
Avoiding the Adjective Fallacy - solutionyogi
http://betterexplained.com/articles/adjective-fallacy/
======
freework
This same effect occurs in computer science with "big-O notation"

Every time I'm asked about big-O in a job interview, I'm asked to recite the
formal rules of the notation, rather than demonstrate how to use the resulting
insight to make the code better. Just because I don't know the formal rules of
how to calculate Big-O they assume I can't write any code that scales.

Its like a teacher assuming a student can't speak english because he can't
recite the adjective order chart from memory.

~~~
mason55
I don't think it's necessary to know the formal definition of big O (or big
Theta or big Omega) but there's a spectrum there. If all you can say is
"nested for loops are bad" and you can't explain why hash tables provide fast
lookups then I'm not going to be very impressed.

On the other hand plenty of people can memorize that a lookup in a BST is
O(log n) without understanding what that actually means. If you can explain
that a balanced BST grows in height by powers of two without actually using
the phrase "log n" then that's more impressive than the person who does rote
memorization without understanding what it actually means.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm going to render myself permanently unemployable in the industry by
admitting this, but one thing I'm still not really sure about is why every
text on CS assumes array have O(1) access? I mean, in the real world it surely
takes more time to reach elements further in memory, if only because electrons
travel at finite speeds and also you can't magically write any number into a
register, there has to be a piece of electronics that will count up to it
somehow. Is it only because all those hardware operations are so stupidly fast
we don't care about them day-to-day usage, or is there another reason for
assuming arrays have O(1) access?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
First, no, in the real world it does not take more time to reach elements
further in memory. Even if the memory is physically further on a chip (and
some memory has to be), the memory transfer happens on a clock edge, not just
"as soon as possible", so the elements actually transfer at the same time.

On to the larger point: O(1) does _not_ mean "twice as fast as O(2)". It means
"does not take longer depending on how many elements there are". That is, if I
have an algorithm that takes twice as long as an O(1) algorithm, the slower
algorithm is still O(1). We do not care about constant factors when dealing
with big-O notation.

Accessing an array is O(1). What do you have to do to access an array element?
You have to take the size of an array element, and multiply it by the index of
the element, and add the starting address of the array, and access the memory
at that address. That's O(1), _because it does not depend on the number of
elements in the array._

In contrast, accessing an element in a linked list is O(N). You have to start
at the beginning of the list, and keep getting the next element until you get
to the one you want. On average, that takes N/2 operations for a list of N
elements. But we don't care about constant factors like 1/2 in big-O notation,
so accessing an element of a list is O(N).

But if I want to insert an element into the middle of a linked list, and I
already have a pointer to the place where I want to insert it, that insertion
is only O(1). I have to change swap some pointers around (2 or 4, depending on
whether it's a singly- or doubly-linked list). But that doesn't depend on the
size of the list. Whereas if I want to insert an element into the middle of an
array, I have to move all the elements after the inserted item, which is an
average of N/2 items, which means that operation is O(N).

This is a completely inadequate explanation of big-O, but I hope it's enough
to clear things up at least a bit for you...

[Edit: fixed italics.]

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Even if the memory is physically further on a chip (and some memory has to
> be), the memory transfer happens on a clock edge, not just "as soon as
> possible", so the elements actually transfer at the same time._

Here is the key insight I was missing. Thank you very much!

------
acbart
I attempted to use only intuitive explanations in my programming class once,
and a student rebelled and asked for some more definite rules. She wasn't
asking for a dictionary, just SOME structure to help her out. The conclusion I
reached is that you need a mix - ground students in rules while supplying them
with high-level concepts. You shouldn't rely on only one approach, but give
them multiple entry points into the idea. Moderation, as in all things.

~~~
ehartsuyker
This is everything I hate about language learning through pure immersion
(Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, most language schools). For example, I struggled for
an absurdly long time with genders in German when I started because I assumed
it was like French (male, female, plural). Turns out there's 4 genders, and
often the female article is the same as a the plural. Once English sentence
could have solved that.

~~~
mikeash
I think that learning the rules is an absolute necessity, even if your goal is
to develop your intuition well enough that you don't need them. (Edit: I think
this implies a little more than I meant to say. Being exposed to the rules is
a necessity, but you don't necessarily have to go out and memorize them from
beginning to end or anything.) They're important scaffolding. Even native
speakers of a language need to be taught the formal rules if they're to speak
well.

I'm going to make a lame attempt to coin a term and call this the Arch
Fallacy, which is when you look at your goal and assume anything not present
in it is unnecessary to achieve it. A completed arch contains no supports
within it, but you'll have a tough time building one without any.

