I are Hulk, I has no grammar

Some people tend to think that knowledge of vocabulary is key to being able to speak a foreign language and that grammar is of less importance. Let me tell you that this isn’t true. We use grammar in everyday speech, whether we want to or not.  If meaning were to be contained within just the word, then we should be able to understand the following utterance without fail:

SPOT

Well, we don’t understand it at all, do we? The problem occurs because there is a number of possibilities and every one of us can understand it in a different way.

A spot as a small part of different colour than the main part? A spot as a place? A spot as a small quantity?

We can’t possibly guess which sense is implied without any context given. But linguistically, giving context is giving a sentence and to give a sentence we need grammar.

There was a little black spot on my yellow summer dress. This nightclub we went to turned out to be quite a hot spot! Would you like a spot of tea?

With sentences everything becomes clearer. That means, with grammar everything becomes clearer. We are able to make sense!

We need to study grammar which is by no means of less value than other domain of knowledge, however, it is unfairly looked upon. Language is involved with everything humans do and to understand language is to understand grammar, the very basis of it. With no grammar, language would be like a house with no foundations. No other species has this incredible skill and ability to speak yet we, so often, carelessly neglect it. Furthermore, a first to understanding a foreign language is knowing the grammar of your mother tongue. You will find, that other languages have nouns, verbs and adjectives too and without knowing these terms it’s much harder to understand new linguistic concepts.

There is a significant difference between knowing grammar and knowing about grammar. We all ‘know’ grammar - you understand what I’m saying and you can express what you want to say too. If you are a native English speaker, then you have learnt this grammar unconsciously whereas if you studied English as a foreign language then you not only know its grammar but you probably know about it too. Hence no surprise the latter often know a lot more about the English grammar than the former. If never taught to do so, it is incredibly difficult to explain the grammatical terms and processes as they are plainly abstract ideas. And at the same time - it is just as difficult to understand them.

I used to get really frustrated with people who asked me about Polish and its grammar without having the slightest clue of how their own language works in the first place. They just seem to think there really is a magical pill I can give them so that they will suddenly grasp all of it. Once I started using terminology that is absolutely a must-know when discussing language and which they obviously failed to understand, they would look at me as if I lost my ability to speak at all and was making inarticulate noises instead. Argh! Then of course they’d say I’m showing off. Really awkward and really frustrating. Don’t do that to foreigners! Make a bit of effort instead. Websites such as English Focused are here to help you out. Have a look at our Step By Step Grammar Series, a painless walk through those seemingly difficult grammatical terms. Good luck!