learning to write good

I kind of liked Car Talk, those Tappet brothers had a way with words.  I guess Trac Talk is informative, but I don't see much humor in it.  I did like the fact that the tractor is (while not a fire truck) fire truck red.  And my my look at those tall trees.  I suppose that's because you are in a swamp.  The live oaks of arid Austin are rather short.  I guess Tree Talk is not a barrel of monkeys either.

Speaking of a way with words, I took Old Dog's quiz last night.  I think I did pretty well.  I got about  half on the first try, and three after one or two guesses, and three I had to give up on.  If I had just been reading them in the paper I wouldn't  have noticed that they were in error.  Maybe block for bloc, I think that would have noticed that.  It's interesting to see things with your school glasses, takes me back to diagramming sentences.  My first semester of high school my English teacher diagrammed the whole Gettysburg address.  Announcing that was impressive, but the actual deed proved to be exceedingly boring.

One of the peculiarities that gives me the most trouble is different forms of a verb for singular and plural,and for that matter, first, second, and third persons, but one thing at a time.  I am, we are.  He is, they are.  A brother Karamazov is, the brothers Karamazov are, but the Brothers Karamazov Heating and Plumbing is, even though it is run by the brothers Karamazov who are.

In general the so-called rules of English are to help us communicate.  If you tell me the Al Karamazov ran, I know it is in the past.  If you tell me he runs, I know it is something he does from time to time and if you tell me he is running I know he is doing it right now, unless you add in the Moscow 500, then I know he will be running whenever that race is run..

But if you tell me Al Karamazov run, or the brothers Karamazov runs, that information is just as good as if I said it the right way.  But oh it does sting, does it not? You can just feel that ruler across the knuckles, even though our civilized public school teachers were not allowed to do that.  And, curious thing no adult native English speaker mixes up those verb forms, and those are the people that we learn the language from, so why is it necessary to teach that? 

Well maybe because we are little kids when we learn that and sometimes little kids do mess up those verb forms.  I was thinking well what would a person who didn't go to school talk like?  Would he learn from other people who talked right or would he be saying "Al Karamazov run."?  I don't know, in present  day America we never run into people who haven't gone to school.

You know just two hundred years ago it wouldn't be difficult at all to find somebody who didn't go to school. How much has going to school changed us?  Not just what we learned, but the whole social experiment?