"enjoy your food", "talk to me" - imperatives, right?

[emkana]

Not according to dd's teacher - she keeps going on about "imperative verbs" to which group talk and enjoy apparently do not belong. I am german so just to make sure I got this is not a difference in the languages I'm unaware of - every verb can be put into the imperative mood yes? No such thing as imperative verbs? And how do I tell the teacher?

Yes, I think that might have an influence. I also think English people use irony a great deal - it is part of the national character, hence 'Don't!' and 'Stop it!' and then there is the US influence, which is assertive and ultra-positive, part of its national character - hence 'Enjoy!' 'Have a nice day' 'You go girl!'

posted identical update on the other thread, just for those who might be interested:

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Went in, held h/w under teacher's nose and said feebly "Excuse me, why is this wrong?" She looked at it and said that "talk" is actually right. Fine. Then she said "enjoy is not a verb, that means not a doing word, so your dd shouldn't have used enjoy there"

at which point I just said "okay thank you" and left the room, stunned

what part of speech, I wonder, does she think 'enjoy' is?

FWIW, we're mid imperatives too, and I think dd understands more than I do

blimey.

I would love to know where she got that idea!
[hshock] She's clearly mad! (or just under stress!) did she relly say it as patronisingly as you've written it, or is that just my interpretation?

anyway, bossy verbs makes it easier to understand than calling it "the imperative mood" - for small children, anyway. I wouldn't bring its real name into play until senior school, personally.
bossy is a funny name for it - you can give a direction, request or, like CCF's examples make a statement! without being bossy, but it's not asking a question, so it makes it a direction.
(i'm not very good with explanations, anyway!)

Go for it!
Enjoy!

I think you should start a campaign Emkana: Foreign residents in the UK demand improved English grammar teaching for their dc. Why Mrs Emkana from Germany asks, should my dd be disadvantaged by living in the UK? If she were living in Germany, she would be taught correct English grammar - both definitions and usage. As it is, she is being taught that "to enjoy" is not a verb.

what a joke.

goodness. I wonder what she would have said if you had asked her what part of speech it was??

Oh please ask

lol can you see her creeping in trepidly again tomorrow, oh Miss X, just another wee question....

Clary!

I read your post about 'I was cold and hungry' and tested my DD (9) and DS1 (7). To be honest I was expecting to be able to report back very smugly that they could do it.

But no - they tell me that they have been told by their teachers that 'to be' is not a verb (because it's about being, not doing).

I feel a little conversation about grammar coming on at some point on Thursday when I accompany DS1's class to the zoo.

I think I'm going to cry!!! If some primary teachers don't know that enjoy and be are verbs, then it is not surprising that children are confused!!

I have a great book for teaching my own children grammar (we home educate) and they have learned their grammatical definitions by heart. They get a very stony glare from me if they use the expression 'doing word' (I don't even know where they got that from - definitely not from me!!)

The definition we use is "A verb is a word that does an action, shows a state of being or helps another verb."

Maybe you could pass it on to some primary teachers who don't know their arse from their anything about grammar!

Having said that there was an activity on BBC Bitesize which said that 'could' wasn't a verb; 'I' and 'my' weren't pronouns and 'always' wasn't an adverb!!

I complained and they've changed it but it still isn't right. I've complained twice; they keep changing it but just changed to another modal verb and still marked it as 'not a verb'!

cory Mon 18-Oct-10 23:30:37 mrz Mon 18-Oct-10 19:10:23 "We teach Imperative verbs are also known as ?bossy verbs?- they tell people what to do!"

How do you make this out? I thought the imperative was a form of the verb, not a particular kind of verb. So surely that should be "bossy forms of a verb"? because when you are 6 years old bossy verbs is easier to understand/accept than forms of verbs.

I can imagine discussing forms of verbs would produce an interesting response from the average 6-year old. I'm imagining whole classrooms full of verbs sitting at desks, with Imperative Form being one of the classrooms - the one with the bossy teacher in it.

my education is sorely lacking, I'd never heard of imperative verbs until now and I have an Alevel in English Lit and a BA/MA in literature subjects. I can identify a verb though - pretty shocking that a primary teacher can't.

Imperative is like an order. That's what I was taught when learning French.

Wouldn't 6yo be able to get that verbs have moods like people - sometimes they're bossy or encouraging, sometimes questioning, sometimes informative?

But Oh Dear Lord to enjoy and be not being verbs. Explains a lot of the remedial work we had to do with 1st year English lang students...

Actually most 6 year olds don't even get the verb / noun/ adverb/adjective/pronoun concept never mind moods.

But Robyn, language doesn't really come into the study of literature does it?

(discovered this to my horror when already taking English A level, having moved from the Scottish system - English Higher, at least in my day, was language and lit. A level was just lit.... quickly gave it up and took maths instead :))

I can't remember now though what I learned at my v. old fashioned primary school - it was the 1970s but could easily have been the 50s, we did parsing in P7... what I learned in various foreign language classes over the years and what I just learned. Am reeling at some of what is being taught in school though; scary.

Ooh - there are loads of moods, apparently. I like dubitative.

Only three verb moods
indicative
subjunctive
imperative
but then there are verb phrases and verb forms

Nope, according to R.L. Trask's Dictionary of Grammatical terms in Linguistics, which this thread stirred me to dig out, there are loads.

But he is talking about language in general, not English specifically, so I wasn't really saying that dubitative was a mood in English - just liked the term. Infinitive surely also a mood?

And FairPhyllis brought up optative before - where are you now, FP? I'm too rusty on this stuff - does linguistics use other "moods" when talking about English?

My apologies I assumed we were discussing English grammar

Well, we were, I just got distracted and off at a tangent. Do want to hear back from FP, though, as I wonder if current thinking ascribes more moods to English, even if using the same forms?