Monthly Archives: April 2014
281.WHY DO WE HAVE GRAMMAR?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just speak and write as you like, without having to learn the rules of grammar?
When you have something to express, you want to express it accurately, don’t you? You don’t want to be misunderstood. If everybody spoke and wrote perfect English, and everything you heard and read was expressed in perfect, accurate English, you probably wouldn’t have to study grammar! Grammar teaches you what corrections to make in your speech and writing and why the corrections should be made. And the study of grammar helps you improve the way you express yourself by using English which is accurate, clear, varied, and interesting.
280.WHO WROTE THE FIRST CARTOON STRIP?
Today we don’t think of a cartoon as being associated with great art, but at one time it was. During the period of the Italian Renaissance, the term “cartoon” meant the first sketch in actual size of a large work of arts such as a mural. When news papers and magazines began to use drawings to illustrate news and editorial opinion and to provide amusement, these drawings became known as cartoons.
In the days before newspapers, artists like Hogarth, Daumier, and Rowlandson made series of drawings on a single theme. Sometimes such a series of drawings pictured the adventures of one character. They were the ancestors of present-day cartoons and comic strips.
279.WHO WROTE MOTHER GOOSE?
Was there actually a Mother Goose who wrote the delightful fairy tales and nursery jingles that all children love? Three different countries give three different answers as to who Mother Goose was.
In England, it was believed that Mother Goose was an old woman who sold flowers on the streets of Oxford. In France, there are people who believe that Mother Goose was really Queen Bertha. She married her cousin, Robert the Pious. Because he already had a wife, Queen Bertha was punished by the pope. One of her feet became shaped like that of a goose. From then on, she was called Mother Goose.
