To think it's embarrassing how English has one of the easiest grammar systems, and yet so many people don't know the basic rules...

[Skyeboat]

I'm a linguist, and the languages I studied have very complex grammar rules compared to English. So much so that native speakers have to memorise verb tables, moods, cases etc. at primary school level, and even those who didn't study to a high level know the basic rules.
English is one of the simplest languages, and yet the amount of native English speakers I see making really obvious mistakes is just embarrassing.
Is the problem that we just don't teach grammar and syntax in school?
For example, I saw a FB post today selling "Teddy's" (as opposed to teddies). That's actually the most common mistake I see - people, even businesses, not knowing how to use apostrophes and form plurals. I'd understand if it was a complicated rule that required memorisation with a lot of exceptions, but it's soo basic. It takes about 10 minutes to learn then you're all set.
I went to a pretty average state school, and I remember they did teach us these things, but we weren't rigorously tested on them or required to repeat them regularly. So I do believe the problem is with a lack of focus on basic English from a young age.
Am I being unreasonable or is this really embarrassing that we have such a poor grasp of our own mother tongue?

I'm not sure I agree how simple English is. We might not have genders for nouns but we have 3 different versions of the present tense. (I play, I am playing and I do play).
We also have a crazy number of irregular verbs and pronunciations.

YABU because English has seriously irregular, rule-breaking grammar that makes a lot less sense than many other systems. Sure, we don't have the complications of gendered nouns, for example, but there are so many exceptions to the so-called rules it's kind of a miracle we can understand one another really!

It doesn't help there is often poor editorial control the written material that gets put out there - as a professional editor I certainly wince at some of the stuff I see from organisations that should surely have got someone to check it.

I have of course, checked this particular post carefully but have probably made an error somewhere, sod's law! 😆

I don't really care if I see these mistakes in a text, but when a business is publicising their wares, and they don't know how to form plurals, that's embarrassing, isn't it?

Hopefully all the robots that are taking over industries and have already managed out our children from future employment, have a good grasp of grammar.

"A business" is singular.

Try telling this to a dyslexic kid who cannot understand why two, too and to are all different.

Don't be a judgemental grammar cunt, it doesn't suit anyone.

I was recently looking at a business site where "are" was used twice instead of "our".

Yes! It didn't come automatically to me that uncountable nouns require "amount", and countable nouns require "number". If it had been drummed into me, it would have. That's embarrassing, for me and my country's education system.

They'll only be receptive if the OP sorts her own grammatical errors first

Less fat, fewer calories.

You shouldn't put a comma before "and" like you do in your OP.

Judging by the mistakes made by AI on Duolingo I'd say not always.

@Skyeboat I don't know how complex other languages are but I do agree with your comments about English grammar.

I'm certainly not claiming to have perfect grammar but it amazes me how many times I see 20 year old + people getting "to/too", "of/off" wrong. This is so basic that I just don't understand how people cannot grasp it. I don't mean that in a rude way but it is basic.

The thing is...language difficulty depends on the language you're coming from. English would be easy to learn for a German, much less so for someone whose native language is Chinese.

English is actually quite difficult to learn properly, but conversely it's very forgiving - it's possible to get most of the grammatical points of a sentence wrong and yet still convey your meaning accurately. Given that conveying meaning is the entire point of a language...you could conclude that proper grammar is much less important in English than it is in other languages.

With that said, I have the soul of a proofreader and thus butchered apostrophes are like needles in my eyes.

Actually, you can if the sentence requires it.

I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Goofy.

Many, many Russians make tense mistakes in Russian - it is a running joke that many Russians speak ungrammatical Russian. Historically, the Russian ruling class spoke atrocious Russian (because they all spoke French at court).

There are endless articles in French newspapers bemoaning the standard of spoken French amongst the younger generation.

Germans regularly bemoan non-standard Bavarian and Berliner grammar constructions and contractions.

I don’t think English is in any way unique in this.

I really don't remember being taught grammar. I asked a few friends in case it was just me and they said the same. They only remember doing this when learning another language.

When you say that you’re a linguist what do you mean by that? This seems like an odd thing for a linguist to say.

Linguistic complexity is really difficult to measure and all languages are equally complex for native speakers. It’s no harder for Finnish children to learn Finnish than for Chinese children to learn Mandarin or English children to learn English. Some languages have more tenses, some have more inflection, some are more agglutinative than others, some have larger vocabularies, some have more sounds than others, some are tonal or use pitch accent. Foreign languages feel more complex because it’s easier to spot complexities in other languages than in your own.

> The amount of English speakers

(1) it should be English-speakers
(2) Amount is used for uncountable substances, like sand or sugar. It should say: Number of English-speakers

Hartman's law of prescriptivist retaliation: "Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror [sic]." Named after editor and writer Jed Hartman.

English is extremely grammatically complex, because it is cobbled together from many influences Germanic/Latin/Anglo-Saxon mainly. As a result of this it has many many irregularities, meaning learners need to memorize a lot.

"Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through."

Is that easy?

But it doesn't. She was saying X, and X. Not X, X, and X which is an Oxford comma.

Maybe as a linguist the OP could outline her understanding of the difference between language learning and language acquisition when she describes one language as “easier” or “harder”, and perhaps a leeetle detour into the relevance of descriptive vs prescriptive linguistics might elucidate the matter... but wot do I no, I only has a phd in it.

There are times when perfect grammar matters and times when it doesn't. The purpose of language is not to be "right", it's to enable communication and smooth interaction.

The very worst communicator I know was a stickler for grammar. He would write intense formations of words that were grammatically correct, but unintelligible and uninteresting. My rule is that if you're relying on correct grammar to make sense, go back, start again.

Worse, he would apply niche, stickler interpretations to other people's writing, and insist that the grammar meant that his reading was the only possible correct one. When even a blind Lithuanian bat would read the sentence correctly, ignoring the quirk of incorrect grammar.

I don't recall having any issues learning the rules of spelling and grammar while and school, and have managed to pass exams and hold down jobs and volunteer roles where writing fairly well was required. That said, I also know lots of people of my generation who were taught in a similar way and who struggle to know, even as adults, if they are using the correct grammar, punctuation, and even spelling. While part of me doesn't enjoy seeing this, I also try hard not to judge because we are not all the same. I do think if it's an important piece of writing, e.g. for a job interview, for a school/university assignment, for a shop sign and so on, then those who do struggle should ideally get someone to proofread or double check for them. I think the same variety of skill exists in all generations. Learning a foreign language as an adult has made me realise that while we don't have such complicated rules about sentence structure, verb endings, genders, cases and so on, we do have some really odd pronunciation rules (e.g. through/though/bough/cough which all sound different despite the same letter combinations, silent letters such as 'k' in knee or knife, and odd words such as queue, quay, yacht and so on).

I agree with you, I am not native English speaker, French actually, which is quite complex grammar.
However, you need to take into consideration people suffering from dyslexia also predictive texting on phones, just saying.
I try my upmost to spell and write correct grammar, in both English and French, no one is perfect, but I try my upmost to spell check and grammar check, with Words, Google et al, it's a lot easier these days compared to having to write an essay/dissertation back in the 90's 😅

Ah, @Takoneko, you got there before me but without the sarcasm!