Page:Madras journal of literature and science vol 2 new series 1857.djvu/250

240 If a man talks English grammatically, that is, correctly, he is never examined as to whether he knows any rules; perhaps he never learnt a line of any English grammar, but it makes no difference. But it is always expected that a man studying a foreign language should be able to stand an examination of a kind neither he nor his examiner could stand in his mother tongue. The same man who meets a stranger in the street and knows well by the first sentence that he utters whether he is perfectly acquainted with English or not, is perhaps on his way to some place where he will pass hours in ascertaining whether a student has a good knowledge of a language foreign to him.

These are therefore the materials which I would put into any man's hands, who wants to study a foreign language for colloquial purposes: viz., a vocabulary of perhaps 2,000 words, divided into sets of, from 100 to 250, with about ten thousand common forms of expression, composed only of each set of words and those words previously learnt. These printed both in the Native and English character, with a verbal and a free translation, the sentences to be aided if possible by copious notes giving all the collateral information possible; and to these to be added a very short rudimental grammar.

It will not perhaps be necessary to give the verbal translations of any but the first 2 or 3000 sentences.

As to the student's further study, he may of course now with perfect ease follow the ordinary plan; that is, take up any book that contains the sort of words and matter most suited to his line of life, with an ordinary dictionary and grammar to which however he will have very seldom to refer. He will know so large a proportion of the words that the context will generally show the meaning of any new word he meets with, and he will lose very little of his time in that which usually occupies about three-fourths of all the time expended in such studies, viz., in turning over the leaves of a large dictionary and guessing which of the several meanings there found for a word is compatible with those of the other words of the sentence before him, many of which he has also yet to ascer-