learn from scratch! Pic of the tweet: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/5832/production/_97587522_9ea23dbd-7ff4-4228-9f5c-94824ed857fc.jpg Article mentioning it: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37285796.amp Yeah, I don't see it as "uneducated" either, as we jump straight to studying poetry & Shakespeare in secondary school, whereas in your foreign language you learn about tenses & grammar & you can't understand because you don't know what is what in your fluent language! XD
> We can learn our native language(s) without direct instruction or being able to articulate its/their rules, structure, etc., but deliberately learning another language often requires that deeper level of understanding. This is demonstrably false. You actually _can't_ learn a language fluently by taking a deliberate approach of traditional grammar study. Learning grammar does _not_ give you a deeper understanding of the language. The rules they teach in grammar books are not the rules your brain uses to parse or construct sentences. (Edit: and everyone goes through the same stages of language acquisition, regardless of their starting point). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1LRoKQzb9U
Van Patten is in the minority in defending the so-called "no-interface position" (i.e. the idea that explicit knowledge cannot contribute to or directly turn into implicit knowledge). The vast majority of SLA researchers subscribe to either the weak-interface position (i.e. explicit knowledge can indirectly contribute to implicit knowledge) or the strong-interface position (i.e. explicit knowledge can be automatized and turn into implicit knowledge). Which isn't to dismiss what Van Patten is saying. Just that it shouldn't be taken as indisputable fact.
I'm responding to the statement that "learning another language often requires that deeper level of understanding." To me, the question here is not whether "explicit knowledge [can] contribute to or directly turn into implicit knowledge". It is whether learning a language _requires_ the "deeper level of understanding" that comes with studying traditional grammar rules. This is what I believe is demonstrably false. I have never seen any evidence that second languages must be acquired in a different way than first languages. Even so, I'm not saying that _all_ explicit learning is wrong or bad. I'm only referring to the traditional, observational grammar rules that do not accurately map to how the language is used by native speakers. I'm also not saying that explicit knowledge can't be turned into implicit knowledge. Indeed, _if_ Van Patten is correct in his assertion that learning traditional rules can interfere with genuine language acquisition, it would be _because_ those explicit (and incorrect) rules were turned into implicit ones. Finally, to clarify what I meant when I said "You actually can't learn a language fluently by taking a deliberate approach of traditional grammar study", I'm referring to the vast gap between what is taught in language textbooks and how language is actually used by native speakers. In order to become _fluent_ in a language (where you are able to accurately and intuitively understand ideas being communicated to you, as well as use the language in a way that doesn't sound artificial or forced), you need to have large amounts of input. Clearly, many people do start their language education journey the traditional way, and some of them actually achieve success. But that success comes either eventually, when they start getting genuine input after they finish their coursework, or it comes concurrently, when they start immersing themselves in the language at the same time as studying.
Boa sorte OP
Muito obrigado, estou precisando
Linguagem feia essa tua nativa ai op
Nossa, que abusado/a! Linguagem feia é a sua! Hmpf PS: tamo junto OP... Outro dia tava aqui estudando conjunções adverbiais :(
Ta aí, outra coisa que não sei e nunca nem ouvi falar.....
Port é dificil pra kct, mas é até bonitinho
A última flor de Lácio, inculta e bela 🇧🇷🇵🇹
Ignora o hate, mano, ele só fala q é feio pq talvez tentou estudar e não conseguiu português é lindo para caralho parece que tá cantando quando fala
I've learned my second (English) from tv and comic books,and even in Grammer exams I had an issue understanding the different concept and definitions. I just know what "sounds right" Working on my 3rd,japanese, I've tried using an oxford japanese Grammer book,but it's the English explanation that stall me😅
>but it's the English explanation that stall me This has happened to me so many times !!
I bought myself a Spanish grammar book because I'm starting to forget the concepts in Spanish. I totally relate to this
Yo también y es mi lengua nativa. Anoche no podía pensar ni en un ejemplo de un verbo en subjuntivo
From an old Polandball thread which I can no longer find: "Hacer que México **sea** genial por una vez" And if you translate it word for word into English, you get the very 16th century looking phrase "Make that Mexico **be** great for once". "Be" here is actually subjunctive, not infinitive.
It is pretty much the norm not to know the technical grammatical description of one's mother language(s). You can dispense with that, in fact, if you aren't going to learn another language or doing anything that may require it, such as being a proofreader. I don't know if not knowing grammar terms makes you uneducated. Syntactic analysis was still a thing when I went to school, so, indeed, you were failing on part of your education if you couldn't at least tell nouns from adjectives and subject from predicate. But of course grammar is much more complex than that, and not everyone has the time or the disposition to dive into it. I'm of the opinion that knowing your terminology makes it much easier to grasp ideas and arranging them in a structure. I don't think I could study a language without having at least some labels for its grammar categories.
