Page:Dialogues, Intended to Facilitate the Acquiring of the Bengali Language.djvu/8



WHEN the following Dialogues were first begun, I did not intend to add a Translation: but I soon perceived, that if they were so extended as to include the most common conversations of the country people, it would be necessary to translate them, and to add a few observations.

It is readily acknowledged, that whoever undertakes to learn a language, should accustom himself to give an account of every word, in whatsoever connection it may be found. It is on this count that dialogues with translations have been supposed to be useless, if not injurious, furnishing the student with a kind of knowledge gratis, which he ought to acquire by application; while they leave him unacquainted with the principles of the language. To avoid this evil, and at the same time furnish a necessary help to the student, I have only added a very free translation, leaving it to him to account for every word, by making a strictly literal one.

This appears more necessary when we reflect that many allusive expressions, and idiomatic forms of speech, have scarcely any intelligible meaning when translated literally; but when the student compares his literal translation with the free one annexed, he will easily see the reason of these apparent irregularities, and