UKC

I am attempting to learn Spanish and an issue I am having is I have a poor grasp of English Grammar. I attended a course at the Instituto Cervantes in Manchester and the tutor said that English people do not seem in her experience to think grammatically. Also I said to aother pupil that I really struggled with grammar and put it down to going to a comprehensive, he is a professor of law, and attended a fee paying Grammar school, and he said tbh he struggled, and he too did not have a strong grasp of Grammar and did not think in terms of Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives.

Thats the story, now to move forward. Can anyone suggest a way to improve my Grammar, focusing on understanding of concepts such as Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives.

TIA

Learn Latin.

The Law Professor had studied Latin at School ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 

I am sure it would help, but I am more thinking of The Ladybird Book on Nouns

I don't know much about Spanish, but for German, I found the Michael Thomas courses helpful. Like you, I have very little formal grammar knowledge, but the teaching didn't rely on knowledge of those formal grammar terms - not even verb, noun, adjective etc. My wife (who studied linguistics) finds it grating, but it was good for getting me to the right result. 

Thank you, I will look at this.
It is interesting you mention German. I was speaking with a German woman who is fluent in English and Spanish, and she said a problem she has, is that in German, you have to listen to the complete sentence to understand the meaning, wheras, in Spanish, because of the Grammar, you only need the first half, consequently, Spanish people who talk fast, in 6 different versions and half speak with a lisp, also speak over each other, unlike Germans

Yeah. German the grammar of Yoda uses. My experience of learning French at school was that the grammar felt much more like English grammar than German grammar does. I'd exoect/hope that Spanish is more like French than German, grammatically. 

You always get a better understanding of grammar through learning a foreign language; especially as an adult. In my experience it's not something unique to English-speakers - we just learn our mother tongue too early in life to learn the rules.

Where native English-speakers do often differ, is that we are less likely to have learnt a foreign language as an adult. I think you will find that your understanding of English grammar will improve as you learn Spanish. It's one of the rewarding things about learning a foreign language, but it's harder for the first foreign language than for subsequent ones.

Having said all of that, I always found that Wikipedia's articles on grammar are very helpful. Both for whichever language you're trying to learn, and for English. The articles written in simple English might also be a good place to start to get quick answers and avoid getting bogged down in definitions of definitions: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_grammar

Good luck to you with your Spanish; it's a great thing to do, has all kinds of benefits including keeping your mind young, and although it does take a lot of time and work, it will probably take less time than you think. If you persevere you will notice at some point that everything comes more easily and you don't have to think about what you're saying any more. That's a fantastically satisfying feeling!

My partner is bilingual and really can't explain the grammar of her other language, so it's not as if that's something unique to English speakers.

Anyhow this may help:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zwwp8mn

Stick with the Spanish and you will learn new grammatical concepts. Give focus to that, as well as vocabulary. It will come, and it's part of the joy of language learning. Be patient.

There are lots of resources that will help.

Initally, focus on word class, i.e. what type of word is this, a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition.

Later, focus on verb conjugation.

I'll PM you some ideas when I get a chance

At age 12, I had to choose between Latin and German as my second language at Grammar School (we all did French from age 11). I chose Latin and was told I couldn't take it because my English grammar wasn't good enough, but the school relented because my sister in the year above me was studying Latin. Utterly illogical, on both the sibling point and the standard of my English because of course I learned grammar properly through studying Latin. Lucky for me too because I went on to study Classics and Classical Archaeology at uni.

I think learning a foreign language, particularly an inflected one like Spanish, will help to improve English grammar as well as the grammar of the language being learned.

But as someone else has said, the wikipedia articles are good. Or get hold of something like Basic English Grammar for Dummies and go through the first 2 or 3 sections.

Yes, definitely.  Although Duolingo can't help much with this - try learning the French subjunctive via American English, which simply doesn't use the subjunctive (and English English uses it less and less).

I remember my German teacher holding his head in his hands faced with a class of otherwise bright kids who had no knowledge at all of cases, and could barely grasp the concept of an indirect object.

Read a library book on English grammar. Or a website on it

I learnt Latin from age eleven and loved it (I later did Greek too, took Scottish Highers in both and considered doing classics at university). The inflection and the fact that, unlike with French (which bored me), there was not the distraction of actually speaking and communicating meant that grammar was right at the fore as a nice logical exercise and, as a result, I started to get a proper understanding of English grammar which I think has stood me in good stead ever since.

what helped me was putting all your conjugations into a table format 

Duolingo is useless, IMO. For the same time investment, Babbel would teach far more, and it explains grammar points.

I'd have to disagree, Latin grammar is pretty different from English grammar. Like you, I studied both Latin and Greek at school and really enjoyed both but preferred Greek due to its alphabet - translation always felt more like code breaking! 

And remember, broadly speaking, correct pronunciation is more important for being understood than getting every grammatical detail exactly right. 

When I started teaching English as foreign language I realised how little formal grammar my English comp education through the 80s had really given me. I knew nouns and verbs and adjectives but not much beyond that. I remember being asked by a middle aged Finnish lady who was part of one of the groups I was teaching about the gerund of a verb and I had no idea what the word meant. I got an A in A level English (although literature was all you could do back then) and an MA from decent uni, so I think its more how we are taught English in the UK rather than me being thick. I remember asking my sister who had recently qualified as an English teacher and she didn't know what a gerund was either!

