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What’s a good English grammar book? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5114 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 1 of 10 10 June 2011 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know that if I knew English grammar, it would make learning grammar in other languages a whole lot easier. Up til now, I've looked things up on Wikipedia when I don't understand them, and it's served me fairly well. However, I think now I'd like to read a grammar book that will teach me everything there is to know about English grammar.
Does anyone know of a good English grammar book that fits the following criteria? -It should be really in-depth. I want to know everything. How hard can it be? I know the language, after all. -Preferably, I'd like it to skip some of the basics. I know what a noun is. I even know what a noun case is, though I don't know much about which ones exist. So it would be nice if the book assumes the reader is a native English speaker who isn't a little kid. I checked the library website, and they have on order 3 Oxford English Grammar courses: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. They come with CD-ROMs, and seem neat. But then, what level would I start with? I think they were designed for ESL learners. There are also similar courses at the library called Oxford Living Grammar. Plus about 10 pages of other grammar books that I haven't looked through. So, any suggestions? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 10 10 June 2011 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are plenty of English grammars written for native speakers, so it shouldn't be to hard too avoid courses
written for ESL learners. An alternative to an English grammar could be an introduction to linguistics. Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 3 of 10 11 June 2011 at 12:58am | IP Logged | ||
Who knows, it may be slightly more extensive than you expect. My German grammar "Duden: Die Grammatik" is a thick volume of about 750 pages, small font. A similar book for English might keep you busy for a while ... I would recommend starting with a thin book, one volume, and you don't want a book with drills and exercises, just an overview. Maybe this will give you what you want to know, already. As you study German, why not "Pons Grammatik kurz und buendig Englisch" link? These small books are good and cheap, I have some of them for my own use. Edited by lingoleng on 11 June 2011 at 1:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| getreallanguage Diglot Senior Member Argentina youtube.com/getreall Joined 5470 days ago 240 posts - 371 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Dutch | Message 4 of 10 11 June 2011 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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The Cambridge grammar of the English language
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| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5189 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 10 11 June 2011 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I would question this premise - the different grammars of languages make me think it would be better to learn the grammar of each language seperately. You could spend weeks learning the English tenses, say, and then find out they don't exist in your L2. I also think the best way to learn grammar is not from a book, but through looking at texts [preferably with audio] and doing translations. This way you can compare to English, but without getting bogged down in grammar terminology. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5319 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 10 11 June 2011 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that this is an over-generalization. While an in-depth study of English grammar would probably do little for foreign language studies, a native English speaker who has no idea what tenses are, will most likely have more problems understanding tenses in other languages than someone who has at least some vague idea what tenses are. He'll also have a harder time noticing similarities and differences between English and the foreign language. For example, if you know that the English Present Perfect is formed with the auxiliary verb to have and the past participle and that the German Perfekt is pretty much formed the same way, all you'd need to find out is how to conjugate the corresponding German auxiliary verb and how German past participles are formed. In my case, being able to do some basic "contrastive linguistics" definitely helped me to better understand foreign languages. BTW, the favorite English grammar books of the native English speakers that I learned English from was Michael Swan's Practical English Usage. IMHO, this is one of the most well written and, more importantly, most practical English grammar books out there. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5189 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 10 11 June 2011 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I like this book too, but prefer the now hard to find "A Reference Grammar for Students of English" by RA Close. Both are good reference books - not books you could use to sit down and learn English grammar with, I dn't think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 10 11 June 2011 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a fan of the Longman grammars for natives.
I've got a copy of the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, which was the set text for an Open University course I took 5 years ago (it is still the set text for that course). There's an accompanying workbook too. What I like about it is that it gives information on frequency of use of alternatives. But the full sized Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English looks even better and I wish I'd bought that instead... but it only seems to be the hardback version that's still available, which is a liiiittle pricey for me... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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