WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Grammar Minute: Is English Really That Hard?

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

It could always be worse ... right? Find out more on today's episode of Grammar Minute!

Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we're saving the English language 60 seconds at a time. I'm Lauren Smith, and one of the most common questions I get about English grammar is this. Why is it so hard? And I sympathize. There are a lot of exceptions to English grammar rules, probably because English is really just a compound of many different languages, and it's these exceptions that make the language difficult, although the actual grammar is relatively straightforward compared to many other languages. Don't believe me, consider Russian, and consider only nouns.

Nouns can have three genders, which are completely unrelated to the object's actual qualities. There's no strict word order rule, so the main way to differentiate between different uses of nouns is by changing the endings, or sometimes the entire word. There are six singular endings for each noun, gender, and six more for plural, adding to a grand total of 36 possible spellings that completely change the meaning of your sentence. Maybe English isn't so bad after all. That's your grammar minute.