Sunday, February 19, 2012

little community crucible moments

English Language, you are strange. Apparently, sometimes "their" is a possessive pronoun, but sometimes "their" is a possessive adjective. Isn't that fascinating! Suppose that one time the schoolmates of these two little birds, very young, barely not chicks any more, who were different yet had odd things in common and were becoming friends, collected together to ask one of them if she would ever date her new friend? (And of course for some reason, they did this when he was not around.) She said she thought that did not seem like the best thing because they came from different belief systems. The schoolmates strongly disapproved of her answer. "That is not fair! He is a great guy! We think you are being closed minded/prejudiced!" they told her. ACK. She said "No, no, I RESPECT him!" This was a pretty good comeback. However, none of them liked it. Even the teacher seemed unimpressed. They were hoping for a different answer. Who needs RESPECT? Even if it is a really great song by Aretha Franklin? The Age of Aquarious song is "Peace will guide the planet and love will steer the stars!" afterall. That way, they get to have more fun. They will not even have to be trapped like Paolo and Francesca. Instead, they get to enjoy learning about a number of splendid things. Such as nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, adjectives. Oh, goody. What is a participle, and how will you manage to remember what it is? Action verbs, being verbs, helping verbs, modifiers...

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