Approaching the end in a happy way

As part of my continuing studies, I changed tack this year an chose an English course, Worlds of English. What a delight it has been! A complete change from the rigour of sciences. No paragraphs of almost unintelligible science language to decipher. But, wading thro' the nuances of English grammar was challenging at times. The difficulty being that methodology and orthography have changed out of all recognition since the days when I was taught English language at school. Nomenclature has changed too, no parsing,  no declensions, grammar has been re-written with more user-friendly terminology. First I had to unlearn the terms I with which I was familiar and learn new methods. Everything suddenly seemed more intuitive.

Borrowed from Facebook

Learning about Englishes, Singlish, Hinglish and Manglish (to name but a few) has been a delight. I have lost many of the strictures placed on me by learning English in the mid twentieth century.

The course team said that after one particular section, we'd never see / hear conversation the same way, and it's true. They asked use to view a conversation set piece then transcribe it using appropriate terminology. I no longer tend to let conversations 'wash past' because there's so much more than just someone talking to someone else.