MODERN LANGUAGES.
"All nations have their message from on high,
Each the messiah of some central thought,
For the fulfilment and delight of Man:
One has to teach that Labour is divine;
Another Freedom and another Mind;
And all, that God is open-eyed and just,
The happy centre and calm heart of all."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
We cannot have a perfect knowledge even of our own language without some
acquaintance with more than one other, either classical or modern. This
is especially true of English because it has drawn its strength and
wealth from so many sources, and absorbed them into itself. But this
value is usually taken indirectly, by the way, and the understanding of
it only comes to us after years as an appreciable good. It is, however,
recognized that no education corresponding to the needs of our own time
can be perfected or even adequately completed in one language alone. Not
only do the actual conditions of life make it imperative to have more
than one tongue at our command from the rapid extension of facilities
for travelling, and increased intercourse with other nations; but in
proportion to the cooling down of our extreme ardour for experimental
science in the school-room we are returning to recognize in language a
means of education more adapted to prepare children for life, by fitting
them for intercourse with their fellow-creatures and giving them some
appreciative understanding of the works of man's mind. Thus languages,
and especially modern languages, are assuming more and more importance
in the education of children, not only with us, but in most other
countries of Europe. In some of them the methods are distinctly in
advance of ours.
Much has been written of late years in the course of educational
discussions as to the value of classical studies in education. As the
best authorities are not yet in agreement among themselves it would be
obviously out of place to add anything here on the subject. But the
controversy principally belongs to classics in boys' schools; as to the
study of Latin by girls, and in particular to its position in Catholic
schools, there is perhaps something yet to be said.
In non-Catholic schools for girls Latin has not, even now, a great hold.
It is studied for certain examinations, but except for the few students
whose life takes a professional turn it scarcely outlives the
school-room. Girl students at universities cannot compete on equal terms
with men in a classical course, and the fact is very generally
acknowledged by their choosing another. Except in the rarest
instances--let us not be afraid to own it--our Latin is that of amateurs,
brilliant amateurs perhaps, but unmistakable. Latin, for girls, is a
source of delight, a beautiful enrichment of their mental life, most
precious in itself and in its influence, but it is not a living power,
nor a familiar instrument, nor a great discipline; it is deficient in
hardness and closeness of grain, so that it cannot take polish; it is
apt to betray by unexpected transgressions the want of that long,
detailed, severe training which alone can make classical scholarship. It
is usually a little tremulous, not quite sure of itself, and indeed its
best adornment is generally the sobriety induced by an overshadowing
sense of paternal correction and solicitude always present to check
rashness and desultoriness, and make it at least "gang warily" with a
finger on its lip; and their attainments in Latin are, at the best,
receptively rather than actively of value.
In Catholic girls' schools, however, the elements of Latin are almost
necessity. It is wanting in courtesy, it is almost uncouth for us to
grow up without any knowledge of the language of Holy Church. It is
almost impossible for educated Catholics to have right taste in
devotion, the "love and relish" of the most excellent things, without
some knowledge of our great liturgical prayers and hymns in the
original. We never can really know them if we only hear them halting and
plunging and splashing through translations, wasting their strength in
many words as they must unavoidably do in English, and at best only
reaching an approximation to the sense. The use of them in the original
is discipline and devotion in one, and it strengthens the Catholic
historical hold on the past, with a sense of nearness, when we dwell
with some understanding on the very words which have been sung in the
Church subsisting in all ages and teaching all nations. This is our
birthright, but it is not truly ours unless we can in some degree make
use of what we own.
It has often been pointed out that even to the most uneducated amongst
our people Latin is never a dead language to Catholics, and that the
familiar prayers at Mass and public devotions make them at home in the
furthest countries of the earth as soon as they are within the church
doors. So far as this, it is a universal language for us, and even if it
went no further than the world-wide home feeling of the poor in our
churches it would make us grateful for every word of Latin that has a
familiar sound to them, and this alone might make us anxious to teach
Catholic children at school, for the use of prayer and devotion, as much
Latin as they can learn even if they never touch a classic.
