If anyone were to ask me to name some of my favourite possessions, high on the list would be my bike. I bought it 30 odd years ago when a student in London and it is still going strong. When I take it to my local bike shop for any tlc, the bikey boys draw their collective breath and wonder whether they will have the parts for such an old specimen (the bike, I mean).
What I am ashamed to admit is that even after 30 years of peddling around, I have never fully understood the gears. Whether I should be in a low or high gear to get up hills. So I tend to stay in the same one and just use muscle power.
I'm afraid it is the same with the car. I go through the motions of changing gear but I secretly wonder what it is all about. 'Don't you hear the engine labouring? Go into third!' bellows my partner. And to tell the truth, I don't really hear anything, I just change gears when it seems the right time. In fact, give me an automatic anyday.
What I need is a Nod off in gear usage.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that this is why grammar is so important. It is the engine that drives the language. And engines come in lots of different models: from the smooth sleek singsong of Italian, to the gutteral case-driven German, to the haphazard-sounding English. The best way of understanding them is to take them apart and put them back together again.
No comments:
Post a Comment