> I beg to disagree. Maybe this explanation is English-specific, i.e. many languages have a much stricter grammar that children learn for a decade or so? Divja

> I beg to disagree. Maybe this explanation is English-specific, i.e. many languages have a much stricter grammar that children learn for a decade or so? Divjak sounds like a slavic last name. English probably wasn’t their first language. That said, in Slovenia we get about a decade of formal grammar training for our native language because it’s so complicated. But we learn it descriptively more than prescriptively. Yes it helps you write and speak formal Slovenian but we are always thought that “When in doubt, do what feels right and you’ll probably get it right”. When learning a second language, you’re learning grammar so you can use the rules instead of the gut feel you don’t yet have. edit: looks like she did undergrad in Poland so likely intimately familiar with non-english first languages