Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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

From:Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 23, 2000, 20:45
On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 23, 2000 at 04:05:48PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote: > [snip] > > YHL > > wondering what others' experiences are, and wishing she had more formal > > grammar (I learned more English grammar from taking French, like what > > this infinitive thing is, than from taking 12 years of English classes) > > Did you learn English here or in Korea? I learnt English when I was still > in Malaysia, and boy were we drilled with English grammar :-)
YHL: Born in Houston, TX. Learned spoken/written Korean from my mom, who also taught me to *read* but not speak English (despite a faithful regimen of Sesame Street). When I went to preschool, the teacher had trouble with me because I couldn't understand what she or the other kids were saying (you know, things like "it's Bobby's turn to play with the toy truck now, right Yoon?"). 1 year later, in kindergarten, I helped other kids write their names, and (this was at a Dept. of Defense school at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri) after I kept acing their silly vocabulary tests, they accelerated me to 1st grade English. In 1st and 2nd grade I took English with the 2nd and 3rd grade teachers, respectively (DoDs school--Seoul American Elementary). And after that I moved to Seoul Foreign Elementary School (my dad quit the U.S. army) and was placed in "normal" English. In short, I learned some of my English in Korea and some in the U.S. Nobody will believe I'm from Texas because I absolutely don't have the accent (my sister has a trace of it); I speak boring, "standardized" dictionary-ish English (exception being those occasional words I've never heard used, but have read).
> Though I also have a similar experience as your learning French -- I had > also somewhat acquired a "gut feeling" for English and wasn't exactly > clear on many grammatical points, until I took a course in classical > Greek. I had never differentiated gerunds from participles until I learned > the difference in Greek.... :-)
I'm still not sure how to tell a gerund from a geranium. :-( I spent one winter break with a Latin primer that got me used to the notion of cases, and then a summer with German plus a semester has me feeling decently comfortable with them, though I still have to pause with some of the prepositions (so do I use dative or accusative with "mit"?). I *like* cases. I regret I didn't grow up using a language with cases. <wry g> YHL