Chapter 12 Part Two: From Chinese to English I am Terrible Trivium

I'm the Terrible Trivium I am the terrible Trivium In those years when I was learning English by myself, there was a time when I only studied English grammar every day, because I memorized a lot of words, but I couldn’t write a long letter, so I put my hope on learning grammar.I think, isn't grammar the law of language?There is also a book that says that learning a language is learning grammatical rules, just like learning mathematics and memorizing formulas.As long as you know the formula by heart, it will be much easier to solve the problem.Therefore, I really thought that as long as I learned grammar well, I would learn half of English, and I could even achieve twice the result with half the effort.

During that time, whenever the small bookstore in the county came, I would buy English grammar books, for example, "English Grammar", "Interesting English Grammar", and even "Medical English Grammar".I study nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs very seriously... then subjects, predicates, objects... and then simple sentences, parallel sentences, compound sentences... and then tenses and voices... Declarative, subjunctive, imperative... But after a while, I feel that the more I learn grammar, the more cumbersome it is to analyze sentences. Some sentences become confusing after a little bit of grammar analysis.

At this time, my friend N told me that I should be "rarely confused" about grammar knowledge.Think about it, even students in English-speaking countries are afraid of things, let alone us Chinese?After many years, when my translation of "Mittler's Travels" was published, I remembered that the terrifying big dirty bird in the book used "I'm the terrible Trivium." to scare Xiaole and the others, And this terrible trivium is the "grammar, rhetoric, logic" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) that every student in a medieval school must read. Generally speaking, learning any language requires hard work. The ancients had the adage that "a sword is sharpened in ten years". Learning a language is like sharpening a sword.I reorganized the grammatical knowledge I had learned, and wanted to sort out a main line from it.I think that since the most basic unit of language is the word, as long as the knowledge of words is understood, the difficulty of grammar may be reduced by half.I start with nouns first.From simple things, to complex and abstract things.First of all, since nouns represent these things, nouns are also divided into abstract nouns (abstract nouns) and common nouns (common nouns).It is very interesting to think about it. Many words that express the nature and characteristics of things are abstract nouns.for example:

advice (advice) care (care) color (color) courage (courage) faith headache kindness wealth (wealth) wisdom (wisdom) The names of people, places, and many specific things are common nouns, and are the most common: Sir Isaac Newton (Lord Isaac Newton) basketball (basketball) internet mobile-phone There are also proper nouns (proper names), which are specific to specific places and things: The British Commonwealth of Nations (Commonwealth of Nations) NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) (APEC)

There are a group, a pair, and a column in Chinese. These words that represent a group are also used in English. Several of these underlined words represent a group, but the spellings are quite different: a crowd of people (a group of people) a flock of sheep a herd of cattle a shoal of fish a swarm of bees an English class (an English class) a team of swimmers I think the interesting thing about English is that English nouns are also divided into countable nouns and uncountable nouns. The so-called countable nouns are words that can be changed into plural forms by changing the ending of the word.Uncountable nouns do not have this change.For example, many of the abstract nouns mentioned above, such as advice, care, courage, faith, headache, health, help, kindness, wealth, and wisdom, are uncountable, as well as furniture, news, information, and so on.

However, memorizing simple rules is not enough.I once heard a sentence from a friend: Sheep are always sheep, and deer are deer everywhere. I couldn't help laughing after hearing that.How fun it is to memorize the special rules of the English language in this way!Once again, I looked through the English homework book of a primary school student and found that he wrote a sentence: Fish and fish are two fish. Swine and swine are two swine. !It seems that not only geniuses or grammar experts have good ideas. The singular and plural of English nouns are actually not that simple. Some experts concluded that there are more than 20 kinds of singular and plural changes, and each form has some exceptions. I used to memorize them by rote. Later, it is very dull to apply.Later, I changed my method, memorized while reading, became familiar with these changes in conversations with friends and correspondence, and gradually became my habit.However, the changes of some words are irregular. For example, the plural of the following nouns need to add es:

motto - mottoes (motto) potato —— potatoes (potatoes) tomato —— tomatoes (tomatoes) However, only s is added to the plural of the following words: piano - pianos (piano) studio - studios tornado - tornados (tornado) Others can use both -es and -s, such as: fresco - frescoes or: frescos (fresco method) gingko - gingkoes or: gingkos (gingko) portico - porticoes or: porticos (porch with columns) For nouns that also end in o, some need to use -es when they become plural, some use -s, and some can use both -es and -s. Why is there such an exception?I have asked some English experts, but they can't tell, they can only say that it is caused by habit, which is how people have always used it.Another example:

ox - oxen (bull) child —— children (children) This is exactly the plural form of Old English, but it is still used today, but many other plural forms of Old English have changed long ago, so what to do?There is only one way - because they are common words, just remember them. It is often said that failure is the mother of success, but I think that learning English and practice is the guarantee of success.Persevere in learning, accumulate bit by bit, never let go of a doubt, never give up a new usage, and never ignore a new phenomenon, even if it is a new usage of an article.When I say new, I mean a usage that has not been encountered before.

