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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

> Other European languages may have this to, but explaining it to people who speak unrelated languages usual results in a wail of "but why?!"

They do, and just like in your other example, they internalize it, they just don't realize they do it automatically because it "sounds good".

> Most grammatical understanding comes when (if!) you study a foreign language and then you find out that "find out" is a thing called a "phrasal verb".

That's super funny, isn't this taught in middle school or something? In Romania you study Romanian grammar from 5th to 8th grade (11/12 to 14/15), and you learn syntax, morphology, etc.

Does the average English speaker really not know about the term "phrasal verb"? :-)

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> Does the average English speaker really not know about the term "phrasal verb"? :-)

Yes.

Furthermore, I didn't know the English word for it, despite being a native speaker, but do know the German "Verben mit Präpositional-Ergänzung", from having learnt German.

Speakers of English as a foreign language will know more about English grammar than English native speakers.

Speaking only for my own experience growing up in the Western United States in the 80s and '90s, everyone was taught grammar from elementary school through senior year in high school, where the only required course was English. All of the pieces were taught. However, there is widespread ignorance among native English speakers about grammar. I don't think it's lack of education, but something else. My theory is that it just isn't interesting or particularly useful or helpful, so the information is quickly forgotten. With most things in education, they recur on an ongoing basis through life. English grammar on the other hand, does not, because you can get remarkably far by just going on how things sound.

I think the brain is designed to free up memory holding information that is not useful. Memory associated with a technical term like phrasal verb seems to be something it would garbage collect.

The brain will remember the term while it’s useful — to get a good grade on a test. After that, for most (almost all?) people it is useless to remember.

There are a ton of language quirks that have their own name, but aren't prominent enough that they're taught - especially not in your native language, if they're peculiar to it. (In a second language, they often have to be taught, because they stick out and make no sense in the context of your first language).

Phrasal verbs are not typically mentioned when Norwegian kids learn English, because not only do we have them, we typically use them in exactly the same way (e.g "eat up" is the same as "spis opp", "find out" is the same as "finne ut"). No reason to explain an obscure and odd concept if kids do the right thing by default anyway.

"Modal particles", small words that subtly indicate the speaker's certainty or degree of concern, likewise is another strange little grammatical quirk that German has, but Norwegian kids generally don't need a name for since Norwegian has them too and they can mostly just be translated directly.

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