Chapters 1 and 2 were so long ago

I think way back when we were supposed to post about chapter 1, I was going to post about "ain't" which many people have done since. I just found it interesting that it was in common usage in the old days, because I didn't know that at all, and I feel like I've read enough novels that are set far enough back, or written far enough back that ain't would show up as a valid verb form, but it doesn't. For chapter 2 I just have to comment on diagramming and how it does make sense most of the time, but when there are exceptions, they really throw me off. Probably because before this class I'd never done diagramming before, like most of the rest of the class who went to public school in Oregon.

The use of "ain't" being proper and our current study of verb tenses makes me think about Eliza Doolittle in the musical "My Fair Lady." She's a "common flowergirl" with a Cockney accent, and Professor Higgins has made a bet with his friend that he can pass her off as nobility within a few month, so he has to teach her to speak "proper" British English. When she has her break through and forms words "properly," they take her to the races at Ascot to introduce her to society and see if they can pass her off as upper class. To the chagrin of Professor Higgins, Eliza doesn't know proper grammar. She tells a story with perfectly spoken words, saying "She come to so sudden she bit the bowl off the spoon" and "And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me?" All the upper society people think this is very strange, and Higgins covers his tracks by calling it "the new small talk" but later teaches her grammar. The scene is funny because she sounds so proper, yet her grammar is absolutely horrible. The disjunction is what creates the humor, because the grammar is so jarring. And I thought this was a good example of why at least knowing "proper" grammar, or at least verb tense, is so important, because it elevates the status of the speaker so much.

Chapter 1&2

The most interesting thing I read the text book is the diagram of the sentence in chapter 2. I have never seen those diagrams before. When I saw those diagrams first in the text book, I didn’t understand what that is. It looks so strange to me because I have never learned how to make those diagrams. However, after I understood how it organized, it was so fun to make diagrams from the sentence. It was just before day of last test, I studied the text book’s exercise problems which had to make a diagram from the sentence. I really enjoyed doing those exercises because it was so fresh thing for me. Therefore, the diagram and how to make them are the most interesting things in chapter 1&2 for me.

Chapter 1

The part of this chapter that I liked was the first page in dealing with the sudy of grammar. I found the paragraph about how we could connect with between the grammar lessons that we have learned and the ones that were learned by Greek and Roman schoolboys long ago. I also liked learning about when the first text book was published and how most grammar books stem from that first book nowadays. I also enjoyed seeing a defintion that explained what grammar is. I liked reading about regionalsims. There is so much different American dialects. In the south they say you all or you'll, in parts of Philadelphia you hear youse and in the Applicahain region you hear you-uns. Lastly, I liked reading about ain't. I never knew that ain't was part of the English conversational language back in the seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries. Nowadays, using ain't is seen as uneducated or ignorant. I personally don't believe this, I think that we as a culture are lazy with our speech. When I hear someone say ain't I just think that they want to be cool or are too lazy to say anything else.

I leave you all with this...
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."