Each language is a conceptual universe unto itself and should be described in its own terms. This means that you have to get to know the language well. The often heard claim that one has to be a native speaker with native intuitions about the language in order to describe a language well is demonstrably false. The best and most thorough grammars of English were not written by native speakers of English, but by foreigners, most notably by the great Danish scholar Otto Jespersen (). The grammars of Jespersen, Kruisinga and Zandvoort have seen many editions and reprints. 1 These linguists were in a position to acquire a perfect mastery of English and gain unique insights into the workings of the language which elude most speakers of English. Why this should be so is that the most fascinating phenomena in English are foibles of the language so deeply ingrained in the minds of native speakers that they tend to escape their notice. Even when a native speaker of English is confronted with these grammatical peculiarities, he often tends to take them for granted because it is only from the vantage point of the closely related but quite different languages Danish and Dutch that it becomes obvious what is so remarkable about English. How can we ever hope to really understand what is special about a language if we cannot adopt such a perspective and if we have no other languages with which to make insightful comparisons? In this manifesto, I am going to try to tell you what I think a descriptive analytical grammar should be like. for sharing their thoughts.