Page:Madras journal of literature and science vol 2 new series 1857.djvu/225

 JULY — SEPT. 1857.] The Study of Living Languages. 215

twentieths of the time so employed; a large portion lose the whole, breaking down before they have acquired any useful know- ledge at all; probably scarcely one in ten acquires a tolerably correct and free use of it, and scarcely one at all such a knowledge as to make them really effective translators, an office of the highest possible importance, because the transference of English literature, for the great mass of the inhabitants of the earth, must precede the formation of a national literature among each tribe.

At present it may safely ba said that no system whatever is followed in studying such living languages for colloquial purposes. Let any one individual of the thousands who are at this moment so employed, be askeS, whose system of study do you prefer, or have you any of your own, and upon what grounds do you decide upon this, or that point, and his answer would generally be such as to show that be had no clear, definite, well-digested ideas on the subject. Without the least previous investigation of the sub- ject, without spending one single day in reading a treatise on it, or considering it in his own mind, he usually blindly takes in hand a matter upon which he will perhaps employ one or several years; taking at a venture as it were, any books or teachers that he may happen to fall in with, or any ideas he may happen to have got into his own head, he knows not how or whence; without any solid grounds for concluding whether the mode he is pursuing will lead to an economical or an enormously wasteful expenditure of time, and, what is of more importance, whether he is laying the foundation of a real, correct, and effective knowledge of the language, or establishing himself in a totally false use of it, which, when become habitual, will never be corrected.

Matters are in respect of this study of languages just as they were in respect of road making before the time of Mr. McAdam. Every man thought he was born a road maker, and those holding the charge of roads did almost anything to them and called it repairs. It was a most common thing for instance to throw a thick layer of loose rounded gravel on the road, which at first caused almost the greatest possible resistance to the carriages and by de- grees was converted into mud, but never afforded any thing ap-