II

We may already from what has been said draw some conclusions as

to the method which we ought to use. We ought to learn a language

through sensible communications; there must be (and this as far as

possible from the very first day) a certain connection in the thoughts

communicated in the new language. Disconnected words are but stones

for bread; one cannot say anything sensible with mere lists of words.

Indeed not even disconnected sentences ought to be used, at all events,

not in such a manner and to such an extent as in most books according

to the old method. For there is generally just as little connexion

between them as there would be in a newspaper if the same line were

read all the way across from column to column. I shall take a few

specimens at random from a French reader that is much used: “My aunt is

my mother’s friend. My dear friend, you are speaking too rapidly. That

is a good book. We are too old. This gentleman is quite sad. The boy

has drowned many dogs.” When people say that instruction in languages

ought to be a kind of mental gymnastics, I do not know if one of the

things they have in mind is such sudden and violent leaps from one

range of ideas to another.

In another French schoolbook we find: “Nous sommes à Paris, vous êtes

à Londres. Louise et Amélie, où êtes-vous? Nous avons trouvé la lettre

sur la table. Avez-vous pris le livre? Avons-nous été à Berlin? Amélie,

vous êtes triste. Louis, avez-vous vu Philippe? Sommes-nous à Londres?”

The speakers seem to have a strange sense of locality. First, they say

that they themselves are in Paris, but the one (the ones?) that they

are speaking with are in London (conversation by telephone?); then they

cannot remember if they themselves have been in Berlin; and at last

they ask if they themselves are in London. Unfortunately, they get no

answer, for the next sentence is, “Pierre, vous avez pris la canne.”

Or take some of the books which are supposed to help Danes learn

English. They are no better. In one (which appeared in 1889) we find:

“The joiner has made this chair. What a fine sunshine! For whom do you

make this bed? Which of you will have this box? I should like to have

it. Of whom have you got this cake? I am very fond of cakes. I have

borrowed a great deal of books from a public library.”

From a “practical” primer in English, which appeared in its second

edition in 1893, I take the following specimens: “Are the king’s horses

very old? No; but the duke’s carriage is old. Is it older than your

friend’s?... Has the nobleman told you the news? No, sir; but the lady

has told me the news about the business and the wedding. Why do you not

give the negro a house? No, sir; but I can tell you that the German

has given each of the negroes a pretty little house. Has the lady a

knife? Yes, the lady has two knives. Why do you not give the ladies the

German’s keys to the church? The noblemen have the German’s keys.”

I could give you almost any number of that kind of specimens. The

ones I have chosen are not even of the very worst type, since there

is (some sort of) meaning in each sentence by itself. But what shall

we say when, in a German reader, to the question _Wo seid ihr?_ we

find the answer, _Wir sind nicht hier!_ The author of that book also

seems to have had a very vivid imagination when it came to the use of

pluperfects. “Your book had not been large. Had you been sensible?

Your horse had been old.” We ask ourselves in surprise, when did

this wonderful horse then cease to be old? But that kind of material

information is not given in the book; it stops at the sphinx-like

remark: _Dein Pferd war alt gewesen._ Could it really have been that

kind of schoolbooks that the Danish writer, Sören Kierkegaard, alluded

to when he wrote that language had been given to man, not in order to

conceal his thoughts, as Talleyrand asserted, but in order to conceal

the fact that he had no thoughts?

Now it must immediately be admitted that there may be a big difference

in the schoolbooks made, even according to this single-sentence system.

It never seems to have occurred to the authors of some of them that

there might be a limit to the amount of rubbish that can be offered

children under the pretext of teaching them grammar. Others again try

to give sentences which are both sensible and in accordance with a

child’s natural range of ideas. With respect to the latter principle,

there has been steady progress from the times when the sentences

either were moral rules of conduct and philosophical profundities, or

selections about Greek heroes, etc. But even in the best modern books

the exercises are often strangely disjointed (cf., for instance, this

exercise from one of the better books: “My brother had not many lessons

yesterday. Where had you been? The weather had been fine for a long

time. This boy had only been in our house three or four weeks. Has your

uncle had many tulips this year? How long had you had this frock?”),

and even if they are not so glaringly nonsensical as some others, yet

their very disconnectedness makes them bad enough.

