july — sept. 1857.] The Study of Living Languages. £49 



2nd, " Write down every thing from the beginning. Read al- 

 ways with pen or pencil in hand." This is directly opposed to two 

 of my principles, one an essential one, the other, one of great im- 

 portance. The first, that every thing is to be learnt through the 

 ear, and not through the eye, because it is the ear that is to be em- 

 ployed in using the language and not the eye. The other, that the 

 foreign character should not be used by the beginner, because time 

 must be saved in learning one thing at a time, and the character is 

 'not necessary to enable one to learn the language itself. 



3rd, " Read aloud all the exercises with a Tamil teacher, and be 

 very careful in ascertaining the correctness of what you have writ- 

 ten." Here it is evident that there was some sort of loose notion 

 about the exercise of the tongue, but it also shows that there was 

 nothing like a real apprehension of the essential importance of 

 this, nor of the extent to which that exercise should be carried. 

 Nor is any thing at all said about that which I insist upon, as the 

 main point, viz., the impossibility of learning to pronounce cor- 

 rectly, and the certainty of being established in a false pronunci- 

 ation, unless for some considerable time, no word is pronounced 

 without referring at the time to a correct standard, without the 

 student hearing one word at a time pronounced both immediately 

 before and immediately after himself by a Native. As to the latter 

 clause of this hint, I urge that the only possible way to secure the 

 correctness of what one learns is not to attempt to invent anything, 

 but to be content to learn every thing, every sound, every word, 

 every expression from a Native. 



4th, " At first, whenever you meet with a new word look for it 

 in the vocabulary, and decline and conjugate it in full. My rule 

 is, never meet with a new word, and never lose a minute in look- 

 ing for a word in a vocabulary, or in guessing which of the different 

 meanings that may be there given is the right one ; and never 

 lose time in declining and conjugating a word in full. Use only 

 limited lists of words, and thoroughly appropriate every one by 

 hearing it applied in a great variety of short sentences, in the 

 course of which exercises, the grammar will necessarily be picked 

 up long before the pronunciation and value and use of the word 



