Grammar

Grammar is necessary if one is to speak or read. My first official encounters with grammar weren’t too obnoxious. We studied nouns. I learned that a noun could be a person, a place, or a thing – like Joe, the circus, and shoes. With this amazing information securely in hand the world of grammar lay at my feet…
Until Monday. On Monday grammar lessons continued except that on Monday we learned that a noun was also a subject and could be an object too. If my eyes could have crossed they would have. I was totally confused. I raised my hand to ask a question. It must have sounded very silly to the teacher.
-You mean a subject is a noun? Or is a noun a subject?
-Yes. It can also be an object.
-What can be? The subject is an object?
-No Susanne, a noun can be a subject or an object.
-But if it is a subject or an object why call it a noun? Why not call it a subject or an object?
- Just listen and you’ll understand.

But I couldn’t really listen. Too many nouns were being written on the board and I couldn’t comprehend why a noun like “Bill” was called a subject here and an object there. I became more and more confused as the teacher gave more and more examples. Then came the dreaded part: do it yourself, say whether this noun is a subject or an object. The wonderfully friendly nouns of last week were complete and terrifying strangers. I could not tell which ones were subjects and which ones were objects. They were just a terrible jumble and I wanted to cry.

They were no clearer on Wednesday when grammar continued. By Friday I was a nervous wreck: I simply could not face another day of chaos not knowing if the word was a noun or an object or a subject. I managed to convince Mom that I had a fever. What relief to spend the day in bed and not face that terror.

The following Monday things were even worse. Now there was something new added to muddle: verbs. Not only verbs but transitive and intransitive verbs. Not only that but also present, past, future. I went home for lunch and did not return until Wednesday. Big mistake. Nouns had become even more tricky. Not only were the nouns, subjects, and objects one big muddle, but they could also be direct and indirect objects. I begged to see the school nurse. I absolutely had to get away from such chaos. I had to go home. I managed to stay there till the following Monday.

I got through Monday and Tuesday but made a point of being sick on Wednesday – thus escaping more chaos. By the time I returned to a grammar lesson, oops forgot which days they were and came to school, everyone was diagramming sentences. I couldn’t. For years I lived in mortal terror of grammar. If my school could have been rid of two obnoxious topics they would have been grammar and math. Math I could tolerate, but not grammar.

I arrived in the eighth grade. Everyone was still diagramming sentences and talking about things I knew nothing about. One day during recess, while sitting on the steps, I cautiously confessed my confusion to a classmate and asked her to explain what a verb is. In one sentence she nailed it for me. I wish I could say that things improved immediately, and that I asked her many more such questions, but I didn’t and they didn’t.

I arrived in Finland and… was expected to teach WHAT?! Grammar, ah you must be joking… you’re not. I poured over grammar books and finally figured out that I could safely talk about articles, prepositions, and verb tenses.

Eventually I decided that I needed my Master’s in English and, hello, guess what? I had to take and pass grammar. I have paid for my childhood fears and frustration many, many times. I have fought with English grammar terms and the nomenclature of sentence parts and whether or not a phrase is a prepositional phrase or a subordinate clause. If it is a prepositional phrase then the nomenclature is different than if it is a subordinate clause. I wonder if old Bill Shakespeare had any of that in mind when he said: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”