Anyway, I stopped in at the big academic book shop in Helsinki on the way home and bought a book with a title like "A guide to English grammar" and that was really helpful! I can't remember all of it now, and there are grammar words we have in English that we don't need for English grammar - partitive anyone? - but it does help when someone is trying to explain how another language works in English. 

Dw i yn dysgu Cymraeg ond dw i ddim da iawn

I've gone the (paid) Duo Lingo route but I'm fortunate that I live and work in Wales so I get opportunities to practise in the real world. I don't miss the grammar drills that I had when I learned Latin and I'm finding that continual practise and exposure to multiple sources of information (books, websites, etc) very rewarding.

My advice? Don't worry too much about the formalities, concentrate on being understood and practise, practise, practise!

.

That looks useful

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I am trying to get to the point where I understand what is said in Spanish, as opposed to translating it in my mind, which I think is what you are saying.
Thanks again.

Thaks, will have a look.

Hola, Chico

I have been to the library, but the books have been targeted at Adults learning English as a second language, however your suggestion has helped me me think again and  that possibly I should be looking in the Children's section, so thanks for that

I will give it a go

In the paid Duolingo, is AI used. I am a firm believer that nothing in life is free, and the time cost of the adverts in Duolingo, probably have a greater opportunity cost in time than a paid subscription, however as my duaghter says I am the cheapest man in the world, I am conflicted

Well thats an obtuse title for a book, I would never find that . Next time I am in Manchester I will have a look in Waterstones.

It does use AI:

https://blog.duolingo.com/large-language-model-duolingo-lessons/

Diolch

FWIW... It's not your fault you don't know grammar. In the UK it went out of fashion and wasn't taught for many years.

Contrast that with kids today, I've not understood my youngest's homework and had to Google explanations to be able to help her, she's aged 10. So primary school (Y6) questions about rewriting the fronted adverbials or identifying which sentences have their subordinate clauses in the passive voice etc etc is may as well be written in Chinese to someone like me, as none of this was in my education 

It's a struggle!

Came here to say this. I didn't really understand grammar until I learnt Latin (and then I became that little eejit who demanded that her German teacher explain why there was no ablative...). 

The problem is 1) native speakers often do innately understand some grammar, but couldn't tell you that they do - do you know when to say who v whom and is it just instinct? And 2) English just doesn't have the morphology that other languages, particularly Latin, have. Simply, the word endings don't change dependent on whether I eat, you eat, we eat, they eat, etc; or whether the cat eats the dog or the dog eats the cat. (But I think there is more morphology in Welsh..?)

Then, ofc, a lot of English teachers don't understand it either.

I also think that more broadly, societally we no longer value good understanding of language and writing. I have to spend my time at work biting my tongue so as not to be seen as antisocial. (Ofc conversely, my grasp of budgets and statistics is questionable). 

Cambridge Latin course is a good start*, but let us know if we can help. This is my nerd home.

*Then rewatch Dr Who and spot the famous character

Fwiw I also studied German and some Italian, and then an incredibly madcap crash through Greek at uni. I just found that rote learning of tables (and being able to visualise them, and draw syntax trees) helped me. Conversely, being told to just practise my German as an adult without any regard to whether I was using grammar correctly was really unhelpful for me. I do not do well when actually being asked to speak my languages. 

That said, I did manage to make up the very odd Spanish phrase from mispronouncing Italian...

Is there a local language school near you? One teaching English as a second language might have a course that you could join which would focus on English grammar? Or they may have someone who could do a little private tutoring for you to get you up to speed?

I did languages at uni, and in my first year French grammar classes, the first half of every class was teaching us the English grammar which we would need to know for the French grammar lesson!

Coupla suggestions.

If you have a VPN, log on to a Spanish server and watch Spanish daytime TV. You won't understand most of it but the context in games shows and the like is usually simple, and you'll pick up a lot of vocabulary - a bit like a child etc.

At some point, see if you can find a Spanish pen-friend or someone you can practice with. It's always good to have company!

I agree with pps that if you're a native speaker you don't usually know much about grammar etc. I have a Dutch friend who corrects my English although that's more likely because he is Dutch and likes to be right all the time, also he knows it makes me laugh.

I didn't learn grammar either so as part of learning Spanish I learnt English grammar. At first I didn't know what they were talking about (who knew there were more than three tenses?) but as I can speak English I was in fact using grammar all the time so it was more a case of learning what things are called than learning something from scratch. 

Dw i yn dysgu Cymraeg ond dw i ddim da iawn 

Gwych! Dw yn dysgu Cymraeg gyda Duolingo eto.

I am convinced that pannas (parsnips) is a euphemism for drugs, and that Owen is a dealer! Some of the weirder sentences then make sense.

Totally get it.  Am also learning Spanish (Beginners course with Open University) and finding my lack of grammatical knowledge to be a challenge. 

There appears to be an assumption that students have a decent level of grammatical terms, which I don’t have.  I know what nouns, verbs and adjectives are and that’s it.  OU website does have a very useful glossary but a quick example of what each term means would be really handy.  

I think this course is similar to the Michel Thomas method mentioned above, but it's free. There is a lot of grammar in it but it's introduced naturally rather than just rote learning tables of verb tenses etc.

https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish

Da iawn, Welsh Kate.

I've been wondering if cennin is the Welsh word for Ketamine but I was too embarrassed to ask

I found out all about the gerund quite early on, from the Molesworth pictorial guide, invaluable.

Most people don't. They think an adverb is an ad for a verb

OK that's the Xmas joke done