~~~
Stratoscope
"contains _no_ supports" (was "contains to supports")

Funny thing is on first reading, I didn't notice that at all and read it the
way you meant. I only saw the typo on a second reading. Interesting
autocorrect the brain does.

In any case I like your Arch Fallacy! I think I will use it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _In any case I like your Arch Fallacy! I think I will use it._

I'll use it too, it's great and I don't recall any term for that particular
error in thinking. I've already started spreading it (the name, not the error)
among friends, hoping it will catch on.

------
kazinator
"Old little lady" is correct in context.

 _" Which little lady are you referring to? The old little lady, or the young
"little lady" that is her five-year-old great granddaughter?"_

Though order is a syntactic feature, the restrictions on adjective order are
derived from semantics, which depend on context. They are not ruled out by the
grammar, _per se_.

Therefore the rule which says it must be "little old lady" is plain wrong.

The fallacy consists of regarding incorrect or incomplete rules as the
unvarnished truth which to learn from and imitate.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Therefore the rule which says it must be "little old lady" is plain wrong.

This is _natural language_. One contrived corner-case counter-example doesn't
invalidate the general rule.

~~~
kazinator
Right; rather it invalidates the purported generality of the rule (which no
serious linguist would assert in the first place).

------
winstonewert
In my experience, getting good at math requires first that you accept that
your intuitions suck. Your natural intuition will constantly lead you astray
mathematically. People who struggle with algebra are often people who are
trusting their intuitions about what is correct. Eventually, you internalize
the rules and they become your intuition. But to suggest that we should skip
the rules and instead try to build up intuition seems rather wrong-headed to
me.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>But to suggest that we should skip the rules and instead try to build up
intuition seems rather wrong-headed to me.

The problem with natural languages, and especially english, is that there
aren't really any formal rules as there are in well-defined maths like
algebras.

If there are no rules, how can you skip them?

------
Broken_Hippo
I'm a native English speaker, and I never came across such a thing. Often,
such adjective mistakes are simply corrected because 'it sounds funny'. I took
advanced courses in English and school, and as a weird result, missed out on
much of the sentence labeling and other such things. I'm also learning a
language. I moved to Norway a couple years ago and am in the second year of
classes. Rules, even when they are loose, help a lot as an adult learner
because the rules give me something to lean on to make guesses. I'm just now
starting to get a feel for what 'sounds' right, but thanks to the rules, I can
bypass that for now and use the language skills I have and make do.

------
brianclements
I teach music lessons professionally and spend hours every day playing with
this exact concept. To me it's really about building off of what a student
already 1) knows conceptually (rules) and 2) has experienced (intuition).

What I've learned is that you can't teach any type of rule until all it's
"prerequisite phenomena" has been _experienced_. Music education has a bias of
more "doing" and experiencing and less "talking" about (or it should at
least). So it has a keen way of turning ideas and concepts into action rather
quickly. I think many other disciplines in school can learn a bit from how
music is taught frankly: there is a very quick turnaround from concept to
application/experience and therefore to emotional context of some sort, which
really is the end goal to all learning. _Why do you care about X?_

So if a rule simply is an equation of some sort, or a statement of
relationships, then the prerequisite phenomena is making sure every variable
is defined within it; so that one can focus solely on the relationships within
the objects instead of the undefined variables. This covers many different
grounds depending on the style of the learner and the material at hand.
Sometimes (rarely) words are enough (if you're building familiar rules into
new rules and the experiential phenomena is all done in the mind "ah-ha!") and
usually, a student needs to hear the sound of a major scale vs a minor scale
and try to describe it with words before telling them what actually makes it
sound different theoretically. And even then, there are different ways to
explain it. If the student picked up major scales really well (prerequisite
phenomena), I will use the modal approach to learning minor scales (it's the
major scale but starting from a different note), if the student picks up the
scale tones and is better with spacial relationships, they usually already
talk about the differences between what they just played as a sharp/flat 6th
or 7th scale tone. And there you have it, they've just instructed YOU how they
think about a concept.

Music is a great example of how there is no single correct way to explain the
theory. First off, music practice and artistic decisions _always_ came first,
