12
THE HESPERIAN
li il
because the languages aro so much moro
difficult? Corfainly not so much more diffi
cult that the maturo mind cannot master in
four years what a child's mind can master in
two ! If the Greeks learned Greek as we
do, none but the aged genius could ever have
carried on a conversation. But they did speak
it; old and young alike, and perhaps did not
violate the rules of their grammar more than
we do the rules of ours. .
The fact is, our method of learning a lan
guage is unnatural. We did not learn our
own language by close application to a Lind
ley and Murray grammar, and to a volume
of Milton, or of Shakespeare. We did not
construe every verb in Robinson Crusoe.
We were not bothered with conjugations and
declensions in "Jack the Giant Killer." In
fact, mo8tof us spoke passable English be
fore we could read, just as the musician can
sing long before he can read notes, and can
read notes long before he can explain the
principles of harmony. He would be called
a strange music teacher that would take a
pupil that had never heard a tune in his life,
into the principles of thorough-bass. What
then of the teacher that requires a student to
decline nouns and conjugate verbs that he
has never used in his life? Our freshmen
read the grandest epic in the Latin language1
and not one of them can say off-hand a com
mon, every-day sentence three words long !
Moreover, we did not learn English word
by word. We learned it by senteuces, or at
least by groups of words. When we wanted
a piece of bread and butter, we did not stop
to think of the individual words "bread"
and "butter," but the two were memorized
together. Nothing of this is done in learn
ing any other language. All through his course
the student spends his time in looking up
words, memorizing words, never using them
nor combining them for himself. He is, in
fact, learning not the language, but its
words. He is learning, not to speak it, bnt
to read its literature.
It is urged that the ability to read the lit
erature of a language is of far greater im
portance than the ability to converse in a
language. This may bo true', but that is not
learning a language. If ho is not to bo able
to converse in the language in the end, the
student had far better read a translation than
waste four or fivo years in this kind of work.
This would avoid the waste of time involved
in hunting up words in the dictionary. This
would save the time wasted in memorizing
useless rules of grammar, and thus the stud
ent would get all the thought out of the orig
inal and have plenty of time for the study
of English. Of two students, give one the
original of Homer's Iliad to translate, and
give the other the translations, and at the
end of a month the second will have road
the Iliad through, and perhaps the Odysye,
and will have clear-cut ideas of the life of
the Greeks at that time, while the other,
maybe, will have struggled through the first
book of the Iliad, and has no definite
thoughts about even that.
If it is Greek you are studying, study
Greek, speak Greek, write Greek, think
Greek, but don't study Greek literature and
imagine you are learning Greek. There is
no use in studying Greek unless to talk it ;
write it and think it. "It will give a clear
idea of the English words that arc derived
from Greek. True enough. But is it worth
while to memorize ten thousand Greek words
for the sake of a hundred or two derived
words? Why not study those words alone ?
The astronomer does not turn his glass upon
a hundred stars to get a definite view of one?
Is it not easier to remember that "azimmuth"
comes from the Arabian language, than
to memorize a thousand useless Arabic
words? What possible good does it do a
student of English to know that "kai" is
the Greek word for "and?"
The point of the whole matter is this:
Learn a language by ear; correct it by its
grammar, and refine by reading its litera
ture. '
D. N. Lehmer.
It is reported that within the last six years over
three hundred and fifty students of German uni
versities have committed suicide because of failure
in examination.
