>I know that I've learned more about English grammar by studying French, Latin, and German, then I ever did in taking any English classes < s > When in your own first-language, who cares what the constructs are if you can speak, read, and write it decently. But in other languages, you *must* learn the constructs well to understand how to use it (and be understood, anyway)...

Exactly the same experience when I started learning English. Few months later I got to learn my own grammar - and it was a nice feeling to know why do all these things have to have names :).

> My book on German notes that it's fairly easy to accidently insult a German if you are not quite careful :)

My experience with trying to speak German (with the grammar caught on-the-fly) is that Germans will never try to correct you - they're too happy to hear someone trying to learn their language. I actually had to tell one guy to kick me every once in a while when I make some mistake, or I'll never learn a thing.