the theory came later as people tried to understand and teach it. And it is
the bias of educators to find a single correct way to understand it within
themselves that leads to them only prescribing one way to do something
(memorize this!). Teaching really is listening more than it is speaking.

------
thaumasiotes
This is actually sort of called out in the comments on the post, but I think
it bears saying again in my own way.

It's deeply disingenuous to compare effortless biologically-determined
learning to effortful general learning and think you can apply lessons from
one to the other. _Even in the example the OP picked_ , there's a reason that
the learners drill the adjective order table, and it's because without the
drill _they will never learn it at all_. Learning a language as a small child
is a different process than learning the same language as a late teen or
adult, and the results are very different. (Even so, I wouldn't bother
instructing people in adjective order... if they do never learn it, it's no
big loss.)

On a different, more technical note, OP doesn't quite understand what's going
on in the example either. "Vietnamese spicy food" is perfectly standard
English; the ordering there is determined by context. "Vietnamese spicy food"
is a subset of spicy food, and will be used whenever it's being contrasted
with other spicy food, whereas spicy Vietnamese food is a subset of Vietnamese
food, and will be used whenever a contrast is drawn between spicy Vietnamese
food and other Vietnamese food. (It's correct, however, that in the zero-
context case, "spicy Vietnamese food" is preferred. In my analysis, that's
more because people are likely to reify the concept of "Vietnamese food",
which makes the phrase structure ("spicy" [adj] "Vietnamese food" [noun])
rather than ("spicy" [adj] "Vietnamese" [adj] "food" [noun]).)

------
arafa
In my third semester of Calculus class, I had a Physics professor. True to his
background, he would sometimes take the entire class elaborately explaining
the geometric interpretation of complex 3D operations, something I greatly
appreciated. The formal notation and theory was always there, but he made sure
the intuition was there also (if possible). Best math teacher I've ever had.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In high school our physics professor (and an actual physics PhD) decided that
he can't teach us "real physics" without derivatives and integrals (the latter
not being in high school curriculum at all), so by the end of the first year,
he taught as both. Our maths teacher started tearing her hair out over this,
complaining about lack of rigour; eventually she gave up and taught us
integrals with full mathematical formality. Having those two takes on the
topic helped us understand it really well.

Another science class anecdote - first year electronic engineering, the
professor is showing us the derivation of transistor gain formula. He started
from pretty much first principles, written out a _huge_ formula, and then
started to cross things out - "this in practice is close to 1 so we can ignore
it", "in standard operating conditions this is pretty much zero" (and poof,
half of the equation gone, multiplied by zero) - and kept going until he
arrived at the standard I_c = βI_b. It gave me a new appreciation of just how
much engineering is basically handwaving parts of reality away.

------
Kenji
You won't be able to complete a single formal, rigorous proof without clear,
formal unambiguous rules. Yes, first principle reasoning is straining,
requires hard work and causes headaches, but the understanding will be deeper
and complete. The English language is shaped by use and constantly changing.
Mathematics is not supposed to change unless we have a mistake in our axioms.

~~~
anigbrowl
Consider imaginary numbers, which don't invalidate anything as such and have
to be tidied away after you're done playing with them, but make an entire
class of calculations much easier by providing a consistent way to deal with
otherwise awkward problems.

~~~
Kenji
They don't change the existing parts of the language, they just enlarge its
body. Imaginary numbers don't invalidate the other rules. In natural
languages, if you learn the rules down to the last nit-picky detail, you will
soon realize that it is no longer valid, sometimes within years, other times
within decades.

------
danharaj
The first class that touched upon the formal theory of limits for me was
called 'Analysis'. The calculus courses I took before that were informal and
leaned mostly on intuition and algebra.

------
clebio
It bugs me that he doesn't actually give a reason for why these orderings are
"right", beyond his having an intuition for them (which might be just pattern
learning, as others here mention).

It's been said (citation needed) that phrases like "tick tock" and "see saw"
are in those orders because it's a high or hard vowel before the low or soft
(e.g. "tock tick" sounds weird). Maybe _that_ is why "little old" lady sounds
more correct to us? I don't know. But the article goes off to draw a parallel
to mathematical intuition, and leaves the original grammar problem unresolved,
in my opinion.

Incidentally, I usually _really_ like the Better Explained articles.

