Hello Clive

Maybe I understand what you mean. To tell the truth, my concern in languages revived when I got questions about the Japanese language from people oversea. They often asked me "why do you say so?". But in many cases I couldn't explain why I am saying so. Sometimes, to answer their questions, I read Japanese grammar books for school kids as well as for foreign Japanese learners and I was often surprised to know what a difficult language I am speaking as my mother language. Mother languages are things of that sort.

We can 'acquire' our mother language in childhood, but we have to 'learn' second languages. 'Acquiring a language' and 'learning a language' are different things and therefore they need different methods. Let me calculate the hours you spent in acquiring English up to the age of 15, for example. 15 x 365 x 16 =87,600 hours. Usual Japanese school kids learn English for six years in school, and they can share their time to learning English at the rate of three to five per week. This means: 6 x 52 x 4 =1,250 hours. The ratio is 70:1. If you take into account the phenomenon that learned languages are easily fossilized if they are not used, the ratio would be more than 100 : 1. It is why we NNS need 'grammar'. 'Grammar' is just one of the means to learn a language in an efficient way without spending a lot of time. I'll show you another evidence to support what I am saying. Your ancestors spoke English without being taught English grammar before the 17th century. Those days 'grammar' meant only 'Latin grammar' and students then had to 'learn' it earnestly just because they couldn't acquire Latin in their living environment. Furthermore, please remember the first English grammar book was written not for native English speakers but for foreigners engaged in trade with English speakers.

You acquired 'English grammatical rules' without learning 'English grammar', but they are still the same rules we are learning. You are keeping them in your brain cells just unconsciously whereas we have to do so consciously. In this connection, I read recently an interesting article by Dr Pinker . According to him, if you get hurt in some part of your brain, you would lose the ability to speak out 'irregular verbs' and if you get another part of your brain, you'll lose the ability to produce 'regular verbs'.

paco