Grammar is not the “rules” you were taught in school. It’s what your brain does to make sense of the linguistic input it’s exposed to. The “rules” you were taught are a hidden curriculum designed to maintain a social hierarchy. Before you learned them, you were already an expert at your language.

Um, is there somewhere I can learn more about the second part of this particularly?

Except that our vocabulary was at a 3rd grade level, and we had no concept of compound sentences or metaphors or what an analogy was. I've never met an elementary school student who could write at the chess level. They're all down at Tic Tac Toe complexity.

Learning grammar helps you talk in deeper ways about the language you are fluent in. It allows you to understand how language works. It doesn't have to be prescriptivist, but it provides the language to talk about language. For me, it's the difference between driving a car and tinkering with one

This has been a big revelation to me in recent years - that being a stickler for “proper” grammar is elitist

I taught EFLfor a few years,always struck me that at least some of it should be taught in mainstream British schooling tbh

🤯 imma need to ponder this

It has long frustrated me when people use "grammar" to cover usage, orthography, punctuation... I understand that better now! If people associate "grammar" with shameful mistakes, with arcane rules that push them down or let them push others down, then the confusion makes sense.

So much this! Thanks.

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