"I'm Sorry For Falling Asleep When You Wanted to Talk Grammar."

[lydamorehouse]

 This is what my wife said to me this morning: "I'm sorry for falling asleep when you wanted to talk about grammar." Which...??? I laughed very hard and told my wife she is a SAINT for feeling bad? Because honest to god, I can be so nerdy. 

Last night, I mostly wanted to complain because articles and particles suck in Japanese. When do you use the object marking particle 'wa' as opposed to 'ga'? When do you use the articles e, ni, or de? It's very complicated for a non-native speaker and my instructor is great, but he also, I think, assumes that his students actually understand English grammar in a way that I'm not sure most of us do? Like, deciding what the subject of a sentence is can be hard once you move beyond: "the boy kicked the ball."

Did any of you out there have to diagram sentences in school?

I remember actually loving it, but, for me, it was more that anything that was more like art was automatically more fun for me?

Anyway, class went okay. My TMI went over just fine? Everyone else talked about their pets. I should have probably done the same, ah well.

Comments

[melita66]

Wait until you get to the giving/receiving verbs! Those are the ones that always kicked my ****. (I took Japanese in a classroom setting twice, about 15 years apart.)

[dreamshark]

Like many fans, I loved diagramming sentences. As the chorus goes in Nate Bucklin's song (based on a long-ago late-night Minnstf meeting) "Let's all diagram sentences - everybody here knows how."

[quadong]

Diagramming sentences was out of fashion by the time I went to school :-(

[dreamshark]

Yeah, it was a very Baby Boomer song. I'm sure you know soooo many people who would be happy to teach you however.

[pameladean]

It was in fashion still when I went, but I got caught between two class "tracks" and never learned either. I can tree a sentence, but I cannot diagram one.

P.

[mtbc]

In England I was taught almost no formal grammar in English. What I do know is mostly by analogy from my French classes.