Reply #4: I beg to disagree.

[SheilaT]

Grammar is almost entirely untaught in this country, other than what students who take a foreign language get in that language.

I know that a lot of the misusages that make me crazy are really language change in action, but the change is vastly speeded up when the native speakers never learn any of the actual rules.

I remember fussing at my sister many years ago that she did not correct her children (quite young at the time) when they used a wrong construction or made a grammatical error. She said, "Oh, they'll learn it just by listening to me." Well, they didn't. Every single grammatical error and misuse they had at age 5 they still have in their mid-twenties.