When people study an ancient or a foreign language, they begin with grammar, which offers a scaffolding for each word, a skeleton for every muscle, but when they hear a language from birth, only later on do they study grammar -- if, that is, they reach a later on.
This might explain why so many authors write badly.
It also makes me wonder if the study of Latin and Greek was the secret advantage of yesterday's writers. When you force yourself to learn the grammar of another language, you find yourself drawn inevitably to think about the grammar of your own. For my part, I learned more about English when I studied German and French than I ever learned in English class; Greek and Latin could offer the same advantage, not only to writers, but to the reader who now stumbles along through the prickly vacant lots of too many stories.
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