Page:Craven-Grey - Hindustani manual.djvu/15

 INTRODUCTION.

A PRACTICAL METHOD OF ACQUIRING A NEW LANGUAGE.

THERE are several modern schools or systems of acquiring a new language, but the best is probably that of Professor Rosenthal.

Under the old-fashioned system, the student was first taught the grammar. He learnt to decline and conjugate, and was laboriously taught rules and exceptions. He was taught the theory of language, not the language itself. He was then made to study the literature with the aid of a dictionary, colloquial being generally ignored. After three or four years of such drudgery, not a single student, unless he had been abroad or practised talking with foreigners, was able to carry on the simplest conversation.

If waiters in Continental hotels, who talk English so fluently, be questioned, it will be found that they have acquired all their knowledge by residing in England for frequently not more than six months. Something therefore must be wrong in a system that in several years fails to teach as much as can be picked up without teaching in six months.

Now to learn a new language easily and quickly, it should first be learnt colloquially, the systematic study of grammar and literature being taken up only when a degree of colloquial proficiency has been obtained.

The Professor's system is based upon the following facts : For the first two years or so of its life, an infant listens. It