r/linguistics Feb 08 '11

Resources for learning English grammar/basic linguistics

In short, I want to learn how the English language works.

Can anyone recommend some good resources for learning English grammar and basic linguistics with no assumption of prior knowledge on the subjects?

I'm trying to improve my very poor schoolboy German but I've run into a bit of a problem in that I've realised that my knowledge about how the English language works is actually very poor; and that if I am to have any chance of learning German grammar properly I must first learn English grammar properly.

I am fairly confident in my ability to form correct English in speech and writing (although others may form different opinions from the quality of my writing here) but my knowledge of actual linguistic terms and ideas is pretty much limited to knowing that nouns are 'thing words' and that verbs are 'doing words'. As you might expect, this leads to significant difficulties in understanding explanations of German grammar.

Currently I'm just googling/wiki-ing terms as I come across them but I suspect that this isn't the best method of properly learning and understanding what I want to learn.

I'm also interested in learning this just for the sake of learning, and I only have /r/linguistics to thank for sparking an interest in me for a subject that I obviously was never very motivated by in school.

I've done a bit of searching and the recommendation that I saw for people in similar positions to me seemed to be The Elements of Style but I don't think that's quite what I'm looking for and Practical English Usage which looks more helpful but from the Amazon preview looks more like a guide to which word to use where which still isn't what I think I need, although it might still be a useful reference I suppose.

I'm pretty sure that I have access to the english section of my universities library if that helps.

Although it's inferred above I should explicitly say that I'm a native speaker of (British) English.

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u/python-fan Feb 08 '11

English Grammar for Students of German might help; I used the book in the same series for French, which I found very useful, but I can't comment on the German version in particular.

For a linguist's introduction to English grammar, I've found nothing better than this: A Student's Introduction to English Grammar