It is easy enough, however, to find something to make fun of in all

such books. Let us then rather ask the reason why this system has

so long been dominant. Its defenders will, of course, refer to the

difficulties in all connected reading exercises; even the simplest

stories contain so many grammatical forms, and so many words, that the

beginner would be overwhelmed and confused by having them all thrown at

him at once. There must be gradual progress in difficulty, that is, the

material for instruction must be arranged in stages from very easy to

more and more difficult things, and this is supposed to be attainable

only by means of disconnected sentences. The principle is sound, but

it is unsound to put it into practice in such a manner that other

pedagogical principles which are just as sound are neglected. Should

pedagogy not also demand some sense in what one treats the children

to? But, as we have seen, it is not always so easy to find the sense.

And should it not also be of some significance to attract the interest

of the pupils? Nothing seems hard to a willing mind. That which is

associated with pleasant recollections has a firmer place in the memory

than dry stuff. But exercises where it alternates between the Frenchman

who has taken the Englishman’s hat and the Englishman who has taken

the Frenchman’s cane, or where either Marie sees Louise’s dog or Peter

sees Henry’s horse--they cannot be anything but boring, even if they

give the pupils ever so gradual practice in the use of the genitive.

Grown persons can, of course, put up with a little boredom, if they

think they can attain anything by it; but in their heart of hearts they

find such things killing, and so they are; yes, even killing for the

linguistic sense. Children can, of course, put up with a good deal,

too, when they have a teacher who can win their respect and affection;

they also put up with many things only for the sake of getting good

marks, or when they are stimulated by other equally unsound means. But

still, it is better to avoid boring them.

I suppose it is also of pedagogical importance for the teaching to be

correct. But here we have just one of those points where we see what

evil results may come of the system of disconnected sentences: it is so

extremely easy for them to become stilted; indeed, even incorrect. Some

examples may be found in the exercise already cited on p. 12, where

the sentence, “For whom do you make this bed?” is not good English,

at any rate, and where “a great deal of books” is a bad blunder for

“a great many books.” It is really easier to write a long connected

piece in a foreign language about something that one is interested

in than to construct merely eight disconnected sentences for the

illustration of a couple of grammatical rules, and without using other

words than those the pupils already have had. As impossible, even if

not positively incorrect, I consider such sentences as the following,

to which any one can find many parallels:--“Tie. Do not tie. Fetch.

Do not fetch.... Give. Do not give.”... Judged as thoughts they

are unfinished or half-finished ideas. Judged as language, they are

also very problematical. Such questions, as “Do I take?” require the

necessary information as to what and when. Such fragments of sentences

are never heard in real life.

Finally, sentences of this kind give the pupil quite an erroneous

notion of what language is on the whole, and of the relation between

different languages. He is too apt to get the impression that language

means a collection of words which are isolated and independent, and

that there must be a corresponding word in his native tongue for each

new foreign word that he learns. These words are then shoved about

without any real purpose according to certain given rules, somewhat

after the manner of a puzzle that was popular some years ago. The

mistake thus made is by Sweet called the arithmetical fallacy, because

languages are taken as collections of units where the order of the

addends and the factors is immaterial. Everything that is idiomatic

in the languages is quite set aside, at all events for the time

being, without consideration for the fact that the most indispensable

expressions often are those irrational groups which cannot be

constructed merely of words and grammatical rules, expressions like

“What’s the matter? I couldn’t help laughing. Serve you right. Ça va

sans dire. Ça y est. Voilà qui est drôle. Wie spät haben Sie? Wer

ist jetzt an der Reihe? Sie sind dran. Was ist denn los?” Where the

Englishman circumstantially says “ring the bell,” the Frenchman has

the short “sonnez,” etc., etc. When the pupil does not get a good deal

of that kind of thing as soon as possible, but for years continues

translating word-groups of the arithmetical kind until he is well

drilled in all the rules of the grammar, the result is that when he is

left to his own resources he takes each word of the English phrase that

happens to occur to him and translates it literally into the language

which he is trying to speak.[2] That is how we come to hear such

ridiculous things as “Ich konnte nicht helfen zu lachen.”

