Thursday, March 5, 2015

YESTERDAY WERE NATIONAL GRAMMAR DAY By Yvonne

 
Bad blogger, bad blogger, I’ve fallen behind on posts.

Yesterday, Grammar Girl reminded me that March 4th is National Grammar Day.  I don’t think it made a difference in many people’s lives. Poor grammar is like typos; we start believing in it and see nothing wrong. And we rarely correct our friends and family – children we will correct, and that’s the right thing to do. Our friends whose first language isn't English, we're also more apt to correct.


When I lived in Milan, Italy, my goal was to speak Italian well. I didn’t want to sound like a three year old just learning to speak.  I was fortunate to have good friends who would correct me in a respectful way. They would repeat what I had said incorrectly, correctly, but not in a reprimanding way but in a caring way. I wasn't every shy about asking what was the right way to say something. An American who once lived in Florence gave me a tip. “When Italians speak to you, repeat what they say and then continue the conversation.”

One of my pet peeves is, “Between you and I.”  The grammarian, Patricia T. O’Conner points out that oftentimes we want to sound gentile, in doing so we make innocent grammatical errors for a lifetime. Her book, WOE IS I, The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, is terrific. You can even email her when in doubt.

James Baldwin said that in England when you open your mouth you tell everything about yourself - who your father was, who your mother was, etc. Speaking proper grammar shouldn’t have anything to do with class but improper grammar will tell on you. 

If you find any grammatical errors in this post, let me know.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...


YESTERDAY WERE(lol)

Anonymous said...

http://shelleysouza.com/2015/03/06/a-new-chaucerian-age/comment-page-1/#comment-65148

sara said...

all education must have to focus teaching some sort of good English language to their students and also dealing with that bi lingual languages term.

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nancy john said...

I think everyone wants to ensure that they present their best work at all times. This is so whether someone is writing in English or another language.

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Unknown said...



Learning new vocabulary is very interesting for fresh learners. who want to get command over language learning skills

Learning second Language

Anonymous said...

speaking is important as writing. But for a non native speaker, if you'll stick yourself on the rule to communicate with native speaker, you'll find in disappointing and frustrating.

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