Why native speakers don’t always follow grammar rules

Many English learners feel confused when native speakers say things that don’t match the grammar rules they learnt in class.

Do native speakers use incorrect grammar? And if they do, what does that actually mean?
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The answer is more complicated than many people think.

Somebody asked an interesting question in my Facebook group the other day:
"Do native speakers speak English perfectly according to the grammar rules?"

And in the past, I’ve read comments like:
"Why don’t native speakers know their own language?"
"Native speakers who use bad grammar are uneducated."

Learners spend years studying grammar rules so I can understand that it feels confusing, or even shocking, when native speakers don’t always seem to follow them.

Learners start to wonder, “How can I know what’s correct?” or, “If even native speakers disagree, how can I ever feel confident?”

For many learners, grammar rules feel safe and solid. So when native speakers seem to break those rules, it can make English suddenly feel much less predictable. 

Think about your own language
Here are some questions for you to think about:

• Did you learn grammar at school?
• Could you already speak pretty fluently before you even studied any grammar?
• Do people in your country sometimes disagree about what sounds correct or incorrect?
• Are some accents or dialects considered more educated than others?
• Do people speak differently with friends and in more formal situations?

What’s true in your language is also (mostly) true in English.

English isn’t special in this way.

Native speakers don’t learn English the same way as adult learners
In my English lessons at school, I learnt about parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on) and punctuation. Apart from that, we didn’t learn any grammar at all.

(I think kids do learn a bit more grammar in school these days, but it’s still nothing like learning English as a second language.)

We spent our English lessons learning about spelling, essay writing, reading comprehension and Shakespeare.

We didn’t learn about tenses, conditionals, modal verbs, phrasal verbs or the passive. I didn’t even know what most of these things were until I trained as an English teacher in my late 20s!

A native speaker can say “If I’d known, I would have told you” perfectly naturally, without knowing anything about the third conditional.

Meanwhile, an adult learning English may know all the grammar rules but still hesitate when speaking.

Understanding the grammar and being able to speak are two different skills.

What do people mean by ‘bad grammar’?
When a native speaker says something that doesn’t fit the rules in the grammar book, is this bad grammar? Does it mean they are uneducated?

No! We can’t judge a person’s intelligence, education or abilities based on the way they speak.

In fact, what people call “bad grammar” is often one of these things:

• Just a slip of the tongue - a mistake that people make when they’re speaking quickly and the words don’t come out quite right, not because they don’t know what’s correct.
• Informal or casual spoken English. There are some things which we say in casual conversation but would never write.
• An example of a regional dialect. People often label dialect differences as wrong.
• Or just different from what I was taught at school a long time ago - all languages change over time!

And don’t forget that these things are true for your own language too. English isn’t any more “incorrect” than other languages, and native English speakers aren’t more careless about grammar.

Sometimes native speakers do make genuine mistakes, just like everyone else. But something that doesn’t match the grammar book is not automatically a mistake.

Where do grammar rules come from?
Grammar rules are not quite what most people think.

Many people imagine that grammar rules are laws which were created in the past and that we must now follow them forever.

But people have been speaking for thousands of years, long before the first grammar book was ever written.

Real language comes first. The rules come later.

In fact, grammar books don’t create the language. They try to describe the patterns that already exist in real speech and writing.

That’s why grammar changes over time too.

And honestly, I don’t even really like the word “rules” because it gives people the impression that language is much more fixed and rigid than it really is.

Final thoughts
If a native speaker says something which isn’t in the grammar book, that doesn’t mean that they don’t know their own language.

This is true for English speakers and for speakers of your first language too.

Of course, standard grammar is important in some situations - especially writing, exams and professional communication.

But real spoken language is flexible, human and full of variation.

And good communication is about much more than following every grammar rule perfectly. 

If you’d like to read more about this topic, you might also enjoy this post:
Grammar isn't always black and white


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