It is grammar that plays the chief rôle. A characteristic teacher’s

report is: “In the course of the school-year we have gone through

accidence as far as the third class of verbs.” The raison d’être of

each sentence lies merely in its value for the grammatical exercises,

so that by reading schoolbooks one often gets the impression that

Frenchmen must be strictly systematical beings, who one day speak

merely in futures, another day in passé définis, and who say the

most disconnected things only for the sake of being able to use all

the persons in the tense which for the time being happens to be the

subject for conversation, while they carefully postpone the use of the

subjunctive until next year.

Now, as misfortune will have it, although the whole system is planned

for drilling in grammar, this end is by no means attained by these too

systematical exercises. The pupils get the scent of what is to be used

in a certain exercise, and they use it mechanically there, but they do

not learn how to transfer it to other connexions, so if they suddenly

have to use a future in an exercise on the pluperfect the future form

is apt to bear a suspicious resemblance to the pluperfect form; when

the pupils are being drilled in the endings of the fourth declension,

and a word belonging to the third declension happens to have crept

in, it is very difficult to get it correctly declined without any

reminiscence of fourth-class endings, etc. I once read a pedagogical

article by a German schoolmaster, I think it was, who had discovered

that the reason why there were so many poor Latin exercises written was

that the pupils often had to apply several rules of syntax in one and

the same sentence; if the sentences were only so made that each one of

them contained but one grammatical phenomenon, it would soon be seen

how clever the pupils could be. Yes, how pleasant it would be if life

too could be so arranged as to have the difficulties come one at a time.

As previously remarked, there is too little attention paid to what

is idiomatical, and sentences constructed by non-natives are apt to

be of the kind that never would occur to a native, even if it may be

difficult enough to find positive “mistakes” in them. Many of the

French and German sentences in our schoolbooks must surely have the

same air of unreality for a native as not a few of those found in

English primers published abroad have for an Englishman.

Very closely connected with the idiomatical elements of a language are

its characteristics of style, and in this respect too our schoolbooks

are clumsy enough, for words which belong merely to elevated or

specially poetical style are bundled together with every-day words in

the very beginning of the first primer without any caution to the pupil

against using them. A foreigner who wants to learn English has first

of all use for words like “grief, sorrow,” but he had better postpone

acquaintance with “woe,” otherwise he is as likely as not to make

himself ridiculous by saying “it was a great woe to me.” “Unwilling” is

more necessary than “loth,” “wash” than “lave,” “lonely” or “forsaken”

than “forlorn,” etc. But on one of the very first pages of Listov’s

English Reader which is written for beginners, we find “I bid him go,”

which is altogether old-fashioned, stiff and bookish (for: I told him

to go, I asked him to go, or I ordered ...), and in the same book

“foe” is preferred to the ordinary, indispensable “enemy.” And in

several English primers the unnatural “commence” is used all the way

through instead of the natural “begin”; likewise the rare “purchase”

for the everyday “buy”--the only reason which I can think of is that

the ordinary, indispensable words follow irregular declensions and

inflexions.