Our attitude towards the study of modern languages has had its high and
low tides within the last century. We have had our submissive and our
obstinate moods; at present we are rather well and affably disposed.
French used to be acknowledged without a rival as the universal
language; it was a necessity, and in general the older generation
learned it carefully and spoke it well. At that time Italian was learned
from taste and German was exceptional. Queen Victoria's German marriage
and all the close connexion that followed from it pressed the study of
German to the front; the influence of Carlyle told in the same
direction, and the study of Italian declined. Then in our enthusiasm for
physical sciences for a time we read more German, but not German of the
best quality, and in another line we were influenced by German literary
criticism. Now, the balance of things has altered again. For scholarship
and criticism German is in great request; in commercial education it is
being outrun by Spanish; for the intercourse of ordinary life Germans
are learning English much more eagerly than we are learning German. We
have had a fit of--let us call it--shyness, but we are trying to do
better. We recognize that these fits of shyness are not altogether to
our credit, not wholly reasonable, and that we are not incapable of
learning foreign languages well. We know the story of the little boy
reprimanded by the magistrate for his folly in running away from home
because he was obliged to learn French, and his haughty reply that if
foreigners wished to speak to him they might learn his language. But our
children have outgrown him, as to his declaration if not as to his want
of diligence, and we are in general reforming our methods of teaching so
much that it will soon be inexcusable not to speak one or two languages
well, besides our own.
The question of pronunciation and accent has been haunted by curious
prejudices. An English accent in a foreign tongue has been for some
speakers a refuge for their shyness, and for others a stronghold of
their patriotism. The first of these feared that they would not be truly
themselves unless their personality could take shelter beneath an accent
that was unmistakably from England, and the others felt that it was like
hauling down the British flag to renounce the long-drawn English
"A-o-o." And, curiously, at the other extreme, the slightest tinge of an
English accent is rather liked in Paris, perhaps only among those
touched with Anglomania. But now we ought to be able to acquire whatever
accent we choose, even when living far away from every instructor,
having the gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish
"manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much
developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers
of modern languages to let the old English faults prevail.
We have had our succession of methods too. The old method of learning
French, with a _bonne_ in the nursery first, and then a severely
academic governess or tutor, produced French of unsurpassed quality-But
it belonged to home education, it required a great deal of leisure, it
did not adapt itself to school curricula in which each child, to use the
expressive American phrase, "carries" so many subjects that the hours
and minutes for each have to be jealously counted out. There have been a
series of methods succeeding one another which can scarcely be called
more than quack methods of learning languages, claiming to be the
natural method, the maternal method, the only rational method, etc.
Educational advertisements of these have been magnificent in their
promise, but opinions are not entirely at one as to the results.
The conclusions which suggest themselves after seeing several of these
methods at work are:--
1. That good teachers can make use of almost any method with excellent
results but that they generally evolve one of their own.
2. That if the teachers and the children take a great deal of trouble
the progress will be very remarkable, whatever method is employed, and
that without this both the classical and the "natural" methods can
accomplish very little.
3. That teachers with fixed ideas about children and about methods
arrest development.
4. That the self-instruction courses which "work out at a penny a
lesson" (the lesson lasts ten minutes and is especially recommended for
use in trams), and the gramophone with the most elaborate records, still
bear witness to the old doctrine that there is no royal road to the
learning of languages, and that it is not cheap in the end. In
proportion to the value we set upon perfect acquirement of them will be
our willingness to spend much labour upon foundations. By this road we
arrive again at the fundamentals of an educator's calling, love and
labour.
The value to the mind of acquiring languages is so great that all our
trouble is repaid. It is not utilitarian value: what is merely for
usefulness can be easily acquired, it has very little beauty. It is not
for the sake of that commonplace usefulness that we should care to spend
trouble upon permanent foundations in any tongue. The mind is satisfied
only by the genius of the language, its choicest forms, its
characteristic movement, and, most of all, the possession of its
literature from within, that is to say of the spirit as it speaks to its
own, and in which the language is most completely itself.
