>English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin
No, no, no, no, no, no, no! No way, no how. English is *not* and has never been grammatically a Latin language. English is by history and grammatically, a German language. The reson the language is so fucked up these days is the twisted attempts by elitist prigs to make it conform to Latin rules of grammar-these have been mentioned by the previous replies to this post.
A lot, I think still even these days, a majority of English voacbulary is based on Latin; but vocabulary is not grammar.
And neither one of us has a gender ID. You are still you, and I still I. And nothing comes between us. Language, much as I love it, too, goes by the boards, ultimately.
Yes, its rules and its grammar are based on Latin...
...thanks to the 18th and 19th Century Prescriptivists, that is.
I still say don't split the damned infinitives; it sounds horrible, and my linguistics prof in undergrad, the Oxonian grammarian, determined that it is in fact permissible to end a sentence with a preposition, so long as that preposition is part of a phrasal verb (like "put up with," which is a phrasal verb because it has a different meaning from either "put" or "put up"). See? There, now everyone's happy.
The cat and the miscegenation are out of the bag; I doubt it would be possible to re-Germanicise the language now (especially after heavy Latinate interference and several hundred years of French infusion courtesy of the Battle of Hastings).
(no subject)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no! No way, no how. English is *not* and has never been grammatically a Latin language. English is by history and grammatically, a German language. The reson the language is so fucked up these days is the twisted attempts by elitist prigs to make it conform to Latin rules of grammar-these have been mentioned by the previous replies to this post.
A lot, I think still even these days, a majority of English voacbulary is based on Latin; but vocabulary is not grammar.
(no subject)
Not really . I was just fencing that.
(no subject)
...thanks to the 18th and 19th Century Prescriptivists, that is.
I still say don't split the damned infinitives; it sounds horrible, and my linguistics prof in undergrad, the Oxonian grammarian, determined that it is in fact permissible to end a sentence with a preposition, so long as that preposition is part of a phrasal verb (like "put up with," which is a phrasal verb because it has a different meaning from either "put" or "put up"). See? There, now everyone's happy.
The cat and the miscegenation are out of the bag; I doubt it would be possible to re-Germanicise the language now (especially after heavy Latinate interference and several hundred years of French infusion courtesy of the Battle of Hastings).