Natural Acquisition of Grammar/Usage Skills

February 11, 2015 12:43 PM

I'm curious to hear the experiences of people with good writing skills who were raised in families with poor language usage.

I was raised by parents who spoke grammatically. As a result, I can look at a sentence I've just written and determine whether it's grammatical simply by passing it through my inner "ear". If it's not grammatical, it sounds off...even if I can't point to a usage rule that's been violated.

I often wonder what it would be like not to have developed that faculty - i.e. if correct usage had been learned later, like a foreign language. I'd think I'd find it really hard to edit my writing if my intuitive "ear" for correct usage wasn't instilled early on.

If you weren't closely exposed to correct grammar in daily life until later on, I'm curious about your experience. Are you nonetheless able to intuit bad grammar from the sound of it, or do you resort to a more analytical, rules-based approach?

posted by Quisp Lover to Writing & Language (26 answers total)

Through years and years of obsessive reading of every book I could get my hands on as a youth and teen.
posted by aught at 12:48 PM on February 11, 2015

Isn't all dialogue grammatically correct within that dialect?

Minor quibble aside, re: foreign language usage, having learned a couple of foreign languages in my childhood, at a certain level of fluency you end up developing another inner ear, but it's never perfect. I can't imagine what a rules-based approach would look like.
posted by tooloudinhere at 12:53 PM on February 11, 2015

Husbunny grew up in Appalachia and his folks, speak with VERY pronounced Appalachian English. I mean, we need to get his Mom to StoryCorp because someone needs to capture it. This is the language/accent you hear Cletus Spuckler use.

He taught himself to read at around age 2 and he's a genius at mathematics. His parents didn't get further than high school. His Mom has always been a reader though, so there were books in his house.

Weirdly he doesn't have a pronounced southern accent, if you heard him talk, you wouldn't detect anything. He does pronounce Can't as Cain't. Also, he uses the hard G instead of the soft G in words like gesture. I think this is because he's read the words before he heard anyone use them.

So there's a certain amount of intelligence and precocity in how this happened. He claims that he just watched a lot of television and that accounts for his grammar/syntax and accent. We know that there has to be a certain amount interaction for language learning, but Husbunny's brain is wired differently from yours or mine.

He learned German well enough in college to accept a post-graduate fellowship in Germany in Mathematics. I mean, you talk about Chinese Algebra being hard...

So, there's a data point for you.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:01 PM on February 11, 2015

Oh! And to answer the question he has an excellent ear for standard grammar and syntax. He writes professionally as a hobby.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:02 PM on February 11, 2015

Isn't all dialogue grammatically correct within that dialect?

Yes, I wanted to say something akin to this. It's not a matter of correct/incorrect (to one's ear) as a switch in register. This comes with a caveat/disclaimer that I did not "grow up in a family with poor language use", but that I can switch between dialect and Hochdeutsch in German. Each is "correct" within its context and I will automatically adapt - after a while - to the environment.

I do this in English as well. When I first moved here I sounded pretty RP (with some 70es London thrown in, apparently, as I learnt much of my English from Queen VHS's. The band, not the monarch). My English is much more colloquial now, and "incorrect" grammar slips in sometimes (I'll notice immediately that it is, but it's still what sounds "right" to me at the time and therefore comes out of my mouth that way).
posted by ClarissaWAM at 1:05 PM on February 11, 2015

Television and books.
posted by rue72 at 1:09 PM on February 11, 2015

Through years and years of obsessive reading of every book I could get my hands on as a youth and teen.

This. Also, a lot of public speaking as a teenager (thanks, Dad!).
posted by loolie at 1:10 PM on February 11, 2015

The people I know who grew up in homes with non-standard English spoken, and who have great language skills despite that, were all voracious and dedicated readers from an early age.
posted by quince at 1:12 PM on February 11, 2015

I often wonder what it would be like not to have developed that faculty - i.e. if correct usage had been learned later, like a foreign language

I agree that you're making some incorrect assumptions here. If you learn a foreign language well enough, you do develop that "ear" The moment you leave rules behind is when you can genuinely start using a new language.

I was raised by parents who spoke grammatically. As a result...

I, like many others, was raised by parents who did not speak English. So I'd say parents are not the sole source of learned grammar.
posted by vacapinta at 1:16 PM on February 11, 2015

heavy reading.
posted by anthropomorphic at 1:34 PM on February 11, 2015

Books books books.
posted by Paris Elk at 1:45 PM on February 11, 2015

Everybody acquires the grammar of their native language naturally. In terms of the spoken language, it's simply not accurate to call dialects ungrammatical or incorrect.

What you're talking about sounds like the intersection of being able to read a sentence and tell whether it sounds grammatical to you, while also having the English that you speak be a variety that corresponds pretty closely to written standards for English (i.e., those with the most cachet).

