One's native language seems inherently logical. Despite its ridiculous spelling, English makes sense to me intuitively; its structures seem, well too obvious for comment, that is until I attempted another language and ran smack into another's set of “obvious” assumptions. For example, in Russian, grandfather is a feminine noun, a joke we beginners all enjoyed. Yet the striking oddities to a foreign speaker are unremarkable to a native speaker. Surely, a good argument for learning another language is to make you question what you hold as obvious and what you assume to be true.
Posted at October 7, 2003 04:50 PMAs I recall, I didn't understand what a preposition was until I took French in high school and had to memorize a list of them. French also led me to an appreciation of relative pronouns and the concept of the subjunctive.
Posted by: Ann on October 16, 2003 11:37 AMThis discussion has been closed. No more comments may be added.