~~~
kalid
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you've enjoyed the articles thus far :).

The adjective order rules are interesting in that we have to reverse-engineer
them from our brains, but aren't consciously aware of them. It's apparently an
area of ongoing research why certain orderings are correct. (Maybe there's
something about the specificity of the adjective, where the more-specific
items are closest to the subject.)

I think the higher-level concern is we can get tricked by thinking we need to
consciously master the structure in order to be fluent, vs. letting our
brain's pattern-matching skills do some of the heavy lifting.

~~~
clebio
Hey, appreciate your reply to my comment! And fair response, I'm glad to hear
from scientists that are able to talk about open research, as opposed to
trying to make a dogmatic point or conjecture without evidence.

I like the view that this is an open problem and an area of active research,
much more than the more conventional, lay-person settling of the issue as
"developed an ear for the language" and that's the end of it.

The impressive work of people like Steven Pinker and Chomsky (in his actual
academic field) is to look very carefully at different ethnographic groups,
and the larger cultures those groups are embedded in. By doing so, finding
groups isolated enough or with a materially different context, such that they
_don 't_ exhibit the same patterns.

The title of the article felt like a bait-and-switch, I guess. When I realized
it was on betterexplained, it did make more sense that it was ultimately about
mathematical reasoning. No worries!

~~~
kalid
Thanks for the reply. I struggled with the title a bit, in my head I think of
the "XYZ Fallacy" as a trap we are likely fall into. For me, the trap was
overemphasizing a set of implicit rules and trying to explicitly teach those
rules to newcomers. (I.e., the newbies are required to use a structured
approach that proficient practitioners never needed or even know about.) This
is my personal lingo though, and might not make sense to others.

------
jonahx
Terrific article. And it turns out the complex adjective chart isn't even
sufficient to capture the rules. Apparently there are exceptions and it's an
area of continuing research:

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1155/what-is-
the-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1155/what-is-the-rule-for-
adjective-order)

~~~
Retra
There shouldn't even be formal rules. The meaning of linguistic constructs are
determined by how the appropriateness of phrasing is captured by usage in
context. Whether "old little lady" or "little old lady" is correct is largely
a matter of what you are more comfortable with, which is a matter of how
people around you spoke when you learned the language.

Formalizing it would be about as silly as formalizing which music sounds good.