Once, friend C gave me a set of Brighter Grammar ("Interesting English Grammar").I found that the original grammar knowledge can also be explained in such a simple and vivid way, instead of being so rigid and boring like some thick and heavy grammar reference books like bricks.For example, there is an exercise in this Brighter Grammar to change all the verbs in italics in the following passage to the simple past tense: A London Fog It is a very foggy day in London. The fog is so thick that it is impossible to see more than a foot or so. Buses, cars and taxis are not able to run and are standing by the side of the road. to find their way about on foot but are losing their way in the fog. Mr. Smith has a very important meeting at the House of Commons and has to get there but no one can take him. He tries to walk there but finds he is Quite lost. Suddenly he bumps into a stranger. The stranger asks him if he can help him. Mr. Smith says he wants to get to the Houses of Parliament. The stranger tells him he will take him there. Mr. Smith thanks him and they start to walk there. The fog is getting thicker every minute but the stranger has no difficulty in finding the way. He goes along a street, turns down another, crosses a square and at last after about half an hour's walk they arrive at the Houses of Parliament. Mr. Smith can't understand how the stranger finds his way. “It is wonderful,” he says,"How do you find the way in this fog?"

“It is no trouble at all to me,” says the stranger, “I'm blind.” I think that after finishing this exercise, you will have a basic understanding of the past tense of English verbs. I read Brighter Grammar without realizing it, but how do I go any further?It was at that time.I bought a copy of "Analysis of English Word Formation".Opening the book, I found that thousands of English words are composed of a few roots, prefixes and suffixes.For example: the root word cours, cour, curs, cur has a lot of words as follows: course (itinerary, process, distance, road, course) courser (runner, stalker; hound, horse)

concourse (confluence, collection, confluence) intercourse courier succor (rescue, relief, rescue, aid) cursory (hasty, sloppy, rough) cursive (cursive, cursive, cursive, cursive) excurse (excursion, travel, excursion) excursion (excursion, travel) excursionist (hiker, traveler) excursive incursion (incursion, entry, invasion) incursive (invading, entering, flowing in) predecessor (precursor, predecessor, predecessor) predecessor current (popular, current, current) currency (popular, circulating, circulating currency) concur (simultaneously, agree, agree) concurrence (simultaneous occurrence, agreement, agreement) recur (recurrence, (disease, etc.) recurrence, (past events, etc.) resurface recurrence (recurrence, recurrence, re-emergence) occur (happen, appear) occurrence (happen, appear, happen) I read grammar books one after another (not the tome grammar books like "English Grammar", "Practical English Grammar", "New English Grammar"), and the grammar knowledge gradually enriched in my mind .However, I have not formed a systematic concept, what is grammar?Until later I read The Little English Handbook ("English Handbook"), the author of this book Edward PJ Corbett said, Grammar may be defined as the study of how a language “works”—a study of how the structural system of a language combines with a vocabulary to convey meaning. When we study a foreign language in school, we must study both vocabulary and grammar, and until we can put the two together, we cannot translate the language. Sometimes we know the meaning of every word in a foreign language sentence, and yet we cannot translate the sentence because we cannot figure out its grammar. On the other hand, we Sometimes can figure out the grammar of the foreign language sentence, but because we do not know the meaning of one or more words in the sentence, we still cannot translate the sentence. (Grammar can be defined as the study of how a language "works", that is, the study of how a language's structural systems combine with vocabulary to express meaning. When we learn a foreign language in school, we must learn both grammar and vocabulary. If we Without combining the two, the foreign language cannot be translated. Sometimes we know the meaning of every word in a sentence in a foreign language but cannot translate the sentence because we cannot decipher its grammar. On the other hand, we sometimes Able to decipher the grammar of a sentence in a foreign language, yet unable to translate the sentence because the meaning of one or more words in the sentence is unknown.) Corbett believes that The grammar of a language is, for the most part, a convention. We form sentences in a certain way because communities of native speakers of the language, over a long period of time, have developed, and tacitly agreed on, certain ways of saying something. The grammar of a language allows some choices but proscribes others. (Most of the grammar of a language is conventional. We form sentences in a certain way because the group that speaks this language has formed and defaulted to certain ways of describing things for a long time. A language's syntax allows some choices but excludes others.) I like what Corbett said. Yes, language is a convention, so grammar is also a convention. As long as people say this and form a habit, it can be summed up as grammar.At this time, I couldn't help but feel a little bit emotional. It turns out that after learning grammar for so many years, its meaning is so simple. But by what exactly (along with vocabulary) does grammar express things? Corbett said, through grammatical devices (grammatical devices). Grammatical devices are inflections, function words, word order, and intonation (if spoken) or punctuation (if written). (A grammatical device is: [formal] inflection, function word, word order, [speaking] stress, or [artistic] punctuation.) I finally understood that the reason why the grammar is both simple and complicated is because it is conventional, and at the same time, because it is composed of such a few small "devices", it has been turned over and over again, and people have written monographs like bricks. .Still, I prefer small books like Brighter Grammar, A Little English Handbook to those big bricks...