The special fitness of modern languages in a girl's education does not
appear on the surface, and it requires more than a superficial,
conversational knowledge to reap the fruit of their study. The social,
and at present the commercial values are obvious to every one, and of
these the commercial value is growing very loud in its assertions, and
appears very exacting in its demands. For this the quack methods promise
the short and easy way, and perhaps they are sufficient for it. A
knowledge sufficient for business correspondence is not what belongs to
a liberal education; it has a very limited range, hard, plain, brief
communications, supported on cast-iron frames, inelastic forms and
crudest courtesies, a mere formula for each particular case, and a small
vocabulary suited to the dealings of every branch of business. We know
the parallel forms of correspondence in English, which give a means of
communication but not properly a language. Even the social values of
languages are less than they used to be, as the finer art of
conversation has declined. A little goes a long way; the rush of the
motor has cut it short; there is not time to exchange more than a few
commonplaces, and for these a very limited number of words is enough.
But let our girls give themselves time, or let time be allowed them, to
give a year or two to the real study of languages, not in the threadbare
phrases of the tourist and motorist, nor to mere drawing-room small
talk; not with "matriculation standard" as an object, but to read the
best that has been written, and try to speak according to the best that
can be said now, and to write according to the standard of what is
really excellent to-day; then the study of modern languages is lifted
quite on to another plane. The particular advantage of this plane is
that there is a view from it, wider in proportion to the number of
languages known and to the grasp that is acquired of each, and the
particular educational gift to be found there is width of sympathy and
understanding. Defective sympathies, national and racial prejudices
thrive upon a lower level. The _elect_ of all nations understand one
another, and are strangely alike; the lower we go down in the various
grades of each nation the more is the divergency accentuated between one
and another. Corresponding to this is mutual understanding through
language; the better we possess the language of any nation the closer
touch we can acquire with all that is theirs, with their best.
A superficial knowledge of languages rather accentuates than removes
limitations, multiplies mistakes and embitters them. With a
half-knowledge we misunderstand each other's ideals, we lose the point
of the best things that are said, we fail to catch the aroma of the
spices and the spirit of the living word; in fact, we are mere tourists
in each other's mental world, and what word could better express the
attitude of mind of one who is a stranger, but not a pilgrim, a tramp of
a rather more civilized kind, having neither ties nor sympathies nor
obligations, nothing to give, and more inclined to take than to receive.
To create ties, sympathies, and obligations in the mental life, is a
grace belonging to the study of languages, and makes it possible to give
and receive hospitality on the best terms with the minds of those of
other nations than our own. This is particularly a gift for the
education of girls, since all graces of hospitality ought to be
peculiarly theirs. To lift them above prejudices, to make them love
other beauties than those of their own mental kindred, to afford them a
wider possibility of giving happiness to others, and of making
themselves at home in many countries, is to give them a power over the
conditions of life which reaches very far into their own mental
well-being and that of others, and makes them in the best meaning of the
word cosmopolitan.
The choice of languages to be learnt must depend upon many
considerations, but the widest good for English girls, though not the
most easy to attain, is to give them perfect French. German is easier to
learn from its kinship with our own language, but its grammar is of less
educational value than French, and it does not help as French does to
the acquirement of the most attractive of other European languages.
As a second language, however, and for a great deal that is not
otherwise attainable, German is in general the best that can be chosen.
Italian and Spanish have their special claims, but at present in England
their appeal is not to the many. German gives the feeling of kindred
minds near to us, ourselves yet not ourselves; with primitive Teutonic
strength and directness, with a sweet freshness of spring in its more
delicate poetry, and both of these elements blended at times in an
atmosphere as of German forests in June. In some writers the flicker of
French brilliancy illumines the depth of these Teutonic woods, producing
a German which, in spite of the condemnation of the Emperor, we should
like to write ourselves if the choice were offered to us.
