246 The Study of Licing Languages, [no. 4, new series^ 
stood and he could recognize the words spoken to him, and con- 
sequently he was in a position to make steady progress in the 
correct use of the language from his intercourse with the people, 
and this he accordingly did. It would of course have been much 
better if he could have continued the same course of study, though 
it were only for an hour or two a day, by which he would have 
far more rapidly added to his stock of words and expressions.* 
It is very probable that many persons would complete the ap- 
propriation of the first 1,000 words'"' and their sentences in one 
month. 
I would now only ask which is preferable a^; a foundation, such 
a really effective use of a language, though within small limits ; 
or such a loose, vague, and useless knowledge of a vast number of 
words, with the rules of grammar, as is usually acquired after at 
least many months of hard study, during the whole of which time 
too, the attention has been kept in a very injurious state of ten- 
sion by the overwhelming load of new things that has continually 
been laid upon it at one and the same time. I believe that in ge- 
neral little effective colloquial use of such a language is acquired 
within a year of hard study, and that often two or three years or 
more pass before the student can talk it tolerably, though only a 
portion of that time of course is actually employed in study. On 
one occasion, I was acquainted with two men who studied intense- 
ly (about ten hours a day) for nine months, after which upon tiial 
they found that they could scarcely hold the slightest communica- 
tion with Natives. 
A remarkably apposite passage from the life of Dr. Hope may 
here be quoted which I have just met with, and in which a part of 
the very means here proposed are stated to have been used by him 
with the most remarkable success, though he did not begin upon 
this plan, J)ut merely learnt the colloquial use of a language after 
• An educated NatiTC, who had, I believe, helped to teach this gentleman, 
lately told me that he had orerheard Natives speaking of him, who said that if 
they had not seen him. they should not hare known that it was not a Native it ho 
was speakfng Teloogoo. 