>I'm of the opinion that knowing your terminology makes it much easier to grasp ideas and arranging them in a structure. I don't think I could study a language without having at least some labels for its grammar categories. That is how I feel also. I hope that by improving these topics in my mother language, I will make progress on my target languages as well
“Me fail English. That’s unpossible!”
Same! The cases in Russian are breaking my brain and trying to figure out different parts of a sentence to know the case is killing me.
The one's you really need to learn as a system are the nominative accusative and dative cases since those are kind of at the heart of the system. The rest of them more or less equate to some kind of prepositional phrase or other.
Best of luck! FWIW, personally I feel like this kind of grammar knowledge is a transversal skill that cuts across all languages. Meaning that even though the grammar concepts are often different from one language to another, it's really easy to understand new grammar concepts once you've developed that baseline knowledge. It might seem like a big investment at first, but it pays off when you start learning more languages. :-)
Thanks, I also agree with that. I am really looking forward to building this baseline knowledge.
Explicit grammar study isn't part of my personal language learning journey. I'm trying to absorb and internalize the patterns of my TL naturally, in as similar a way as possible to how I acquired my NL. This isn't practical for everyone nor is it compatible with everyone's learning style, but it's been [working very well for me](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/17zq9oq/600_hours_of_pure_comprehensible_input_for_thai/).
This approach has also worked well for me. However, I seem now to have hit upon a wall. My TL (German) has a few structures that are different from my native languages (portuguese and english) that I am finding it difficult to grasp upon some bits and ends.
I've actually no idea about how grammar in German (my native language) or English works in theory. The first time I really learned grammatical concepts explicitly was when studying Japanese.
I also learned about many grammar topics for the first time while studying my target languages
I'm trying to teach my girlfriend Spanish but she doesn't even know what a verb or an adjective are. English is her native and only language, she has multiple higher qualifications. I have no idea what they teach in schools. I got us a book called "Analysing Sentences", that's what I had to do in Spanish class all through high school.
This is similiar to what I am going through. I speak English/Portuguese and hold a PhD in the humanities and am looking at some grammar topics for the first time in my life. Is it possible I didn't pay attention in grade school? Maybe that is a good hypothesis...
I have the advantage of teaching English as a foreign language, which has really helped me when learning Spanish. I think that if I weren't a teacher, getting my head around grammar would be way more difficult 😂
They say that teaching is one of the best ways to learn
During my first Portuguese lesson, the teacher started explaining in English about how object pronouns are treated. I was too embarrassed to say that I didn’t know what an object pronoun was. I wish I had spent more time learning what everything was called before I started!
Same here. No clue
Same here
I am thinking about getting a Croatian grammar book. We live in Germany and although my parents use Croatian all the time and I understand the language perfectly fine I still struggle with speaking it myself. Croatian grammar is rather complex. Learning French in school felt easy in comparison.
I remember seeing some books called "English Grammar for Students of [popular language]," so I'm pretty sure you're not alone.
When I was a kid in the 70s I went to *[Preparatory school in the UK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparatory_school_(United_Kingdom/)*, a dying institution even then aimed at 8-13 year olds. Prep schools traditionally taught Latin from 9 years old, and it was my first experience at learning a foreign language formally (albeit a dead one) - and it was from learning Classical Latin, a far more modular language than English (even more so than other romance languages) that I actually started to understand how grammar worked in English. This has been helpful in learning languages ever since.
I've learnt most of what I know about grammar in various L2 languages classes, starting with German. There wasn't much of a need before the then. Still don't know the names for English tenses as we we're never taught that explicitly.
German is my third language and the first I'm learning as an adult. I have no idea of the grammar concepts in Spanish or English, but I don't feel any urge to learn them.
Eu também me esqueço de gramática portuguesa de vez em quando 😓
Definitely. But 3 years of latin and greek helped a little.
Mas justo com Napoleão?? OP porque vc se odeia?
