224 The Study of Licing Languages, [no. 4, new series, 



pended, is an immense desideratum. It would lead numbers to 

 make a beginning who now never attempt it ; and many such, if 

 they once began, would not rest till they had obtained some con- 

 siderable knowledge of it. 



An encouraging system is equally required for those who do at 

 present set themselves to the study with the purpose of going 

 through with it. Nothing can be more discouraging than the 

 means usually pursued at present, whereas if a man were pursuing 

 a system in which he felt at every step, that he was making real 

 useful progress, he would go on with tenfold spirit, always feeling 

 too, that stop where he would, his labour had not been thrown 

 away. In endeavouring to accomplish the first object the follow- 

 ing rules may be laid down. 



1st. The student is really to learn the language and not to at- 

 tempt to teach himself. For instance, nothing is more common 

 than for a man, as soon as he has learnt a few words, with the 

 help of his grammar to begin to try and form sentences. In this 

 way he may certainly make a new language of his own, but it will 

 not be the language he proposes to learn. Thus numbers attempt to 

 communicate with Natives by English sentences made up of foreign 

 words which consequently are not merely scarcely intelligible but 

 often convey no meaning at all, though perfectly correct as regards 

 both words and grammar. The student must not at first attempt 

 to take the smallest step alone. He must not pronounce a word 

 nor put two words together by himself. He must be content to 

 learn every thing, and that thoroughly, from a Native, sound by 

 sound, word by word, expression by expression, and not attempt 

 to go beyond this, till he has become so established in correct pro- 

 nunciation, in his knowledge of the correct value of words and in 

 the actual forms used by the Natives that there is no danger of his 

 substituting something of his own for the real language. 



It is by no means sufficient to learn a sound or expression once 

 or ten times : it can only be correctly acquired by exercise, by thou- 

 sands of repetitions, referring every time immediately to a correct 

 standard. If a man reads for an hour with a teacher and then 

 goes attempting to pronounce the words by himself for the rest of 



