The more dangerous pitfalls for those who use words in combination--as all
of us do--have been pointed out. The best ways of avoiding these pitfalls
have also been indicated. But our work together has thus far been chiefly
negative. To be sure, many tasks assigned for your performance have been
constructive as well as precautionary; but _the end_ held ever before
you has been the avoidance of feeble or ridiculous diction. In the present
chapter we must take up those aspects of the mastery of words in
combination which are primarily positive.
<Preliminaries: General Purposes and Methods>
Before coming to specific aspects and assignments, however, we shall do
well to consider certain large general purposes and methods.
<I. A Ready, an Accurate, or a Wide Vocabulary?>
First, what kind of vocabulary do we wish to acquire? A facile, readily
used one? An accurate one? Or one as nearly as may be comprehensive? The
three kinds do not necessarily coexist. The possession of one may even
hinder and retard the acquisition of another. Thus if we seek a ready
vocabulary, an accurate vocabulary may cause us to halt and hesitate for
words which shall correspond with the shadings of our thought and emotion,
and a wide vocabulary may embarrass us with the plenitude of our verbal
riches.
But _may_ is not _must_. Though the three kinds of vocabulary
may interfere with each other, there is no reason, except superficially,
why they should. Our purpose should be, therefore, to acquire not a single
kind but all three. We should be like the boy who, when asked whether he
would have a small slice of apple pie or a small slice of pumpkin pie,
replied resolutely, "Thank you, I will take a large piece of both."
That the assignments in this chapter may help you develop a vocabulary
which shall be promptly responsive to your needs, you should perform some
of them rapidly. Your thoughts and feelings regarding a topic may be
anything but clear, but you must not pause to clarify them. The words best
suited to the matter may not be instantly available, but you must not
tarry for accessions of language. Stumble, flounder if you must, yea,
rearrange your ideas even as you present them, but press resolutely ahead,
comforting yourself with the assurance that in the heat and stress of
circumstances a man rarely does his work precisely as he wishes. When you
have finished the discussion, repeat it immediately--and with no more
loitering than before. You will find that your ideas have shifted and
enlarged, and that more appropriate words have become available. Further
repetitions will assist you the more. But the goal you should set
yourself, as you proceed from topic to topic, is the attainment of the
power to be at your best in the first discussion. You may never reach this
goal, but at least you may approach it.
That the assignments in this chapter may assist you in making your
vocabulary accurate, you should perform some of them in another way. When
you have selected a topic, you should first of all think it through. In
doing this, arrange your ideas as consistently and logically as you can,
and test them with your reason. Then set them forth in language which
shall be lucid and exact. Tolerate no slipshod diction, no vaguely
rendered general meanings. Send every sentence, every word like a skilful
drop-kick--straight above the crossbar. When you have done your best with
the topic, lay it by for a space. Time is a great revealer of hidden
defects, and you must not regard your labors as ended until your
achievement is the maturest possible for you. If the quantity of what you
accomplish is meager, suffer no distress on that account. The desideratum
now is not quantity, but quality.
The assignments in this chapter will do less toward making your vocabulary
wide than toward making it facile and precise. To be sure, they will now
and then set you to hunting for words that are new. Better still, they
will give you a mastery over some of your outlying words--words known to
your eyes or ears but not to your tongue. But these advantages will be
somewhat incidental. Means for the systematic extension of your verbal
domain into regions as yet unexplored by you, are reserved for the later
chapters of this book.
<2. A Vocabulary for Speech or for Writing?>
In the second place, are we to develop a vocabulary for oral discourse or
a vocabulary for writing? It may be that our chief impediment or our chief
ambition lies in one field rather than in the other. Nevertheless we
should strive for a double mastery; we ought to speak well _and_
write well. Indeed the two powers so react upon each other that we ought
to cultivate both for the sake of either. True, some men, though inexpert
as writers, have made themselves proficient as speakers; or though
shambling and ineffective as speakers, have made themselves proficient as
writers. But this is not natural or normal. Moreover these men might have
gleaned more abundantly from their chosen field had they not shut it off
from the acres adjacent. Fences waste space and curtail harvests.
The assignments in this chapter are of such a nature that you may perform
them either orally or in writing. You should speak and write alternately,
sometimes on the same topic, sometimes on topics taken in rotation.
In your oral discussions you should perhaps absent yourself at first from
human auditors. A bedstead or a dresser will not make you self-conscious
or in any way distract your attention, and it will permit you to sit down
afterward and think out the degree of your failure or success. Ultimately,
of course, you must speak to human beings--in informal conversations at
the outset, in more ambitious ways later as occasion permits.
In your writing you may find it advantageous to make preliminary outlines
of what you wish to say. But above all, you must be willing to blot, to
revise, to take infinite pains. You should remember the old admonition
that easy reading is devilish hard writing.
<The Mastery of Words in Combination>
These purposes and methods are general. We now come to the specific fields
in which we may with profit cultivate words in combination. Of these
fields there are four.
<I. Mastery through Translation>
If you read a foreign language, whether laboriously or with ease, you
should make this power assist you to amass a good English vocabulary.
Take compositions or parts of compositions written in the foreign tongue,
and turn them into idiomatic English. How much you should translate
at a given time depends upon your leisure and your adeptness. Employ all
the methods--the spontaneous, the carefully perfected, the oral, the
written--heretofore explained in this chapter. In your final work on a
passage you should aim at a faultless rendition, and should spend time and
ransack the lexicons rather than come short of this ideal.
The habit of translation is an excellent habit to keep up. For the study
of an alien tongue not only improves your English, but has compensations
in itself.