5i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



How the Grammar is Ascertained 



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 noth- 

 ing 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 gram- 

 matical forms and constructions already existing in those languages. 

 So it is only a hasty judgment that would conclude that Indian lan- 

 guages 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 grad- 

 ually 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: 



l-emlu-i 



I eat 



m-emlu-i 



you eat 



l-emlu-ya 



I ate 



m-emlu-hi 



you will eat 



emlu-Jii 



he will eat 



it is obvious on comparing the Indian forms with their English equiva- 

 lents 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 pos- 

 sesses the prefix Z-. Similarly "you" is the equivalent of the prefix 

 ra-, 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 



