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?

You might have had a point thirty-odd years ago, but I have to break it to you that STEM degrees are very fashionable and that arts degrees are widely derided, to the extent that any interest in the arts is beginning to be considered at best pointless, at worst suspect. Paxman is/was great on University Challenge but he must be about 100 by now and hardly a barometer of public opinion.

You'd still be judged even in these Philistine times for saying that Shakespeare wrote the Iliad - after all, surely only pretentious tossers have ever heard of the Iliad!

Oh yes. 😂 I swear, every Spanish learner spends at least a year just ignoring the subjunctive in the hope it'll go away. Sorry guys, it ain't happening...

What gets me isn't the complex areas like frontal adverbs or split infinitives. It's the basics that are really easy to learn - the most common mistakes, such as:-

Their/there
Stationery/stationary
Carrot's/carrots
Kerb/curb
License/licence

I just can't understand why people can't take a few minutes away from looking at cute cat videos on Facebook to learn these basics. It's not rocket science.

But some people seem to think it's cool to get these basics wrong, a bit like the "I can't do maths, me" gang! They just can't be bothered to learn the very simple rules or spelling for common words.

It's pretty depressing really that after 10+ years of free compulsory state education, adults can't get the most basic things right.

If you don't find the ough construction difficult would you mind wording it in a way to help people who do? I think it's really hard

@Skyeboat yep, I agree with you 100%. This thread is such a great example of things that we need to try and do better on when it comes to attitudes to education. If us Brits could lose the defensiveness, snobbery and double standards we might be able to stop sliding backwards!

It's pretty shameful that there are people on this thread whose mother tongue isn't English who have such a fantastic grasp of the English language.

Learning at least a second language is another thing we should be doing much more of in the UK

@TheShellBeach , I’ll tell you where those missing ‘ofs’ went - they turned up all over the place where they’re not needed, e.g. ‘Outside of the town centre.’
They need to be sent back where they belong!

Oh yes! And on TV property programmes where the presenter says there's a balcony (or en-suite), "off OF the master bedroom". Aargh!!

You're a 'linguist' yet don't seem to know the difference between punctuation and grammar? Because what you have criticised are punctuation errors, not grammatical ones.

And as someone who has worked in English language education, I can assure you that English is by no means 'easy'. It may seem that way at first, because it is so ubiquitous, but unlike, say, Russian or Chinese, which are very difficult to get into but then 'level off', English is fairly simple at elementary level but gets more complex as you go on.

English grammar may seem 'easy' in the sense that there is no grammatical gender or complex case system, but there are a ton of verb forms, lots of irregularities and something as 'obvious' as how to ask a question is actually quite difficult. Spelling is a complete nightmare, even for native speakers. Pronunciation too. In short, English's status as the global lingua franca might make it seem easy, but it's actually quite an unusual and 'odd' language compared to most of its European peers.

All that being said, I do wince at 'I could of'. No excuse for that!

Then I will take some comfort from the fact that all the arts graduates I know who think I’m a total dimwit for only having a degree in chemistry are living in the past, I guess!

It’s sad that any discipline should be derided though - one subject is no more valuable than another, and no-one should be looked down on for studying one subject rather than another.

Just because learners find such elements difficult, doesn't mean that, compared to other languages, English is difficult. I agreed with a pp who said that they only really hear English people insisting that our language is difficult. My friends from other countries are broadly of the view that English was one of the easiest to learn.

Most people insist that their own language is impossibly difficult!

It's impossible to measure the difficulty or otherwise of a language without knowing some details about the learner. What's their native tongue? If it's German or Dutch, for example, then they have an advantage with English. What's their exposure to the language? These days, no matter where you live in the world, you'll likely have some exposure to English from childhood onwards. In some parts of the world such as Scandinavia, children grow up watching undubbed TV series and films in English from an early age. That's unlikely to be the case for other languages. Similarly, what is their motivation for learning the language? Since English is the unchallenged global language these days, millions have a very strong motivation to learn it. Again, that's often not the case for other languages.

So all of these and other factors have to be taken into account before deciding a language is 'easy' or otherwise.

I'd rather schools used their limited time & resource to teach children about finances, health & nutrition, sustainability and perhaps recognition that while talent & ability is equally spread, opportunity is not, rather than where to put a comma.

But we're all different. You do you.

"Curb" is the American English spelling. Also "license" is the spelling of both noun and verb in American English.

What kind of explanation are you looking for? It's just something that has to be learned case by case and memorised. In SLA, we don't tend to encounter enough, although, through, bought etc all at the same time - they're just learned and memorised as they arise. Any teacher who presents all these words to a language learner at once would be setting them up for failure.

One thing that's probably relevant is that those four words in particular are very high-frequency, and as such are usually taught really early on, at A2 level. They're words that we see, hear and produce a lot, which makes them easier to memorise.

That might sound like a cop-out, but every language has peculiarities that you just have to memorise. In English, it's non-phonetic spellings - but that's still pretty easy in comparison to Arabic or Hebrew writing, or the different Japanese writing systems. In other languages, it's conjugation tables, gender, declinations, tones...

Some English speakers get weirdly obsessed with the -ough thing whenever language is discussed, I guess because it's become a common meme online. There are other aspects of pronunciation that are often far more difficult for learners like rhotic vs non-rhotic accents, certain phonemes (depending on your L1), or the schwa if your L1 is syllable-timed.

This, every time! Why do people put apostrophes on plurals? Why? My boss does it as do loads of people. I just don’t understand why?

People would say "Where's your grammar?" We would yell "At home by the fire".

Boom Boom

Presumably only embarrassing if they know it’s wrong and they obviously don’t.

Yes . . . a business selling "teddy's" on Facebook. The sort of business that is extremely likely to use colloquial language (NTM have its copy composed on a phone). And the sort of business which, when it's operating in languages whose native speakers get more grammar education than we do, would also be likely use colloquial, uncorrected copy composed on a phone. You would know that if you had a better grasp of how the languages you've studied are used colloquially.

In any case if you think business language, especially marketing language, is exclusive of colloquial language, your linguistic studies must have been very specific.

Yes . . . a business selling "teddy's" on Facebook. The sort of business that is extremely likely to use colloquial language (NTM have its copy composed on a phone). And the sort of business which, when it's operating in languages whose native speakers get more grammar education than we do, would also be likely use colloquial, uncorrected copy composed on a phone. You would know that if you had a better grasp of how the languages you've studied are used colloquially.

In any case if you think business language, especially marketing language, is exclusive of colloquial language, your linguistic studies must have been very specific.

How are you with 'less' and 'fewer'? (same issue)

Good question. Perhaps it's a confusion with the plural possessive.

YABU They only started to teach grammar about 6 or 7 years ago when SATS were overhauled. People don’t know what they weren’t taught.

Although they might have taught it in private schools for longer.

That's from some Scottish dialects

Someone who works in English language education doesn’t know there are two facets to punctuation: one phonological, the other grammatical? Punctuation is an aspect of grammar.

On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune.

Lynn Truss Eats, Shoots and Leaves.