july — sept. 1857.] The Study of Living Languages. £39 



ideas, and what points are likely to be difficulties to them. If 

 the first two sets of words had ten sentences in each, and the last 

 thousand words four on each, the whole of the sentences, on, sup- 

 pose, 2,000 words would amount to about 10,000 which would 

 be sufficient to make the student thoroughly at home in expressing 

 himself freely on all common subjects. Besides these general 

 words and sentences, each student, according to his profession, 

 ought to have a separate set of words and expressions belonging 

 to his peculiar occupations, whether those of a Magistrate, a Mer- 

 chant, a Missionary, an Engineer, &c. 



But it would be of no use his acquiring this information till he 

 was in some good measure grounded in the more general use of the 

 language, and therefore he should not perhaps take such a list of 

 words in hand till he had gone through the first two thousand ge- 

 neral words with their sentences. The professional sentences should 

 contain, of course, only those words already learnt in addition to 

 the technical words. With these sets of words and sentences there 

 should be a short grammar, containing only the first rudiments, in 

 the simplest possible form, so that it can be referred to without 

 loss of time on any point. This however in fact should be made 

 comparatively very little use of. Rules of grammar are not want- 

 ed, a man in conversation cannot possibly stop to form the parti- 

 ciple of a verb from the root, by considering the rules. If it does 

 not come of itself into his mouth nothing can make amends for that 

 defect. What is wanted is, such a knowledge of grammar as a 

 child of four years old possesses ; that is, a knowledge which ena- 

 bles him to speak correctly, intelligibly, and without hesitation, 

 though he does not know a single rule for anything he says. His 

 speaking must be independent of any rules, whether he has learnt 

 any or not. Yet a short grammar, to be looked into occasionally, 

 at first may be of some little assistance in acquiring the inflexions 

 of the nouns and verbs, &c. But the grand means of acquiring a 

 grammatical use of the language must be simply the repetition 

 multiplied, of a good variety of correct forms of expression. 



Nothing can be more absurd than insisting upon knowing the 

 rules of grammar before a student can be allowed to know a language. 



