There have been two main tendencies in the teaching of English grammar, both of them wrong-headed. Once upon a time, when all learned people knew Latin, grammarians tried to fit the rules of English to the patterns of Latin. English was seen as defective, and only improvable insofar as it imitated Latin. This yielded various silly rules (e.g., not ending sentences with prepositions, not splitting infinitives). In modern times, teachers of English have tried to treat English as an analytic language, almost as a computer language. They make up rules that attempt to describe the operation of English and in so doing describe a language in terms that they would not use to describe any other language. This kind of approach leaves the language open to the assaults of those who would mangle it to make ideological points (e.g., making up one’s own pronouns). If the old grammarians lamented that English “had no grammar” (i.e., wasn’t like Latin), the moderns rejoice that English “has no grammar” (i.e., isn’t like Latin). What both old and new English grammarians fail to realize is that English is a Germanic language, and it has Germanic grammar, not Latinate grammar. In many ways, English has been worn smooth by centuries of contact with other languages, but it still shows its descent from the Old English of a thousand years ago. Old English: Hwæt hit is? Modern English: What is it? (Note archaic word order.) Old English: Beo þu bliþe! Modern English: Be happy! (literally, “be thou blithe”) (Note use of imperative mood.) Middle English: Sumer is icumen in. Modern English: Summer has come in. (Note development of progressive tense as in, "Summer's a-comin' in.") Middle English: Be war or ye be wo; Knoweþ ȝour freend fro ȝour foo Modern English: Beware (be on the watch) or you will be sorry (full of woe); Know your friend from your foe (Note use of old letters thorn and yogh. ) Early Modern English: God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. Modern English: May God rest you merrily, gentlemen, and may nothing dismay you. (Note adverbial use of “merry” before the difference between adjectives and adverbs had hardened. Modern German still doesn't differentiate between adjectives and adverbs.) Early Modern English: If God be for us, who can be against us? (Note use of subjunctive.) This is still correct Modern English, though the colloquial use of if God is with us is now widespread. Early Modern English: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Modern English: As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever in the new world that will never end. (Note changing sense of “world,” here used as in OE on worulda woruld, a direct translation of Latin in saecula saeculorum, from NT Greek eis aiwnas aiwnwn. ) Early Modern English: But she on earth hath union with God the Three-in-One Modern English: But it (the Church) is united with the triune God (Note the use of notional gender -- the Church, like ships is referred to as feminine -- after most grammatical gender has disappeared.) Bonus example: Does it want its blankie? (Older notional gender retains the sense of infant, young child as neuter. Also note addressing very young child in third person, which is cognate with archaic German modes of social address from superior to inferior.)