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?

AIBU

DD has just finished year 6 and has spent years of primary school on SPAG.

Sorry YABU I mean

So much defensiveness on this thread, which I think is so typical of British attitudes to education in general and languages in particular. It's holding us back. Of course there are exceptions and circumstances thay can make it harder for some people to learn some things. But as a nation we have to value education more, and expect better from and for our children, or we are going to continue our slow descent into international irrelevance.

I'm in my 50s and didn't learn grammar at school. I think the reason that many British people don't know grammar rules is because we learn our native language by listening and speaking not by learning grammar rules and vocabulary. I speak 3 other languages which I learned by study at school and college and I understand the grammar as I learned it while studying.

That being said, many people's grammar knowledge now isn't as good as it was.

@orangeblosssom I think schools are much more keen these days to teach English grammar. I agree that there was a period where it wasnt instilled into pupils and there are a lot of adults now who don't write well.
So I don't think the OP is being unreasonable at all.

I work with adults who need support with their literacy skills and they come to my classes because they're often crippled with embarrassment about their skills, and were often made to feel stupid as children. I spend a lot of time reassuring them that so long as they can make themselves understood, perfect spelling and grammar aren't the be all and end all. And I stand by that.

The first thing I teach when teaching linguistics is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive attitudes. We are asked to ensure students are descriptive. Your post is prescriptive. Like the 18th century grammarians who made up many of the rules people seem to respect today. They made them up to distinguish between the classes. Literally linguistic classism. Any kind of establishment prejudice against the marginalised disgusts me more than whether people follow these abstract grammar rules

It's not about keenness, it's about a change in the syllabus.

I do hope you can tell me what a fronted adverbial is as that is currently considered essential knowledge

I do hope you can tell me what a fronted adverbial is as that is currently considered essential knowledge

I had to google that one. I don't recall coming across that in English, Frrench or German when I was at school in the 1970s.

I do agree about basic mistakes that should have been sorted out at primary school, but I can’t agree that English grammar is simple. I have studied several other languages, inc. Latin and Russian, but not until I started teaching EFL did I realise that despite no noun genders, no declensions and hardly any verb conjugations to worry about, English grammar is far from straightforward.

Just for starters, something that native speakers don’t even think about - question tags.

‘You went yesterday, didn’t you?’
‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’
‘You were there on Wednesday, weren’t you?

‘I’m getting fat, aren’t I?’
‘He’s not too busy, is he?’
Etc.
So complicated for learners!

Whereas e.g. French uses simply n’est-ce pas? German uses nicht wahr? and Greek uses then eenay? . Etc.

I might add that from experience, foreign learners of English are generally taught grammar much more thoroughly than our native speaker children so often are, and the situation is not helped by the widespread attitude that these things don’t matter any more - except for fusty old nitpicking pedants, nobody cares.

It's good to hear that English teaching has improved in schools! Perhaps this is just a problem with my generation and it'll have improved by the time the next generation are running businesses and preparing texts for publication.

It just doesn't matter. If someone can be understood there's really no issue.

I remember being taught about prescriptivism vs descriptivism, and the different ways of viewing language - for example, as a "crumbling castle" (in need of repair), or indeed as something that changes and evolves. Of course, language evolves, but that's not what I'm talking about. Rules such as how to form plurals (i.e. not with an apostrophe) is not something that varies from region to region, or generation to generation. In 20 years, perhaps "teddy's" will be an acceptable plural form of "teddy", but for now it is not, and seeing businesses publish texts with such obvious, basic mistakes is an indictment on the quality of our education (which, from what I'm reading here, has now improved radically).

Someone mentioned Ukrainians in their area having a better command of English grammar than native speakers. This is interesting. I'm quite closely acquainted with several Ukrainians and from what I've heard, while the country is much more deprived than ours, the education system is extremely rigorous and children are held to a very high standard in state schools.

I'm not sure that I agree about the nature of the English language. Compared to a language like German, English is chaotic and inconsistent in its approach to the rules of grammar - in German, one analyses the situation, applies the rule and out rolls grammar. In English it's much less logical. I'm Dutch by birth and the Dutch language is the same - chaotic, inconsistent and with illogical rules for spelling.

I don’t tend to make very basic mistakes (they’re vs there, you’re vs your, incorrect apostrophes etc) but my grammar could improve. I wish I’d been taught grammar at school but we weren’t bar the very, very basics. I distinctly remember being taught what a noun, adjective, verb, adverb was in the middle of secondary school (!) as well as similes vs metaphors. My DC are doing these in early primary which is fantastic.

I would like to know how to construct sentences better. I know about putting commas after items in a list for instance but other than that I just guess where they go.

You have misunderstood me.

I'm not suggesting that English is an easy language for foreigners, but that as native speakers we don't really have an excuse for making such basic mistakes as how to conjugate a verb or where to put an apostrophe.

I don't know a single native English speaker that has an issue with phrasal verbs.
Have you ever heard a native English speaker say "I just need to take the rubbish up to be collected" or "come into it! You're having a laugh".
That's obviously not what I'm talking about.

Things like idioms, phrasal verbs, inconsistent pronunciation rules and so on are understandably difficult for foreigners, but what I'm concerned with here is how we as a nation do not have a basic of grasp of our own native language. In the countries of the languages that I speak, children have to memorise verb tables and do grammar drills and there are entire television shows for children discussing and explaining different rules. Here, I feel like we are just content to make mistakes, even when learning the rules would take 2 minutes.

I've learned a few things on this thread already which I have taken note of!

Like a few people have mentioned, most people are reading and writing more than ever before, but at the same time we're reading and writing informal and "raw" stuff, not just professionally-edited books.

The standard of English in the population might have improved. I read an analogy once. Imagine if every child was constantly playing catch, chucking balls back and forth between their mates, all the time. Do you think that would somehow make the future generation of cricket players worse from "bad form"? Well, right now every child is reading and writing more than ever before on their smartphones and tablets.

But the standard of English in the body of written text has declined, because there's so much more informal and unedited text around now.

There is grammatical variation in the UK, OP.

https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects/articles/grammatical-variation-across-the-uk

For example, "we was" is acceptable in some dialects; it's not wrong in those dialects.

Do people writing other languages not make similar mistakes then?

It wasn't for a fair while in the 80s.

It would be marked wrong in a grammar or English test, in any region of the UK.

I think the crux is

When she wrote Teddy's

You knew she meant Teddies.

You didn't think, "who's Teddy and what of his is she referring to?"

Her communication in context therefore was effective and did the job.

as native speakers we don't really have an excuse for making such basic mistakes as how to conjugate a verb or where to put an apostrophe.

My spoken and written English is half decent but I have absolutely no clue what 'conjugate a verb' means. Stop being so pretentious.