Rage at the Serbian Language (part of a continuing series)

On Monday, I was the only one in my language class. The day’s teacher was my least favorite of the possibilities and it was a grammar-intensive lesson, not a good combination.

I’m going to try to explain the grammar -- which is starting to make sense to me after two headache-inducing study sessions -- although I don’t think it translates well to English. There are two ways to say a sentence like ‘A lot of students go to the movies.’ One emphasizes the quantity. (How many students go to the movies? A lot of students go to the movies.) In this variant a lot is an adverb [my grammar knowledge isn't outstanding, but I thought adverbs can only describe verbs and adjectives], the case of the noun students changes to my least favorite case - genitive, and the verb to go is third person singular, even though students is a plural noun.

The second variant of the phrase emphasizes who. (Who goes to the movies? A lot of students go to the movies.) To make this phrase grammatically correct, a lot is an adjective – which means its ending changes to match the subject, students stays in the nominative case, and the verb is third person plural.

This still confuses me. I asked my teacher if this was important to learn and he told me that it isn’t. “Most Serbians don’t even know this grammar,” he told me.

So why are you teaching it to me?