It was yesterday, but now I'm just creating a blog, probably will write in English, who knows, my plans dont work out that often.
"An overview of English grammar". First of all English is a largely analytical language which means that the word order is far more important than in synthetic languages.
And this special grammar lingo without which most of the site barely makes any sense I must just memorize.
Parts of speech:
Nouns (существительные), pronouns (местоимения), adjectives (прилагательные), verbs (глаголы), adverbs (наречия), prepositions (предлоги), conjunctions (союзы), and interjections (междометия).
Parts of the sentence: the subject (подлежащее), the predicate (сказуемое), the attribute (определение), the object (дополнение), the adverbial modifier (обстоятельство).
The subject is usually a noun, and the predicate is usually a verb, and the predicate comes after the subject, usually.
Personal pronounses are quite important because they can show number and gender in their forms which isn't readily available for most English words since it's an analitical language and not synthetical one as I already mentioned.
Wow, actually the word "hers" exists, it is analogous to "mine", so we can say "this book is hers", and even "this books are yours" and this books is ours", and "this book is theirs", and "this book is a book of his" and apparently "this book is its".
Then there are reflexive pronounses like "it sees itself", "he sees himself" etc but that isn't news to me. Ok, maybe I didn't know for sure that reflexive pronounses are used only when the subject and object are the same. There is also an emphatic use, like "I myself think it'pretty awesome". And as for myself, I think it's kinda useless.
...and indefinite pronouns: some, somebody, someone, something; any, anybody, anyone, anything; no, nobody, no one, none, nothing; every everybody, everyone, everything; each, both, other, either, neither, one, all, most, few, several, much, many
Zero idea what those semicolons mean though.
Demonstrative pronouns are "this" and "that".
Relative pronouns are "who" and "which"
Interrogative words remind me of the wh-questions like "what is this" or "when was it?". They could be pronouns or adjectives.
Next are nouns, but there's too little time till dawn left so I'll end up here.
Also, the sirens are wailing tonight, how cool is that.
There are a lot of noun classes, but the most problematic division for me is the one between countable and uncountable. Too often it seems to be completely arbitrary.
Gender of nouns is dictated solely by context and meaning. Animals are usually "it", though.
Number of nouns is simple, but there is a whole bunch of irregular plural nouns like "man - men" which have to be memorized.
Then animate nouns aka living things can show possession (притяжательный падеж) with an apostrophe ('s) and inanimate ones are more likely to use the preposition "of". And nouns dont have any special endings to indicate their case (case = падеж), so they rely on the word order, in the sense that the first noun is the subject and the second one is the object. Like the cat hates the dog and not the dog hates the cat.
There are suffixes that mark nouns, but they arent really reliable, so who cares. The better thing to do is to deduce the function of the word and then decide whether it's a noun or an adjective.
Articles
So there are two types of articles in the English language, one is definite and the other one is indefinite, see more at the link to the grammar section... ok.
Next are Adjectives.
Overall, I think learning grammar is trivial and can surely be done in a short amount of time. Pronunciation is really problematic, though. I've never learned a thing about phonetics in my life and don't even know how to start. And someone on imageboards once said "those who didn't learn pronunciation first are bound to learn the language twice", so I assume learning how to actually speak is quite essential.
Also, a rad and groovy thing that I learned yesterday is how to omit pronouns. You know, in English it often feels like we start every sentence with "I said", "I was", "I have no idea" etc. But if we just skipped the "I" part it would be a weird command like "go and have no idea!", so we must omit the verb as well. And then it becomes short and natural, and totally fine, if a tad informal: "no idea what that means".
Just like nouns adjectives are the most reliably identified by their function in the sentence. Usually it's an attribute.
Adverbs (Наречия)
It's like adjectives but not really as far as I remember from school. Often they have the suffix -ly, but some of them are just simple words like "never", "ever", "here", or "there".
So, here's the main definition, listen closely. The main difference between an adjective and an adverb is that the former describes a noun and the latter describes a verb. Hence "-jective" (a noun is usually a subject or an object) and "-verb", I wildly guess.
They also stick to the certain themes like manner, time, frequency, place or direction in their describing of verbs.
Numerals can be cardinal or ordinal. Let me guess, ordinal is the place in a row, like "seventh" or "first". And then cardinal means quantity, like "seven apples" or "one rose".
"Cardinal" is a somewhat confusing name compared to "ordinal". But it's easier to remember when you understand that quantity is the general function of numbers.
Ordinals almost always are used with definite article, so it's "The Seventh" and "The First" actually.
Conjunctions (союзы) can be coordinating, meaning they connect parallel elements, single words, or whole clauses. Talking about "and" and "but". But conjunctions can also be subordinating. These are more meaningful "after", "if" or even "because", connecting subodinate clauses with the main clause.
Interjections (междометия)
It's like "alright", "yeah yeah yeah". Give me some synthesizer, Zac! Ok, its your part coming on. Are you ready? Right now, one, two, three. It' fun to stay at Young Men's Christian Association. So fun to stay at Young Men's Christian Association. ♫
Verbs
Main verbs are principal verbs or notional verbs (смысловой глагол). Like "work" or "live". They change their form in the third person singular by adding -s. e.g. "it lives".
Auxiliary (ауксиларии) verbs serve all kinds of functions. Mostly forming tenses with "have", "will", etc. "Be" can also be a linking verb. And "do" form questions.
Modal verbs are also called "defective verbs" because they can't form tenses in the regular way and basically don't exist without a main verb. Usually they express attitude towards the main action like not just "swim" but "must swim" or "may drown".
Then there's long list of irregular verb to memorize.
All verb have four forms: The Infinitive (to), The Gerund (-ing, noun), The Present Participle (-ing, attribute, forming continuous tense) and The Past Participle (-ed, attribute, forming passive and perfect)
Prepositions stand before a noun and postpositions after. There are very few true pospositions: ago, aside, apart, long. You can also move half of a phrasal verb like "up" in "wake up" to the end of the sentence and call it postposition, but it's actually a particle.
Prepositions are far more common: to, into... there are whole categories of them. Prepositions of place (on, in,at), of direction (to, trough), of time (at, for), of manner (by, with) etc
Next is word order