Key to Grammar

8/3/2019 Key to Grammar

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A KEY TOGRAMMAR

BYRonnie Bray

GrammerianTo HM Queen

Elizabeth II



The Key to Grammar Ronnie Bray

Let’s get something straight right from the start. I don’t know no grammar never having learntnone. If you can’t tell already that I don’t know no grammar then you soon will. I can hear the

questions forming in your mind: “Didn’t he go to school?” “Didn’t he learn nothing ?” and so

on. Well, I’ll tell you. I did go to school now and then but I must have missed the grammar lesson because I don’t ever remember even hearing the word ‘grammar’ let alone being told nothing

about it. When someone asked, “Where’s your grammar?” when they read my school work I

always told them “She’s at home getting dinner ready for the lodgers!” all sweet and innocentlike. 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 andcount 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.

That’s 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 don‘t make any more sense than Chinese tome. I got all kinds of marks on this here keyboard but I didn’t get no book with the computer and

so I can’t figure out what they is supposed to do. They look good and make people believe I no

what’s 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 it’s 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 Ididn’t 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 didn’t think I wassome 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 paceand 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 theyspell 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 don’t

hold hands it is still dative according to my mother. Contemplative is when you think something isso but it might not be. This is also known as the uncertainly principle or did I or didn’t I madness.

It happens after you leave home and are too far away to go back and you start to think about thegas oven. What that has to do with writing I don’t know but a lot is said about it so maybe that’s

why it comes under grammar.

Then there’s 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 don’t have to but I’d like you to do it

but I ain’t telling you to so please yourself but why dontcha just do it! That’s as plain as it can betold 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 couldn’t 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 don’t care whether your grammar is up or down. I mean if you had toknow grammar before you could talk there’d be an awful lot of quiet people and there’d be no

shouting at football matches or hollering in elections just like in the monasteries that have banned

non-grammar talking. Sometimes people don’t speak for generations on end in them places because no one knows the grammar and so nobody can’t teach them what they don’t 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 wouldn’t 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 andgot good jobs and left all talk of grammar behind. It’s like saying that no bird can’t not sing unless

it learns to do music first and then giving it a test and telling it it ain’t ready.

Reflexive means bouncing back and it is what they do with elastic and rubber bands except whenthey 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 tryingto 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 hasone name in it and it is ‘thingy.’



Subjective has to do with politics especially if there is a king or queen. Although there’s a lot of

talking about it what it really means if you cut it down to the bones is do as you’re 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 toyou 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 doesn’t know what the matter is and has tomake 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 don’t

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 roomand 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 fromone 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 can’t be done because it was never meant to bethat 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 don’t need no

grammar. You tell a girl you have grammar and pretty soon she’ll want it too but it doesn’t juststop there she’ll 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 putin front of cat or any other of those things that you must never ever end a sentence with. Why have

them if they don’t 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 differentgrammars 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 I’m not getting stuck with the grammar. I got my public to think about. Theydon’t know no grammar and they’d 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 won’t hurt them for thatmatter and then I’ll have another look at it. But for now, where’s that popcorn machine and my

Elvis CD?

Copyright © January 2001

Ronnie Bray

All Rights reserved

Documents

Key to Grammar