Page:Craven-Grey - Hindustani manual.djvu/18

 acquired in these 24 lessons is sufficient for all practical colloquial purposes. The most necessary words are contained in the first lessons. It has been estimated that an ordinary English villager, from the day he is born to the day he dies, uses in speech no more than 350 words. (Of course he understands far more.) Professor Rosenthal estimates that the average educated man uses 4,000 words in conversation on all general subjects. Lepsius the Egyptologist limits the necessary vocabulary to 600, while another authority fixes it at 1,500. However, be that as it may, arithmetically speaking, "with 40 words we can form 1,024,000 sentences of 20 words each." (In practice, though, most of these sentences would have to be eliminated owing to the forced and unnatural order of the words.)

Now, the natives of India use a larger vocabulary than ordinary English villagers, for not only are they naturally more fluent, but Muslims and Hindus generally use different words for all common objects : for a "key" the former usually say kunjí, the latter chábí.

Further, Oriental idiom and thought differ so widely from European, that it would be extremely difficult to arrange, as gramophone records, a series of long sentences (with interlinear translation) easily intelligible to a beginner. Short sentences,, however, could be satisfactorily arranged. As regards idiom, take the simple sentence, "It is a fine day." Now an Englishman by this means "a sunny day," and if he wants to translate this thought he must say, "The sky is cloudless." However, an Indian's idea of a fine day is a "soft day," and the phrase "fine day" calls up in his mind a vision of a drizzly day in. spring, a garden, and a summer-house. To talk Hindustani, or to translate it, it is first necessary to think like a Hindustani ; and such thought can only be acquired by, first con-