Page:Madras journal of literature and science vol 2 new series 1857.djvu/230

220 The Study of Living Languages, [no. 4, new series, one in a hundred has read books, there is a large proportion of the words, which are never used in conversation on ordinary matters, and which therefore are so far from being of any use to the great mass of those who have to acquire the language that they are always in his way, if he has learnt them, leading him to express himself in words not in common use, and consequently unknown to most of those with whom he has to communicate. So far therefore from it being sufficient to follow the ideas which a man has gathered while studying dead languages, they are in fact the very opposite to those which are correct as respects the study of such living languages as are here supposed.

If we examine the mode of study adopted generally, however it may vary in minor points, the system, so far as that can be called a system, which is indeed no such thing, is that suited to the dead languages. A man takes up a book of stories, a grammar, and a dictionary, and learning, almost exclusively by the eye, he proceeds exactly as if the use of his ear were of no consequence, as if he must at once grapple with the whole vocabulary of the language, and as if when he had got the materials of words and rules of grammar, he could himself guess the forms of expression which he must compound from them; like the idiot who was found to have stored up in his box all the wheels, axles, &c, he could lay his hand upon, thinking that when he had got enough he could easily make a clock of them. The results of this proceeding are notorious. A youth in India has passed a splendid examination, knows every word of the language and has a rule of grammar for everything, loses his way out riding and cannot get home before he is in danger of a stroke of the sun, because he cannot make any Native he meets understand him, nor can he understand a sentence spoken by them, and this after many months, often a year or two, of intense study from morning to night. And what is still worse, probably he is confirmed in a false pronunciation and a false mode of expression from having almost entirely neglected these two great essentials, or at least not having given them any thing like due attention. The consideration of this source of many of the most serious mistakes that are made in this study will be very useful.

Another great source of mistakes, is that such languages are