The beginner has only use for the most everyday words; he ought to have

nothing to do with the vocabulary of poetry or even of more elevated

prose; like everything superfluous, it is detrimental, because it

burdens the memory and hinders perfect familiarity with that which

is most necessary. It will, moreover, be impossible for him to get

a proper conception of the linguistic effectiveness of poetry and

elevated prose, when he is so far advanced as to read the good writers,

because from his very first lesson in the language he has learned the

literary expressions side by side with the phrases of normal prose

and everyday conversation. But even among words not belonging to the

language of literature, many may without scruple be postponed in order

to make room for the most necessary words, which must be learned

in such a manner that one always may have them on hand without the

slightest hesitation. In Miss Goldschmidt’s picture-method (which is

now used a good deal outside of its native land, Denmark, and also in

large part deserves the popularity and praise which it has won), I

find, for instance, not less than 58 words for that many more or less

intimate articles of women’s clothing; and when I in the same book

under the heading “cuisine” find 46 words, among others, “bouilloire

tamis, passoire, pelle à main, puisoire, lavette, canelle évier,

coquetier, écumoire, entonnoir, pilon, râtelier, râpe, billot, manne,”

I cannot help feeling thankful that no one ever tormented me with

learning them; it seems to me I have got along pretty well in Paris

and elsewhere in French conversations, just as I have read many French

books, without knowing all these technical words. But, on the other

hand, I have a strong notion that I should not have got along so well

in conversation, and should not have been able to read French so well,

if my vocabulary had been limited to the one in Miss Goldschmidt’s

pictures.

The usual treatment of grammar, too, involves the learning of a number

of words that one has no use for. There are few words which even the

stupidest pupils in French and English have so pat as “louse,” and

the reason is that the plural of both “pou” and “louse” happens to

be something out of the ordinary. For as soon as a word is declined

differently from the usual paradigms, it has to be learned for the

sake of so-called completeness. Thus we had to learn in school the

rigmarole: “amussis, ravis, sitis, tussis, vis” and usually also

“febris, pelvis, puppis, restis, turris, securis,” where “vis vim”

(perhaps also “sitis sitim”) would have sufficed; the others (with

meanings like ruler, hoarseness, rope), I am sure, never occurred in

what we read of Latin literature, and as far as the last words are

concerned, why it would not have made any difference anyway if we had

let the accusative end in “--em,” if we had to use the word in a catch

exercise. And then there was the “long rigmarole” which it was our

pride to be able to run through without winking: “amnis, axis,” etc.,

and which doubtless has cost us all some hours of drudgery before

we could quite make it stick. Of the words in it, “scrobis, sentis,

torris, vectis,” at least, were entirely superfluous for us--aside from

the fact that if by some wonderful chance we should come across one of

the words in the course of our reading, we were sure enough to remember

that the word stood in the long rigmarole, but why it stood there or

what the word meant, that was apt to be quite forgotten. Well, it did

not make much difference in so far as the chances were a thousand to

one that for understanding the passage in question it was absolutely

of no consequence if we had remembered that the word was masculine. (It

may be of some comfort to add that some of them may also be feminine:

the old Romans were not always as big pedants as Latin teachers would

like to make them out to be.) Sweet writes: “In the German grammar I

began with the word _Hornung_, ‘February,’ was given as an exception

to the rule that nouns in _-ung_ are feminine, and for many years

no German word was more familiar to me, except perhaps _petschaft_,

‘seal,’ whose acquaintance I made at the same time and in the same

way. But to the present day I cannot remember having met with either

of them in any modern German book, still less of ever having heard

them in conversation, _Hornung_ being now entirely obsolete except in

some German dialects. At last, when I began Middle High Grammar, I met

with it for the first time in my life in a poem of Walther von der

Vogelweide, but by this time I had forgotten all about it.”[3]

In most English grammars for foreigners, the word _caiman_ plays such

an important part that the children never can forget it, and this is

just because it is not _caimen_ in the plural; likewise it is carefully

inculcated on the pupils that _die_ meaning “a stamp used for coining

money” has the plural _dies_, but it is scarcely probable that one in a

thousand will ever have any use for the word in this sense; cf. Storm’s

remark on _travail_ quoted below.

Much of that kind of thing has fortunately been removed from the

schoolbooks of later years, but there is no doubt still some weeding to

be done.