~~~
anigbrowl
Sorry, I think that's complete bullshit. And there is indeed a great deal of
theory that formalizes what makes music sound good; most of it is maintaining
patterns of whole-number ratios to derive scalar and rhythmic intervals, and
there are certain algorithms and formal rule systems that reliably produce
pleasing results within particular genres. Even music that deliberately breaks
these rules (like 'noise music' involving extreme distortions or recordings of
'unmusical' sounds) can be thought as a meta-development of those rules; the
equipment or source material employed to make such 'unmusical' sounds acts as
constraints, and lead to emergent structures of their own.

~~~
Retra
I would disagree with you, but the problem here is that we are communicating
different concepts using the same words.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, I don't wish to get in a fight and I'm sorry if my blunt response came
across as a personal attack. I'll try to keep a more open mind and work harder
at understanding your perspective rather than just restating my own.

------
ajarmst
Interesting article, and it does describe things that we should strive for---
an intuitive sense is a key sign of mastery of a subject. However, the idea
that we should learn math the way we learn languages has a flawed premise.
Human beings have been equipped by evolution with the capacity to acquire
language by exposure. Cognitively normal children aquire language, including
the complexities of grammar, through simple exposure to people speaking that
language during a particular period in their development. It's unfortunate
that this ability doesn't persist through life, or apply to more than one
language for most people. But for children, language acquisition is completely
effortless.

This is not the case for other cognitive skills, such as reading and (to our
point) mathematics. My son cannot learn calculus simply by hanging out in my
office. While our end goal may be the sort of effortless intuition in
mathematics that we experience in parsing complicated sentences, the process
of acquiring those two skills is of necessity widely divergent.

------
TeMPOraL
Focusing only, or mostly, on formal structure always[0] seemed to me to be
just a failure of teacher at introspection. For instance when using your
native language, if you stop and look at your own thought process, you'll
quickly realize that you _don 't_ consciously invoke _any_ grammar rules. In
fact, the brain doesn't have enough computing power to explicitly build
sentences by applying grammar rules, not if you want to have a conversation.
It should be obvious, on introspection, that formal structure can be only a
scaffolding for building your cache.

[0] - For things you learn to use all the time, or to leverage your cognitive
process. The obvious exceptions are things you want to do with mindless
precision, where the risk of guessing wrong is unacceptable. Compare public
speaking to memorizing a poem, or guesstimating to doing explicit pen and
paper arithmetics.

------
hyperion2010
ROA: this is the first time I've ever heard of such a thing. I'm not surprised
such a thing exists, but as a native speaker who has done a whole lot of
writing I find it amusing I've made it for so long without ever encountering
the attempts to formalize it.

------
Terr_
This reminds me of Lockhart's Lament regarding math education:

[http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdf](http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdf)

------
gohrt
Maybe I was incredibly lucky, but whenever someone rails against how awful the
"standard" math education is, and recommends a "better way", I note that the
"better way" was how I was taught.

I suspect what happens is that students _forget_ some of the good basic ideas
(or is that "basic good ideas" ;-) ) they were taught, and teachers fail to
re-emphasize them to keep students on track, and so all they remember is the
formal/abstract techniques they spent a login time struggling with. Painful
experiences stick in our memort more than smooth easy experiences.

------
Isamu
Why does the phrase "old lady" or "little old lady" pop into your head when
you go to speak about an old lady? Because you have heard the phrase many
times before.

It's just memory, we recite timeworn phrases because that's what we hear over
and over.

Non-native speakers use phrases that "sound wrong" only because they are
synthesizing from principle or from their own language, and haven't heard the
usual phrases over and over.

This is where rule-based language analysis runs aground.

~~~
jameshart
Okay, but let's assume you encounter a goat. It is purple. It is from Mexico.
It is tiny. It seems to also be a robot. I'm guessing you've never come across
someone describing such a thing to you before, such that you can identify from
memory the correct way to describe that goat.

So why, when someone shouts out "Look out for that robot purple tiny Mexican
goat!" you would immediately peg them as not a native English speaker, but if
they had said "Look out for that tiny purple Mexican robot goat!" you would
not?

This is not a 'fixed phrase' thing. There are rules, you're just not
consciously aware of them.

------
conceit
> Similarly, getting good at math doesn’t mean marching through a gauntlet of
> rules on every problem

No, it does to a degree. The rules are inferred from observation and
internalized, but not precisely. "little" before "old" is a rule, almost
motoric. As a foreign speaker I agree that isn't a logical rule :)

edit: I guess, the author is looking for the term heuristic (a general rule
that is right often enough, but not precise nor complete).

------
sireat
Interestingly enough in the example he gave 303 x 13 I actually didn't look at
the last digit to see that 5074 is wrong, I did an instant mental calculation
of 300x13=3900 and saw that 5074 can't possibly be right before reading on.

So everyone has a different spidey sense.

------
bluedino
>> we developed an ear for the language and know how it should sound. And “old
little lady” sounds off

Until you get into regional dialects and slang.

It only sounds off if you are accustomed to reading correct English. I do a
lot of reading, and I think that is what developed my ear for phrases which
are 'incorrect'.

I can't tell you what a participle or things like that are because I haven't
been formally trained, but I can tell you which sentence from a list is the
correct one.

