Nobody wants to attend a grammarian’s funeral because he/she always dissects language like a living or non living object . He/she often forgets that only language is the living medium of the people and it changes with the changing times. He always insists that how a language should be rather than describing what actually it is. However, an English poet wrote a poem on “the grammarian’s funeral” as a mark of respect for him.
Once an American journalist commented that the British queen does not know English as she uttered a sentence like “my daughter is taller than me”. In his opinion the queen should say “my daughter is taller than I”. The news became the talk of the world for quite some time. The next day some purist grammarian wrote that the correct sentence should be “my daughter is taller than I am.” some native speakers of England came to the queen’s rescue but most grammarians frowned at her colloquialism.
Nirad C chowdari, who settled in London and almost lived like a British used to say that the British do not know English as though he went there to teach them correct English. He wrote very adversely and satirically on Indian crowds and manners etc in English. The British, as always, are very gracious and honoured him with the Title SIR.I don’t know why the British gave him the title-for teaching them correct English or imitating their manners and mannerisms or criticizing the Indians.
Two female English teachers who I call angels came to my school to teach English on a project work .During my informal talk with them I asked ”are you married? One of them told me that “neither of us are married”. Being a grammarian and purist myself I expected that she would say” neither of us is married” I asked her whether the sentence was correct .She replied that it was not but added that most native speakers use that way.
Now it is time for the scholars to decide whether we should follow the grammarian or the native speaker with regard to the use of language .I hope they will throw some light on this blog and make it more interesting ,informative and educative.
Yours sincerely,
JVL NARASIMHA RAO
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Sir, teaching grammar is always challenging.The more you dissect a language, the more difficult it gets .In india,still most educational institutes follow the prescriptive grammar and in the competitive exams and the yearly public exams the students are asked to identify the parts of speech, change the direct speech into indirect speech, correct the ungrammatical sentences and so on.teaching grammar is difficult for the teacher and learning it is all the more difficult for the learners.In the examinations, the sentences like ' he is taller than me", neither of us are married' are given under correction of sententences.The two sentences are perfectly correct and idiomatic in native speaking countries like England
The difficulty with teaching parts of speech is all the more troublesome.
Look at the following sentences
1.He is taller than me
2.He is taller than I
If the student is asked to name the parts speech of the word THAN,he/she will most probably go wrong because in the first sentence than is a preposition and in the second it is a conjuction
Similar is the case with teaching tenses.Some grammarians say that there are only two tenses in english and they argue that the sentence"he will come tomorrow" is in the present tense and not in the future tense
We can cite a number of examples to show how difficult it is to teach grammar.The native spekers learn the grammar nonconsciously.so they do not have the problems.But the non native speakers have to learn it consciously,laboriously.
yours sincerely,
JVL NARASIMHA RAO