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Re: Grammar in HS (Was: Re: Argument Structures)

From:Jim Grossmann <steven@...>
Date:Friday, August 25, 2000, 5:57
Hi, all,

You won't get flamed by me, H.S.   I think that omitting letters that stand
for unstressed vowels is a wonderful idea.   Anything that makes our awful
spelling system more regular is a wonderful idea in my book.

:-)

Jim




----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: Grammar in HS (Was: Re: Argument Structures)


> On Wed, Aug 23, 2000 at 03:50:56PM -0400, nicole perrin wrote: > [snip] > > Maybe this is a silly question, but is grammar of one's native langauge > > taught in countries other than the US? Because here almost everyone > > grows up without knowing even what subject and object are. I always > > think it's a stupid practice (or non-practice) but I wonder what it's > > like in other places? > > Yes. I'm from Malaysia, and in primary school (equiv of grade 1-6 in N. > America) I was in a Chinese school where they taught elementary Chinese > (Mandarin) grammar, proverbs, etc.. I don't remember much, mostly 'cos I > was a slacker back then. :-P But in addition to that, we had to learn > Malay, esp. 'cos from secondary school onwards (equiv grade 7 onwards), > *everything* was taught in Malay -- textbooks and exams were in Malay, > even in the nominal "chinese" or "indian" or even "english" schools. There > were definitely lessons on Malay grammar, even for students who are Malay > by race. (Aside: I used to shudder at the frightening complexity of Malay > verbs, which have a system of prefixes and suffixes with sometimes > inconsistent (or, unexpected, I should say) nuances... but now I wish I'd > paid more attention to them in class -- what I know of verb conjugations > now is mostly from Indo-European languages; wish I had a better grasp of > how those Malay suffixes work, might turn out useful in my conlang...) > > And of course, we also had to learn English (to various degrees of > competency, depending on the school), so imagine my shock when I came to > N. America and discovered that apparently students here aren't even taught > English phonetics (don't even mention grammar), they are just taught to > follow the "gut feeling" they get when they see a word. (This, IMNSHO, is > probably why the schwa sound is becoming increasingly prevalent in spoken > English. Native English speakers may not notice this, but I remember > having a lot of trouble deciphering spoken English that sounds like a > string of consonants punctuated by the occasional vowel which isn't > pronounced exactly in the most intuitive way, either. I honestly won't be > surprised that sometime in the future, the vowels in unstressed syllables > won't even be written out anymore, since it makes no difference to the > pronunciation. But enough of this rant, before I get flamed ;-) > > > T