Reading a lot, and being exposed to enough examples of what various editors believe is correct, is probably the best way to get a good grasp on what would be seen by others as standard written language.
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 1:53 PM on February 11, 2015

I work as a professional writer and editor in English. I'm not a native speaker of English, by the way, but I've developed fluency + style thanks to books and years of experience. Nowadays I would consider myself bilingual but I didn't grow up as such.

I grew up in a working class home where language usage was and is relaxed. I was an obsessive reader from a young age and I went on to go to University as the first person in my family. So, yes, books.

Having said that, it is worth noting that hardly nobody speaks "properly". Well-educated native speakers keep slipping up too. It's worth listening to tapes of people speaking and you will notice this yourself. Subject-verb agreement is particularly iffy. Sentence construction can be interesting too.
posted by kariebookish at 1:57 PM on February 11, 2015

My mother spoke High German, my father speaks Bavarian dialect. I was always an avid reader and I developed such an inner ear early on. I studied English at school from age 10, added Latin 3 years later and French another two years after that. When I left school I had a reasonable vocabulary in English and good grasp of grammar. As a result my written English was largely correct in terms of grammar but my style was oddly formal and I used odd word choices quite frequently, when I lacked vocabulary in specific areas. I never got very far with Latin or French even though I spent years studying both languages.

Since then, I spent 12 years in the UK. And most of my social and professional reading in the last 16 years has been in English, as has most of my social media and TV consumption. But for the last four years I have been living in the German speaking part of Switzerland. And I speak both High German and English every day, frequently switching between both, even at times when talking to the same person. My teams are international and we use whatever language is appropriate for all people present or lends itself to the subject matter. And my Swiss colleagues speak to me in Swiss German, which I have learned to understand quite well since moving here.

When I lived in an English speaking environment I developed that same inner ear. I could tell if my sentence was grammatically wrong. I had native speakers compliment me on my writing. I was mainly thinking in English and there was no significant effort involved.

Now that I am always switching back and forth between the two languages something very bizarre has happened. Quite often, I will write something - in either language - and it looks off. And then I analyse why and it turns out that I've been using English words and German grammar or vice versus. And I have been known to write something and start using words and grammar for one language but as the email develops, I switch to the other language's grammar. On occasion it's not even just applying the wrong grammar - I've started sentences in one language and finished them in another - words, grammar, everything. Needless to say I have made a habit of proof reading my formal written output very carefully. And it's not just grammar, it's spelling, and number conventions and what have you.

So, at least based on my experience, having well spoken parents is not the only way to acquire this inner ear. Nor do you have to be very young to develop one.
posted by koahiatamadl at 1:57 PM on February 11, 2015

And re-reading this - you can definitely overexert that poor inner ear if you switch been different languages too much…oh well.
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:10 PM on February 11, 2015

I'm a first-gen high school grad, with parents and neighbors who spoke dialect common to Yankee farmers; a form of Appalachian English . Use of "ain't", dropping "g", saying things like "Thank you for all you done", and the like.

My speech and writing are standard; I work as a journalist. It's the influence of reading. In speech, I code switch when talking to family.
posted by jgirl at 3:20 PM on February 11, 2015

People are answering the question "How did you develop educated language skills after having been raised in an environment without proper usage?".

What I asked is whether those raised in environments without proper usage are able to use their inner ear to intuitively suss out the propriety of a given piece of usage, or whether they tend to use less innate, more rule-oriented analysis.

Thanks for answering, koahiatamadl. I'd like more info on your second posting, if you have a sec. How can you "overexert" the inner ear?
posted by Quisp Lover at 3:24 PM on February 11, 2015

Albert Camus was raised by his mother, who was illiterate and had some serious speech/hearing issues. IIRC, he thought that his mother had a vocabulary of about 400 words.
posted by jason's_planet at 4:13 PM on February 11, 2015

My family moved to the US shortly before I turned 4, and we never spoke English at home. My inner ear must have developed through some combination of school, books, and TV, because I definitely use it.

Although my English inner ear is fairly reliable when it comes to things being grammatically correct, it's not always great about catching awkward sentences. That's especially a problem if I've been speaking more Polish than English.
posted by capsizing at 4:51 PM on February 11, 2015

I grew up in the rural deep south. The English language was an absolute mystery to me until I started taking French courses in the fifth grade. That was what made everything snap into focus for me over the years (I took French every time it was available, and ultimately took a BA in it in college, too): a comparative approach to differences between languages was the only thing that made clear what instructors were talking about when they referred to grammar and syntax (and pronunciation and circumlocution and pacing and on and on and on).
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:08 PM on February 11, 2015

"Although my English inner ear is fairly reliable when it comes to things being grammatically correct, it's not always great about catching awkward sentences. That's especially a problem if I've been speaking more Polish than English."

capsizing: do you have fallback ways of catching these problems? Or are you forced to let them go?


