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Kai.....
The British simply do not teach their children grammar!
In my own case, I came to my first Latin lesson (aged 11) to be told about 'First person singular', the 'infinitive' of the verb and the Nomative, vocative, accusative of the noun, Mensa, was ..... (god alone knows!).
I hadn't a single CLUE about what they meant in ENGLISH let alone LATIN! At that stage, I wasn't even AWARE that we used Nouns and Verbs. I am still not entirely sure what a 'present participle' actually IS!
By the age of 11, the state system had not ONCE given me a lesson in grammar! Not ONCE had the concept that there were RULES that could be 'listed' been MENTIONED!
I got lucky; I was sent to a minor public school which corrected SOME of my missing education.
If you want to see the level of the British misunderstanding of the apostrophe, just ask 95% of the British when you use the apostrophe in the words - it's - and -its- !
Parents don't teach their children grammar because THEY don't unserstand it, either!
I know it's sad but, to those who want to find out HOW to use punctuation and the REASONS behind punctuation, I recommend 'Eats, shoots and leaves' by Lynn Truss !
What's funny is that, if you look up that book on Amazon is that they list the book as :
Eats shoot, and leaves
and
Eats, shoots and leaves
I think they missed the point.....
Because my education in grammar was SO poor, I apologise for the 'howlers' that must exist in this posting. If I could have SEEN those 'howlers', I would not have INCLUDED them!
Ian
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