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As becoming rich is our abiding concern, we must conduct ourselves in such a way as to

instill in the wealthy the unequivocal feeling that we are fit to move amongst them.

Mixing with the rich will enable us to acquire, maintain and increase wealth. Generally,wealthy people have good grammar or are immersed (oops) impressed by those who do.

Therefore, here is a quick guide to the basics of English grammar for those of you who

have no understanding of this complex but vital subject.

Note: I should say that I have no great grasp of the rules of English grammar myself,

being American. But I have been reading about grammar for the past several hours andpropose now to pass on to you what I have picked up in that interval, generous soul that I

am.

First of all, I have learned that those who write and even publish on the subject ofgrammar tend to be a little on the bossy side. They say things like, Always use a noun

phrase and do not separate... Pay special attention to the sentence type. Do not use

other auxiliaries." Read this section. This sort of dictatorial behavior may be one reason

why so many of did our very best to get away from grammar as soon as we possiblycould in high school. Do this. Do that. Sheesh.

But good grammar, as mentioned above, is a prerequisite to entree to rarefied social

circles and to the environs of the muchly moneyed. Oop. I have just checked and have

been told by a grammarian to drop the nonstandard ly and to use "much. See what I

mean about bossy?

One of the first things to learn when mastering English grammar (and there is something

called usage and I dont understand the distinction so wont get into that) is that there areeight classes of words and a huge number of other terms that are incredibly hard to

understand at least for me and probably for you given you have read this far, whichsuggests that you want to brush up on your grammar.

The eight parts of speech are: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions,

conjunctions and interjections.

Let us deal with each of these.

Nouns and pronouns: A noun is a thing. All kinds of things can be nouns and nouns areall kinds of things. Pretty basic. They can be concrete like, well, concrete. Couldnt get

much more concrete than that. Concrete is also an adjective, which shows you straight

away how tricky grammar is. And a verb too since you can concrete stuff by slathering itwith the noun concrete which would make the object nice and concrete adjectivally

speaking. I guess. But we are talking nouns here, not concrete. Pronouns are a sort of

noun. Examples of pronouns are: you, him, her, it and me. I like the word me, inparticular. Like, Whats in for me? I also like nouns like money and assets and

wealth. There are also what are called abstract nouns. Examples of this sort of noun

include, I believe, words such as generosity, charity, and selflessness. I am not

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fond of such words myself, but they have their uses, I suppose, when one wants to appear

to prize such things when doing so serves to advance ones interests in certain situations.

Verbs: These can appear in four basic forms: base, simple past, present participle, and

past participle. Verbs are up and doing sorts of words, whereas nouns are kind of inert.

Verbs can be nouns. Grammar is kind of confusing. Take nap for instance. You can napand there you have a verb and you can take a nap, which is a noun. I like verbs like avoid

when I can use them in close proximity to nouns like work or make in the vicinity of

money. A verb can serve as the predicate of a sentence. And what is a predicate? Letssee. Oh, right. It is what is said about the subject and I trust that everyone is clear on that.

As for simple past, that would be getting into verb tenses--I think. And we dont want to

do that if we can help it. One of my sources says you arent supposed to shift tenses

incorrectly, so dont ever do that. And a participle is a form of a verb and things getcloudier from there. Every verb needs a subject. I dont know if that applies on the field

of battle as in Fire! or Charge!

Adjectives: Basically, they describe things. Stupid, pretty. But I think pretty stupid issomething else grammatically. Maybe an adjectival phrase. But I am not sure, being

shaky on such things. Order of adjectives is quite complicated and grammarians dontagree on that matter though they seem to be in agreement on a whole lot of other stuff

and get all bent out of shape if you dont do exactly what they say even if you didnt

mean to. Not do what they say, that is.

Adverbs: They can modify another adverb or a verb. Pretty confusing, if you ask me.

Prepositions: These are words that show the relationship of other words to each other. Oh.Sounds helpful. Examples include: into, onto, to, at, for, against, across, about, above,

through, under, with. If you are good at geometry, you are probably good with

prepositions. Foreigners have a lot of trouble with these things and sound dumbsometimes in English even if they are really brilliant, which is a shame. Sounding dumb,

I mean. It is okay for foreigners to be brilliant and Americans too, who dont usually

sound as dumb as brilliant foreigners can in English which is their native language.English. Americans.

Conjunctions: These connect words, phrases or clauses. Oop. So what are phrases and

clauses? Okay, fine. We'll get into that. A phrase has no verb; a clause does. Clauses arethe building blocks of sentences, says one of my sources, though I thought the parts of

speech are which is what we just been going over. Every sentence consists of one or more

clauses and when an independent clause can stand by itself it is a sentence. If anindependent clause can be a sentence, I dont really see the point of independent clauses.

I am just relating what I read. My sources also say that one should learn how to combine

independent clauses into bigger units of thought, but does that include sentences and youarent really combining them if you are making each a sentence in its own right.

Combining them would be making one great big sentence. And you ought not to connect

two independent clauses with only a comma because a comma isnt good enough and

would be a comma splice. You need a semicolon and that is getting into punctuation and

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we dont want to do that right now. Getting back to conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or,

nor, for, either, neither, yet, so.

Interjections: Thank goodness for these. They are utterances that have no grammatical tie

to that which precedes or follows them. Cool! Yippee! Yee hah!

Other things to know about grammar are first person, second person and third person. I

am writing this in the first person. You can tell that because I am using I. If I were writing

it in the second person I would be saying things like, You are writing in the first person.Or something like that. And one source said that the Sherlock Holmes novels are written

in the first person, Watson using I a lot. I suppose the Holmes short stories are written in

the first person too. The third person would be, They did that, as opposed to I did that

or you did that. Children like the third person as in, "They broke it, Mom.

One frustrating thing about studying grammar is that you never learn what happened in

the end. You are reading about verbs and one person says, I do not like beans. The other

person says, "You must eat your beans. Do we ever find out what happened? Nooo. Andwhat's more, I dont remember what an auxiliary verb is.

Grammar, nonetheless, is something that those who wish to be considered educated and

hope to be rich someday should master. It is good for society and makes you sound smart

even if you are foreign a lot of the time.