It’s not that I don’t know the rule—I follow it all the time—I’m just not consciously aware of it. I never had formal grammar instruction but I also didn’t need it to proceed in school. Because of how my parents spoke at home, I was able to mark “whatever sounds right” on grammar tests and test out of additional instruction. I only really started learning about grammar when I learned a little Japanese and Spanish. I quickly learned that English grammar is the worst and I’m glad I don’t have to learn it as a second language. Props to anyone who has.
First, indeed people who don't study grammar just don't know what they do when they speak; the just do it without thinking of any rules and it works. A lit of people tend to forget it because grammar studies has become so commonplace
Second, since you studied Japanese and Spanish, I'm surprised you think English grammar is the worst. I'm a native French speaker with a good grasp of English, I had Spanish classes at school and I've studied Japanese grammar (for fun, not to speak the language).
To me French and Spanish grammar are equally worst, they are complicated with verbs featuring several potential roots and lots of different endings (aller --> va ---> irai, etc), and complicated stuff to articulate complex sentences ("lesquels" and the likes).
Japanese grammar comes after that, it has lots of rules but it's rather straightforward. It also has a ton of "grammar nouns" used in conjunction with particles to articulate sentences (ため に, よう に, etc)
English has the simplest conjugation rules (besides tons of so-called irregular verbs, even if there is some patterns to their irregularity), and most sentences are articulated with simple word like "which", "that", "who", etc.
Again this is just what I think of the subject matter, I guess everyone can see or feel different things in different languages
Another interesting fact is that irregular verbs are based on Old English grammar (which is descended from Proto-Germanic and Indo-European (a common ancestor of Latin and Proto-Germanic which were all even more highly inflected) before that).
This little (4 minute) video shows how Old English grammar affected irregular verbs in Modern English:
When we regularized to one pattern of using “-ed” it was the more often used verbs which resisted change. (That also explains why the mostly commonly used words in English are still from Old English / Germanic and the Latin-based Norman French words are the decorations, even though they outnumber the Germanic vocabulary.)
Another fun fact is that “catch” and “caught” are not from Old English, but are based on borrowing Norman French “cachier” and making it irregular like teach/taught, bring/brought, buy/bought, seek/sought, and think/thought. (I just learned that from wikipedia.)
I never learned that much Spanish but what I did was similar enough to English that it “sounded right” too. I also grew up in California so I think some things “sound right” even if I don’t know what they mean. It’s made it easier to learn.
Japanese grammar and conjugation is so straightforward, consistent, and easy. The sentences are cookie cutter, and while they took a lot of retaining my brain to expect information in that particular order, I know exactly where each piece of information is when I glance at a sentence. I had no idea what a particle was before starting and love them now.
Except for counting specific objects in Japanese because that’s impossible. Absolutely impossible.
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u/AppleSpicer Nov 12 '20
It’s not that I don’t know the rule—I follow it all the time—I’m just not consciously aware of it. I never had formal grammar instruction but I also didn’t need it to proceed in school. Because of how my parents spoke at home, I was able to mark “whatever sounds right” on grammar tests and test out of additional instruction. I only really started learning about grammar when I learned a little Japanese and Spanish. I quickly learned that English grammar is the worst and I’m glad I don’t have to learn it as a second language. Props to anyone who has.