One tiny problem, though: anyone who was a “grammarian” in England in 1600 was a grammarian of Latin. Of course, this didn’t stop them: if English was to become “eloquent” like Latin, the solution was easy: make English conform to the rules of Latin grammar. Simple.

Thus began the long tradition of trying to make the Germanic square peg of English fit into the round hole of Latin. This is why, by the way, all our grammar words are from Latin words: NOUN from Latin ‘nomen’ = “name” VERB from Latin ‘verbum’ = “word”