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Just as the Indian speaks sounds without being able to represent them in writing, and just as he possesses thousands of words without suspecting it, he also follows complex and intricate rules of grammar without being in the least aware of the fact. There is of course nothing strange in this. We are so accustomed to being taught grammar in school that we often allow ourselves to slide into the hasty opinion that we speak and write grammatically on account of this training. There are, however, perfectly illiterate and uneducated people, who, merely through association with those who talk grammatical English, speak with entire correctness. The first grammarians among the Greeks and Hindus did not invent the rules governing speech in their tongues, but only perceived and set down in systematic shape the grammatical forms and constructions already existing in those languages. So it is only a hasty judgment that would conclude that Indian languages are without grammar or form, merely because the Indian does not know that there is such a thing as grammar.

The Indian's ignorance, however, brings it about that the structure of no Indian language can be learned ready made, but has to be gradually explored and worked out step by step. With good interpreters this is a fascinating pursuit, and with proper philological training it is often not as difficult as might at first seem, though it is always a laborious and lengthy task on account of the wealth of the languages and the intricacy of their structure.

For instance, when forms like the following are obtained:

it is obvious on comparing the Indian forms with their English equivalents that the stem emlu is the only element that occurs in every one of these Indian words, and the word eat the only one that is common to all the translations. There can, therefore, be no doubt that emlu means "to eat." In the same way comparison shows that wherever we have the English pronoun "I," the Indian language in question possesses the prefix l-. Similarly "you" is the equivalent of the prefix m-, while "he" does not seem to be expressed. A suffix -i occurs when the English rendering is in the present tense, -ya for the past, and -hi for the English future. These five phrases, if we can rely on their having been accurately translated, therefore reveal not only a verb stem, but three pronominal elements and three tense elements. They