Grammar
- When writing, Canadians will start a sentence with As well, in the sense of "in addition"; this construction is a Canadianism.
- Canadian, Australian and British English share idioms like in hospital and at university, although "in the hospital" is also commonly heard. In American English, the definite article is mandatory in both cases. (However, in most situations where English speakers outside the U.S. use the phrase to university, American English speakers instead use the phrase to college, with no article required.)
Read more about this topic: Canadian English
Famous quotes containing the word grammar:
“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalism—but only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
—John Simon (b. 1925)
“Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)