But, notwithstanding the depth and strength of German, it is generally
agreed that as an instrument of thought French prose in a master-hand is
unrivalled, by its subtlety and precision, and its epigrammatic force.
Every one knows and laments the decadent style which is eating into it;
and every one knows that the deplorable tone of much of its contemporary
literature makes discernment in French reading a matter not only of
education but of conscience and sanity; but this does not make the
danger to be inherent in the French language; obliging translators are
ready to furnish us, in our own language and according to taste, with
the very worst taken, from everywhere. And these faults do not affect
the beauty of the instrument, nor its marvellous aptitude for training
the mind to precision of expression. The logical bent of the French
mind, its love of rule, the elaborateness of its conventions in
literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the
custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pass
unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and
definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and
unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. But the very
completeness of it has seemed to some writers a fetter, and when they
revolt against and break through it, their extravagance passes beyond
all ordinary bounds. French represents the two extremes, unheard-of
goodness, unequalled perfection, or indescribable badness and
unrestraint. Unfortunately the unrestraint is making its way, and as
with ourselves in England, the magazine literature in France grows more
and more undesirable.
Yet there is unlimited room for reading, and for Catholics a great
choice of what is excellent. The modern manner of writing the lives of
the Saints has been very successfully cultivated of late years in
France, making them living human beings "interesting as fiction," to use
an accepted standard of measurement, more appealingly credible and more
imitable than those older works in which they walked remote from the
life of to-day, angelic rather than human. There are studies in
criticism, too, and essays in practical psychology and social science,
which bring within the scope of ordinary readers a great deal which with
us can only be reached over rough roads and by-ways. No doubt each
method has its advantages; the laboriously acquired knowledge becomes
more completely a part of ourselves, but along the metalled way it is
obvious that we cover more ground.
The comparison of these values leads to the practical question of
translations. The Italian saying which identifies the translator with
the traitor ought to give way to a more grateful and hopeful modern
recognition of the services done by conscientious translations. We have
undoubtedly suffered in England in the past by well-meaning but
incompetent translators, especially of spiritual books, who have given
us such impressions as to mislead us about the minds of the writers or
even turned us against them altogether, to our own great loss. But at
present more care is exercised, and conscientious critical exactitude in
translating important spiritual works has given us English versions that
are not unworthy of their originals. [1--An example of this is the late
Canon Mackey's edition of the complete works of St. Francis of Sales,
which has, unfortunately, to be completed without him.]
There is good service to be done to the Church in England by this work
of translation, and it is one in which grown-up girls, if they have been
sufficiently trained, might give valuable help. It must be borne in mind
that not every book which is beautiful or useful in its own language, is
desirable to translate. Some depend so much upon the genius of the
language and the mentality of their native country that they simply
evaporate in translation; others appeal so markedly to national points
of view that they seem anomalous in other languages, as a good deal of
our present-day English writing would appear in French. It has also to
be impressed on translators that their responsibility is great; that it
takes laborious persistence to make a really good translation, doing
justice to both sides, giving the spirit of the author as well as his
literal meaning, and not straining the language of the translation into
unnatural forms to make it carry a sense that it does not easily bear.
The beauty of a translator's work is in the perfect accord of conscience
and freedom, and this is not attained without unwearied search for the
right word, the only right word which will give the true meaning and the
true expression of any idea. To believe that this right word exists is
one of the delights of translating; to be a lover of choice and
beautiful words is an attraction in itself, leading to the love of
things more beautiful still, the love of truth, and fitness, and
transparency; the exercise of thought, and discrimination, and balance,
and especially of a quality most rare and precious in women--mental
patience. It is said that we excel in moral patience, but that when we
approach anything intellectual this enduring virtue disappears, and we
must "reach the goal in a bound or never arrive there at all." The
sustained search for the perfect word would do much to correct this
impatience, and if the search is aided by a knowledge of several modern
languages so that comparative meanings and uses may be balanced against
one another, it will be found not only to open rich veins of thought,
but to give an ever-increasing power of working the mines and extracting
the gold.