Page:Craven-Grey - Hindustani manual.djvu/19

 stantly talking with natives and, secondly, by reading their colloquial language, the early reading lessons being written in pure colloquial language. No action is performed well till it is performed unconsciously, and no one knows a foreign language till he can think in it and talk in it unconsciously, i.e., without thinking over the translation. Continental waiters learn to do this in English in six months, and it is absurd to suppose that an Englishman with sufficient education to pass into and out of Sandhurst cannot do the same. What is required is a proper system and proper teachers. Let the beginner, as far as possible, follow Professor Rosenthal's practical method. A Munshi, who soon tires, is not a good substitute for a gramophone, but still he is the best substitute available, and work with him can be done aloud.

A few words as regards the use of the text-book. The old method of preparing, say 30 lines of Virgil, was to give a boy a dictionary and an hour to prepare the task. The boy spent an hour in laboriously looking up every word in a large dictionary and as often as not in selecting the wrong meaning. (Dictionaries are for people who know something of a language ; not for beginners who cannot even talk.) Next, the boy spent an hour in class with a master, a first-class teacher, in unlearning most of what he had acquired in his hour of solitary and painful labour. This is the reason that few grown-up men, who have not been to the Universities, have any acquaintance with the classics.

The modern system, and a wise system it is, is to use a translation. In an hour, instead of 30 lines, 100 lines are read, and the meaning of the author being intelligibly expressed, is at once understood : nothing has to be unlearnt, and a great deal of the day's lesson sticks in the memory. However, a translation to be of any use must be good,