What If Grammar Didn't Exist?
Have you ever thought what it would be like if grammar didn't exist? Here's that same sentence without grammar: “Thought you ever what if existed grammar?” It doesn't make sense, but what actually is grammar?
Grammar is the structure of language. It's how words are made, connected and related to each other. Grammar includes syntax (how sentences are structured and constructed which includes subject verb order and active vs. passive voice), morphology (how words are formed including prefixes, suffixes, verb tenses, and plurals), parts of speech, punctuation, and more.
Grammar didn't appear suddenly; it was developed as humans evolved and their speech developed. In fact, it's not something that cannot exist, but many of us wonder about a language without it. If grammar didn't exist, there would be a lot of problems such as misunderstanding in many languages. In English, many words have multiple meanings. For example, in the sentences “the fly is on food” and “the bird is going to fly,” the word "fly" is same, but the meaning is different. One is an noun for a type of insect and the other is a verb. English also has a specific order of subject verb object, and if we didn't follow it, our speech would be confusing. For instance, the sentences “a man robbed a woman” and “a woman robbed a man” have similar parts. Without grammar, we wouldn't be able to understand who we are talking about and who did what to whom. It would become chaos.
Additionally, we wouldn't be able to explain complex ideas. It would become a word soup, like how a newborn talks, which we usually can't understand. We wouldn't even be able to distinguish between past, present and future. For example, if I said “I walk,” you wouldn't know if it was about past, present or future. We also wouldn't be able to express and discuss our emotions as easily, we will mostly rely on just facial expressions or simple gestures. It would be much harder to talk than you think it would be.
In conclusion, grammar isn't just for school. It's for us humans to communicate better with each other. While you might think without grammar, it would be much harder to speak without it. It's crucial to use grammar to understand emotions, meanings, and context, to explain complex ideas or tone. Without grammar, our history, stories and dreams wouldn't make sense, they would all just be disorganized thoughts. So, the next time you're frustrated by a comma or a verb tense, just remember: without those little rules, we’d all be standing in silence, holding a thousand words but having no way to say what we actually mean.