"No one speaks "ungrammatically"

I'm fully aware of the issues re: prescriptive/descriptive language taxonomy, and am, fwiw, squarely on the latter side. But over-backlash on this - or on any other - issue gets silly. There are many styles of language use, and you well know the one I'm referring to. You're pretending not to understand in effort to push me to express myself more to your preference. Which is highly prescriptive, really.
posted by Quisp Lover at 7:16 PM on February 11, 2015

Kids growing up in households with bad grammar still see TV and movies, where proper English is used. It may be more a difference of what's acceptable and comfortable than what one is capable of understanding.

Also, this isn't the same thing, exactly, but learning how to write in AP style or learning how to write in a news style is different than other kinds of writing. You observe the rules, you learn them and you adhere to them. I've developed a, as you say, AP style "inner ear." Now when I see something that isn't written in AP style, it looks wrong to me.
posted by AppleTurnover at 8:29 PM on February 11, 2015

I grew up in a fairly poor household, and I lived in books for most of my childhood. My parents used to give me a hard time because I was a "walking dictionary" and talked "posh" compared to my siblings, who didn't read so avidly. I am also aware of picky details in speech, like when someone uses "less" instead of "fewer" -- that's something my son does and I can't help reminding him when he does it. But I'm also aware that the rules of language are fluid, and that "less" and "fewer" are more and more interchangeable. My son is also a heavy reader, and he has an incredible vocabulary, but I wouldn't say his speech is any different from his peers most of the time. We have the added complication of living in a German-speaking country, so I do notice occasional German grammar structures slipping into his speech.

Maybe that's a generational thing? He probably watches more TV than I did and has some limited access to social media, and when I see something he's posted, he uses jargon that's specific to kids online that I didn't know he knew.
posted by tracicle at 3:03 AM on February 12, 2015

"Kids growing up in households with bad grammar still see TV and movies, where proper English is used."

But is it? A lot of dialog in entertainment is in informal vernacular of one sort or another. The goal is to mirror real life (which is often ungrammatical!) rather than adhere to rigorous standards. I'd imagine it would be quite hard to develop a keen inner ear for proper usage from Hollywood, because of all the noise with the signal. Books (which a few answerers have cited) are a lot more reliable (and I can imagine how they'd help you develop that inner ear). Newspapers, too, but your point about AP style being a separate realm unto itself is both true and interesting (thanks!).


tracicle, the smart, well-read kid speaking like his peers strikes me as fairly typical. Hard to say he's wrong, either. Talking like his peer group while quietly discerning the difference sounds like the best of all worlds! Good adaptation, etc.
posted by Quisp Lover at 7:46 AM on February 12, 2015

I learned English (as a foreign language) in school. I think I am fluent in English, but you can look at my posting history to judge for yourself.

whether those raised in environments without proper usage are able to use their inner ear to intuitively suss out the propriety of a given piece of usage, or whether they tend to use less innate, more rule-oriented analysis.

No rules. The only rules I tried to learn were the if-clauses, and I still have to look them up whenever I try to remember them. I get much better results when I just use them without thinking. I achieved this by being an avid reader of books and the world wide web since its early days. I think my daily MeFi browsing sessions are helping me maintain my fluency. When my "inner ear" is not up to par, my fallback methods are: Googling (to see if the phrase I was thinking of is indeed both grammatically correct and commonly used) and rephrasing.

But even with my native language, I learned grammar from books, not my family. Everyone around me spoke in one dialect or another, and it was a given (in my culture/home country) that I'd learn how to speak and write "properly" during school years. We were taught that our country's language was a construct based on one of the predominant dialects, but not exactly the same. And we learned about characteristics of different major dialects. So there was never the assumption that "my dialect" is the same as the "official language". Basically, my native language was the dialect spoken by my parents and my second language was the standard language of my country. I think this is the first time I thought about the possibility of acquiring the standard language just from family members!
posted by gakiko at 1:30 PM on February 12, 2015

I grew up in a house where Mandarin Chinese was spoken by both parents and at a time when their English was pretty poor. One interesting question to explore, I think, is: can someone acquire an "inner ear" for educated speech if not raised in that linguistic environment? And for me, the answer was YES; the related answer, if how that came about, comes back to books as always. I still have a few quirks of language from the fact that I learned the majority of my English from library books, albeit while immersed in an English-language school/country as a young child; I have to consciously recall how to pronounce words like "freight" and "accept."

But yes, I can unconsciously and instinctively produce upper-class East Coast American English. I've also always had an ear for prescriptive grammar in school. For instance, every SAT study guide will tell you to rely on rules rather than "ear" for responding to questions on the Writing section, but I trust my ear implicitly for both prescriptivist and linguistic grammatical judgments, and I got a perfect score on that section with little to no studying.
posted by serelliya at 10:18 PM on February 12, 2015