MS The Study of Living Languages, [no. 4, new skriks, 



stood and he could recognize the words spoken to him, and con- 

 sequently he was in a position to make steady progress in the 

 eoneet use of the language iVoni 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 as 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 jrpon trial 

 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, but merely learnt the colloquial use of a language after 



* An educated Native, who had, I believe, helped to teach this gentleman, 

 lately told me that he had overheard Natives speaking of him, who said that if 

 they had not seen him, they should not have known that it was not a Native who 



was speaking Teloogoo. 