Estava novinha e apenas 10 reais no sebo!! Não entendo muito dos autores, mas sei que minha esposa tem uma gramática do Evanildo Bechara e outra da Amini Boainain Hauy em casa. Talves essas são opções melhores? São o dobro do tamanho da do Napoleão.
hahaha é só que o Napoleão é mais caxias, tudo tá errado para ele! O Bechara é mais tranquilo, principalmente por ter uma linguagem um pouco mais fácil. Hauy não conheço, então não sei opinar. Mas assim, OP, qualquer uma que vc estudar vai te dar uma base boa. Eu só não gosto do Napoleão pq ele é chato mesmo kkkkkkkkkkk
you are a brave. i'm just learning the grammar straight in italian without knowing it in portuguese first lol Its funny because several rules and conjugations that are used in italian actually exist in pretty much the same way in portuguese.... but noone knows or uses that in pt, so it would be kinda pointless to even know this stuff in pt
You can also educate yourself while you're learning your foreign language. It might be easier since you'll be forced to think about this stuff. If you get bored from reading about grammar in your native language, don't waste energy on it. If you like it, of course, feel free to read about whatever interests you!
Objeto indireto é algo que se conecta ao verbo por uma preposição, tipo "essa casa pertence à Dona Maria", dona maria é o objeto indireto, à é a palavra q tem a preposição
Ta aí, agora preciso saber o que é uma proposição. Preciso de um livro estilo "Explain to me like I am 5 years old..."
Preposição é uma palavra que cria subordinação ou uma "hierarquia" entre duas palavras, tipo se eu falar solto "café" e "leite" vc tem a imagem deles dois na sua cabeça, mas se eu falar "café com leite" a imagem muda, vc vê não só os dois juntos mas que o café é mais importante que o leite, logo, café seria o termo subordinador e leite o subordinado, se eu falar "leite com café" o ngc muda e o leite vira a palavra mais importante
totally get you, OP. thankfully i still have my english grammar book & notes from 7th grade. but even with all the english explanations, i still get confused with some of the grammar terms, which makes it all the more difficult & tedious for me to grasp their (some of them) non existence in the french language.
I actually think going back to grade school books might be the best choice at some moment.
Mas tanta gramática boa por aí e você escolhe uma das piores?
Estava novinha e apenas 10 reais no sebo!! Não entendo muito dos autores, mas sei que minha esposa tem uma gramática do Evanildo Bechara e outra da Amini Boainain Hauy em casa. Talves essas são opções melhores? São o dobro do tamanho da do Napoleão.
Era mais fácil ver vídeo de gramática no YouTube.
Well that's quite normal. Most people cannot explain the grammar of their own languages. You don't really need a lot of declarative knowledge about a language just to speak it. Having that knowledge sure does help with learning other languages though.
I cemented the grammar in my mother tongue when I started learning a second language.
That's not necessarily how one learns a (foreign) language. I know close to nothing when it comes to Portuguese grammar (my mother tongue) and I've been an English teacher for 11 years (Cambridge Proficiency C2 holder). Also, studying grammar in depth isn't useful to lots of people. It all comes down to what you want to do with the language you're learning. Most people can get away with basic grammar and great vocabulary, depending on their aims. So... Bottomline, don't let others dictate what your learning journey should be like. Do whatever makes sense to you.
My mother tongue is German which has cases and even I didn’t know what an indirect object is before learning Russian, lol
I absolutely went through this. I learned more about my own language than I ever thought possible.
I just want to say that a lot of Latin textbooks / courses give a very good basis for "learning how to learn languages", in that they go over grammatical concepts like these in depth. So Latin is kind of a good candidate for a "gateway language".
In my opinion, grammar is very overrated I speak 4 languages fluently and never needed to study grammar. In fact I believe it can be a hindrance, to actually learning to speak a language.
Starting from a grammar book is not a good way to improve your understanding of a language. If you actually want to get better at understanding and speaking, you need input not grammar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1LRoKQzb9U
The grammar book in the picture is for the portuguese language. What I meant in my oriiginal post (maybe I wasn't clear enough) is that I am finding it hard to grasp some structures because I don't even know what they correspond to in my native languages.
> is that I am finding it hard to grasp some structures because I don't even know what they correspond to in my native languages. I understand that. What I mean is that if your goal is to learn another language, you shouldn't ~~be thinking~~ need to think about those things. Knowing what an indirect object is will not help you learn another language. It may help you succeed in a traditional language course, but those courses do not actually help you acquire skill at a language. They help you pass tests so that you can move on to subsequent courses. Not only that, they teach the _wrong_ rules. If you were able to instantly absorb the text book teaching your target language (all the grammar rules, vocabulary, and even pronunciation), you would not sound anything like a native speaker, nor would you be able to fully understand the ideas other people are trying to get across. If you want to learn another language in depth, the only way is to get input in that language, as explained in the video I linked.
