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English grammar does make sense
Geoff Pullum’s new book, The Truth About English Grammar, is a stylish and witty introduction to English grammar as it ought to be understood. Most of what is taught to schoolchildren about grammar is nonsense, as he demonstrates, and here he offers general readers a modern description of how our language puts sentences together, freed from the straitjacket of Latin grammar wrongfully imposed on it for the last few centuries.
Did you have to learn how to conjugate verbs? I did. Six tenses, 1st/2nd/3rd person, singular/plural, 36 in all. Nope. Regular English verbs have four forms—walk, walks, walking, walked. Irregular verbs have five—take, takes, taking, took, taken. And be, all alone among English verbs, has eight—be; am, is, are, was, were; being; been.