I hear some people talk and I'll shake my head as I hear them slaughter the
English language, but then I realize they probably don't do a lot of reading
and didn't get far and school and that's just how their peers talk, as
incorrect as it may be.

~~~
mirceal
there is no correct or incorrect way of talking. slaughtering the English
language? as long as both people understand, it does not really matter.

language is not something that's set in stone - it constantly changes. I would
encourage you to be curios and try to learn something from others ways of
speaking.

Something not matching your expectations / what is commonly seen as the
'right' way does not make it wrong.

IMHO judging people that don't read or didn't get far in school is plain
wrong.

------
ionforce
Is "Adjective Fallacy" actually a thing or just something invented by this
article?

Such a poor headline.

------
lazyant
I think I was taught the adjective order as in generic to specific.

------
anigbrowl
_We didn’t become good at English by studying a chart: we developed an ear for
the language and know how it should sound._

Unless we grew up speaking a different language, or were born to people who
didn't have English as their first language. My wife has been in the US since
the age of 2 and speaks perfectly but she still has a few minor linguistic
tics that a second-generation native speaker wouldn't, and is she shy if she
comes across a word she's not sure how to pronounce or whose meaning is
unclear.

Having taught English as a second language to people from a wide variety of
backgrounds, I don't expect anyone to memorize the royal order of adjectives,
but it's incredibly useful for them to know that there _is_ an underlying
system and to match patterns of adjectives from their reading material against
it, or play games with it (like thinking deliberately wrong phrases such as
'old little lady' for comic value), or be able to refer to it if they're
nervous about writing something. The same is true for people who miss out on a
proper education because of domestic or socioeconomic problems and maybe come
to literacy as adults, but never develop the total confidence of someone
surrounded by language since birth. Incidentally, those of you who live in
California may have noticed the public information campaign encouraging
parents to talk and sing to children, especially babies and toddlers. Research
indicates that this has a massive influence on brain development and
subsequent success or failure in life. See
[http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/2159692...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21596923-how-babbling-babies-can-boost-their-brains-beginning-was-
word) for an overview.

So yeah, of course the _best_ way to acquire language is to be in a
linguistically rich environment, and just soak it up to develop an intuitive
understanding that promotes linguistic creativity and wordplay, as opposed to
studying it through formal methods and turning it into a philological
exercise. But that does not mean that formalism is bad, or that we should
conceal the existence of systematic structures from kids in case it will wreck
their creativity or something - if for no other reason, than to spare them the
waste of reinventing the wheel should they be inclined to adopt a formalist
approach on their own initiative. It's very easy to handwave away such rigid-
seeming pedagogical tools if you already enjoy the benefits of total fluency,
but for those who do not enjoy the same advantages this is the equivalent of
pulling up the ladder behind oneself and then critique the confused for poor
listening skills.

I don't have a comment on the math part - I agree with the author that we
ought to be open to using multiple learning techniques so that each student
can find the best one, but I think he seriously underestimates the utility of
formality. When I was 5 I thought chanting multiplication tables every day at
school was a bit silly, but 40 years later I greatly appreciate the fact that
I can handle everyday trivial math problems reflexively rather than needing to
reach for a calculator, pencil and paper, or a mental script of how to perform
the calculation. Repetitive drills and formal methods are not the best way to
_explain_ new concepts, but they are incredibly useful exercises to _retain_
them and make the basic knowledge feel instinctive in later years.

------
elektromekatron
I went to school here in the UK, getting good marks in English and I have
never heard of the Royal Order of Adjectives. It sounds like some official
lackey the Queen might call on when she just can't find the right word.

I remember our English teacher giving us one single lesson on conjugation, and
that was only because we were so confused by all the stuff about conjugating
verbs in French class. Other than that I cannot remember us going near any
kind of formal grammar.

edit - I just thought, it is also not that hard to construct a context in
English where 'old little lady' can work.

 _I looked again at the little lady sitting across from me. At first, from her
height, I had assumed her to be young. However now, looking closer, I could
see she was a very old little lady indeed._

~~~
jameshart
Precisely - you're not arguing against the article at all here. The point of
this piece is that it is possible to learn how to do something without ever
being exposed to the underlying rules. Or even to the fact that such rules
exist.

Calculus, by comparison, is built on firm rules about what you are allowed to
do and what you can't, when cutting a shape up into pieces and rearranging
them. The piece is arguing that it might be possible to make headway in
calculus by just being exposed to usage, and the formal rules can be kept to
later. That seems quite compelling.

~~~
elektromekatron
_Precisely - you 're not arguing against the article at all here._

Yep, I should have probably made that clear. Was more side commenting through
the metaphor. In general, learning English like that works quite well, but
then it throws you when you are then asked to conjugate the verb 'to be' in
French class and nobody has ever asked you to ever conjugate a verb in
English. You end up knowing how to use English, but do not learn the technical
terminology required to dissect it.

