Review your English grammar

Learning Latin is going to be challenging, but in a good way.  It will stretch your language abilities and when you have won the challenge of the week, you might notice a satisfying sense of accomplishment.

One of the obstacles I encountered last semester that my grammar was rusty.  I am not talking about Latin grammar now, but English grammar.  Why would rusty English grammar present a problem in Latin?  The Latin grammar concepts are explained in English grammar terminology. 

If you refresh your English grammar, before you start your Latin course, you will understand the concepts being presented and therefore perform better in the class.  I struggled with this and I have continued to review grammar to keep it fresh. 

I am going to conduct a very basic review of English grammar and you will want to spend some time reviewing authoritative sources for a complete review.

English grammar is made up of with parts of speech. Those parts are Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, adverbs, Adjectives, Articles, Conjunctions, and Prepositions. 

In each part of speech, there are sub-categories that define a specific type of speech.

Nouns has proper nouns, infinitive, abstract, common, concrete and collective nouns. 

Pronouns have personal, relative, reflexive, possessive, interrogative and indefinite pronouns.

Verbs have auxiliary, compound regular, irregular, infinitive and transitive verbs. Verbs also have person, voice, mood, number and tense.

Adverbs have two types and they are conjunctive and degree.

Adjectives also have degree describing a comparison. (An example of the comparison is good, better, best).  The other types are possessive, indefinite, interrogative and demonstrative.

Conjunctions, prepositions and articles are not as complicated as nouns, pronouns or verbs.

You will encounter all of these areas of grammar in Latin.  Latin will also present some concepts not used in the English language such a case system and a flexible word order.  You will see how the case system defines the function of each word and changes the ending on nouns, pronouns and adjectives to determine the function of the word and the word ending.  

Note: I referenced my course materials in Lingua Latina and The Little , Brown Handbook to ensure the grammar concepts I used were correct.