Search This Blog

Popular Posts

Labels

Saturday, June 25, 2016

English grammar terms you need to know (when learning German and other languages)

If I were you I would learn the subjunctive. What is the subjunctive? Learning languages, even on easy to use, or user friendly website Duolingo, involves learning some grammar, especially in German.

It's hard to learn a foreign language when you have forgotten the technical terms in English. Here's a quick reminder for me and you.

Technical term - easy explanation
false cognate - false friends (confusing words which sound the same but are different. For example in German
wo is where and
wer is who
(I remember 'who is where' and where is - who?)

nominative - name or subject of sentence, the person doing the doing (The cat in the sentence
'The cat sat on the mat.')
accusative - person who things are done to, object of sentence, in the sample sentence, 'the mat'

Noun - name or naming word (John, book, cat, mat)
In English only proper names - of people and places - have capital letters

Capital letters - THIS IS IN CAPITALS
lower case - all small letters - this is in lower case
initial letter - first letter of a word

verb - doing word (sat)
adverb (describes a verb) quickly eg he ran quickly / the fox ran quickly

adjective (describes a noun) quick his answer was quick / the quick fox
pronoun word which stands for a noun such as I you he she they it 

indicative - indicates what is happening - (I am or I will)
subjunctive - what your subconscious dreams or wishes, wishful thinking, possible but not actual if 'I were you I would' - sub meaning under - as in subway- the underworld underground - not real, usually prefaced by the words if or maybe.

If I were you I would learn the subjunctive.


Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor

No comments: