A KEY TO GRAMMAR

BY Ronnie Bray

Grammerian To HM Queen Elizabeth II

The Key to Grammar

Ronnie Bray Lets get something straight right from the start. I dont know no grammar never having learnt none. If you cant tell already that I dont know no grammar then you soon will. I can hear the questions forming in your mind: Didnt he go to school? Didnt he learn nothing? and so on. Well, Ill tell you. I did go to school now and then but I must have missed the grammar lesson because I dont ever remember even hearing the word grammar let alone being told nothing about it. When someone asked, Wheres your grammar? when they read my school work I always told them Shes at home getting dinner ready for the lodgers! all sweet and innocent like. Actually they were darned lucky to be able to read my writing. Bad writers were told that it looked like a spider had walked into the ink well and then crawled across the page. In my writing they said it looked like the spider was drunk as well. In my later years I heard the word more and more and knew it must means something else than Nanny because of the way they fitted it into sentences. I knew about sentences. A sentence is a piece of talking written down and it starts with a big letter and stops when you have to breathe and count to four. There are a sort of under sentences when you have to breathe and count to three but start talking again before anyone else has the chance to jump in and say something different. Thats called a comma. Too many and you end up comatose. You can find other marks on paper especially in books but no one knows what they mean although old people with glasses will pretend they do but they dont make any more sense than Chinese to me. I got all kinds of marks on this here keyboard but I didnt get no book with the computer and so I cant figure out what they is supposed to do. They look good and make people believe I no whats going on but its all fancy and show like a frock on a dog. Then it happened. I wrote a story and someone said OK well publish it but its got to have good spelling and a good grammar. I thought oh oh or something like that and started in to worry. I have always been a good speller because I could read before I could balance on two legs but I didnt read no books with any grammar in them. They were all kind of grammarless books such as they make for those who are not quite growed up but are too big to be carried about. Well this story was kinda enjoyed and people oohed and aahed about it and so they said I was a writer. That made me feel funny inside and I got to wondering what my old school teachers would say if they could hear all the goings on. One other thing they said was that the grammar had to be right. Oh oh I thought again. I did that a lot mostly quietly to myself so people didnt think I was some sort of strange person in need of tabletting and locking up for good. Well I ignored the grammar but when Gay reads my stories she points out all kinds of things that are wrong in a foreign language so I have to make out as if I have some savvy about these things. When I change tenses in the middle of a sentence I have to explain that artistes such as creative writers like what I am are not bound to rules like they was iron chains and that a change of pace and tense can do a story an awful lot of good especially if it makes the reader stop and think. She said it would do that alright but in a funny kind of way. She obviously has never heard of artistic incense. And so it was that I smuggled a book about grammar into the bathroom and hided it behind the cistern where I read it surrterep sripptet surritiess seriptishers surrip when no one was watching

and I learned all kinds of interesting things. For instance if something as already been done it is perfect. That shows how stupid and a waste of time grammar are. I seen many things done in the past that are far from perfect. Also if something has a bit in it it is a particle only in grammar they spell it participle so if something has already been done and finished in the past but you can still see part of it working in the present it is a past perfect participle because it lies in the present continuous case of the genitive because it belongs to whoever made it. Now something in the dative case is like a bottom drawer or a hope chest because it has to do with boys and girls running away to get married. Even if they only go to the picture show and dont hold hands it is still dative according to my mother. Contemplative is when you think something is so but it might not be. This is also known as the uncertainly principle or did I or didnt I madness. It happens after you leave home and are too far away to go back and you start to think about the gas oven. What that has to do with writing I dont know but a lot is said about it so maybe thats why it comes under grammar. Then theres the jussive case. I never met anyone who knows about the jussive case but it is in the bathroom book and so far no one has shown me that it is wrong just that they never heard of it. Jussive goes like this: you can do it if you want to but you dont have to but Id like you to do it but I aint telling you to so please yourself but why dontcha just do it! Thats as plain as it can be told especially to people who have never heard of it. Passive is when you are writing real fast and your brain overtakes your writing. Passive is never perfect because it gets all muddled up. Phlegmatic is disgusting and only applies to heavy smokers. Imperfect can apply to diamonds and participles but not to continuous present ones unless it is going to go on for a long time. Most people have no notion at all about grammar and the rest couldnt care less. As long as they can draw their pay cheque and get their groceries and have their dust bin emptied every week and no litter left on the path they dont care whether your grammar is up or down. I mean if you had to know grammar before you could talk thered be an awful lot of quiet people and thered be no shouting at football matches or hollering in elections just like in the monasteries that have banned non-grammar talking. Sometimes people dont speak for generations on end in them places because no one knows the grammar and so nobody cant teach them what they dont know and so nobody says anything ever not even come in when you knock on the door they have to do it all in sign language and beckoning and pulling faces. It can make for some very ugly monks but the food is good. Though grammar has its place or they wouldnt have made it up no one really knows what it is. Some think it is just to fool schoolboys into staying at school long after they should have left and got good jobs and left all talk of grammar behind. Its like saying that no bird cant not sing unless it learns to do music first and then giving it a test and telling it it aint ready. Reflexive means bouncing back and it is what they do with elastic and rubber bands except when they put it into mirrors and looking glasses. We are nearly all wrapped up with the grammar now. There is just a few to go and then we can get back to important things like popping corn and trying to sing like Elvis. Nominative is what they used to call things before everything had a name. It was useful but went out of fashion although I often use it and my wife uses it even more. Nominative really only has one name in it and it is thingy.

Subjective has to do with politics especially if there is a king or queen. Although theres a lot of talking about it what it really means if you cut it down to the bones is do as youre told or you get your head cut off. I think I read somewhere that if they do cut you head off they have to give it to you so you can take it back home with you or else they have to pay a poll tax. Objective is the subject of a context when the speaker doesnt know what the matter is and has to make it up. It is also used to make a point in court when you are losing the case but apart from that it can also mean art. Accusative is also used in court when you want to insult a murderer but dont want to say his name out loud for fear of prejudicing his case. Interrogative is also another case that comes up in court a lot. It is when the police have asked a lot of questions in a special room and the suspect regains consciousness he is said to be interrogative. It also means he is guilty. The complex case is only used by drunks because it is too hard to understand when you are sober. In fact I have never heard it said but I am often on the point of saying it myself that grammar is altogether too confusing to have any place in such an easy language as English. Having said that you can quote me. What with past and present participles being virtually indistinguishable from one another and no one really trying to make them any different whether in reflexive or dominant mood and with other grammar requirements all being met by staying silent it surprises me that anyone ever says anything at all when so much can be said with a look. As for writing in grammar I really believe that it cant be done because it was never meant to be that way. How many people can write in French or Icelandic and what do they do about grammar if you have to change grammar every time you change language its just a waste of time and in nay case it make some people think that education is impotent which it is only if you want to impress people and travel abroad. If you want to stay home and marry the girl next door you dont need no grammar. You tell a girl you have grammar and pretty soon shell want it too but it doesnt just stop there shell want the moon the stars and the sun and then where will grammar help you? I have never seen a verb do anything or an adjective be useful except to make another word to put in front of cat or any other of those things that you must never ever end a sentence with. Why have them if they dont do nothing and how did we get stuck with them in the first place. I expect some foreigner slipped them in while we was looking the other way. People from abroad have different grammars so how can we be sure we have the right one? Its too confusing to try and work it out so why do it? I may be a writer but Im not getting stuck with the grammar. I got my public to think about. They dont know no grammar and theyd be upset if I started putting it in. The world is not ready for grammar just yet Let someone else get it going first, someone like Hemingway and Steinbeck and Kelsey Grammar who have already got their reading public and new stuff wont hurt them for that matter and then Ill have another look at it. But for now, wheres that popcorn machine and my Elvis CD?

Copyright January 2001 Ronnie Bray All Rights reserved