Stan wrote (snipping the rest of interesting message for your convenience):
> But no one uses
>them that I know of in learning vocabulary.  Actually the rules require
>memorizing quite a few phonemic transformations, and it seems just as
>easy to learn that the supine forms - which you find in most -tion
>words - are to be linked to basic verbs in derivational series, that
>are familiar to Romance speakers, and the same series have also been
>borrowed in many cases into the Germanic and Slavic languages.

At least for me grammatical rules are a summary. I for one have always
learnt grammar starting with the examples. My personal formula in learning
languages is that I want to ask: "Way do I make a mistake here when I want
to say this?"
"It is because you don't know that this construction is necessary, as
in......."
"So if I say ................. it is correct?"
"Yes".

So at first you go to the grammar in order to be able to look for the
grammatical cathegories. Then you read text. After that you try to
reproduce the text (can be speech as well) and at that stage you go to the
grammar to help yourself in the construction. When you think that you
master the passage in the grammar, you summarize it by learning a rule.





[log in to unmask]
Kjell Rehnström
Vänortsgatan 87
752 64  UPPSALA
Tel. 018-50 22 35