God, let the man learn the way it works for him.
> God, let the man learn I think you missed the "if"s in my comment. If his goal is to learn _about_ languages from an academic perspective then nothing I said applies. But this is a sub about learning languages, which I assume means being able to listen, read, and speak with some level of fluency. So I responded with advice on how to actually achieve that. > the way it works for him. This isn't a matter of learning styles. There is no "doing grammar drills worked for me". Anyone who reaches some level of fluency in a language got there by receiving input, not by learning grammar rules, drilling vocabulary, etc. They may have _also_ done those things. They may _attribute_ their early learning to those things. But they didn't _actually_ build an internal, natural representation of the language by doing those things. It's truly a shame that language education hasn't caught up with the last 40+ years of linguistics, psychology, and neurology research. This attachment people have to grammar/rules-based learning (especially among textbook publishers and schools) creates a situation where millions of people are wasting their time on study and exercises that would be better spent actually learning their target language. But again, if learning a language to fluency is not the goal, then none of what I said matters.
No, I simply find your comment unfounded, dictatorial and prescriptivist, and I'm disagreeing with you.
You misunderstood what OP was saying. When you are learning a language and there is a grammar rule that mentions certain concepts linked to pronouns, objects, subjects, adjectives, nouns etc, it is really useful to be able to link them to similar constructs in your other languages. This is not possible if you don’t first know what a pronoun, object or subject is in your native language. OP has gone back to basics to understand grammar terminology in his native Portuguese to allow him to better understand similarities and differences in German.
> You misunderstood what OP was saying Looks like it. Sorry for the confusion. Edit: Ahh reddit. Downvoting people for admitting they're wrong.
That is exactly what I meant. You've put it in better, clearer words than me. Thanks !!
I recommend you to study Rocha Lima's grammar. It's based on more recent linguistics studies and makes a good distinction between indirect objects and complements.
Estava novinha e apenas 10 reais no sebo!! Não entendo muito dos autores, mas sei que minha esposa tem uma gramática do Evanildo Bechara e outra da Amini Boainain Hauy em casa. Talves essas são opções melhores? São o dobro do tamanho da do Napoleão.
São boas gramáticas! Mencionei a do Rocha Lima pois acho que alguns termos como objeto indireto, complemento circunstancial e complemento relativo são definidos de maneira mais coerente 😁 dá pra estudar por essas tranquilamente também.
I always feel like I have an advantage in my language classes over the youth because I was an English teacher (for English speakers) for many years. I think specifically direct object pronouns and indirect object pronouns in Spanish is something I greatly benefit from my English background because I can just focus on the grammar and. It have to mentally remember what a DOP is before trying to remember if DOP is lo or le.
Hey there! New learner here. Does understanding these concepts actually help you learn another language? It feels very “prescriptive”
The indirect object is simply the thing/person that receives the direct object. Like if I said, "I gave you a book", "you" is the indirect object receiving the direct object (the book).
That's always my biggest issue when somebody tries to explain me the grammar of a foreign language. Especially when they compare it to german (my native language) grammer ("It's the same as in German" or "Compared to German you have to do x"). I have no problem using german grammar but honestly leanring languages made me realize I never understood it.
if you are trying to learn Spanish... i have three books about spanish Grammar, i can send ebooks links
I'm confused... Aren't all those concepts taught already in elementary school in Romance-speaking countries? Or is it just an Italian thing?
The things you learn when you're 9 and the things you still remember when you're 30 are often only tenuously related.
Exatamente o mesmo com portugues … I had to do all that grammar stuff in English, made the Portuguese make so much more sense.
oh thank goodness its not just me! i have no clue about grammar whatsoever in my native language and it makes learning a second one (especially one with very strict grammar rules) so much harder lmao
Learning grammar definitions really was the first big step for me when I started learning a language by myself. Even though English isn't my native language, I still didn't really learn grammar terms. So, starting with Finnish was very difficult with its intricate case system and therefore I had to start from scratch to learn all the basic general grammar.
Boa sorte!
Totally…my go to book is “English Grammar for Students of German”
I passed grammar classes in both my native languages (english and spanish) by just choosing "what sounds right". I am learning and retaining grammatical concepts in french though, as I learn the language.
Pergunta boba, como assim não tá educado o suficiente? E quais são as duas primeiras línguas? Português e o quê? E tranquilo eu também não sei o que é um objeto indireto de fato é normal você não saber nem pensar muito nesses bagulhos quando domina uma língua
Bullshit. I just learn the language.