LITMIR.BIZ

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so that they have even preferred to give up almost all sense and connection in the subject-matter rather than make a break in the systematical progress in grammar. Such a form as pu was not allowed to occur before the pupils had learned the whole conjugation of pouvoir pouvant pu je peux, etc.; these forms must be learned connectedly, it was said. But the irony of it all is that this “connectedly” means that they are learned out of all connection—and therefore to little profit. When the pupil is required to “understand” the forms which occur in his reader, it will be found on closer examination that this means merely that, for instance, il a is understood by the one who knows that it is 3 pers. sing. pres. of avoir, or who at least knows the formula j’ai, tu as, etc.; that yeux is “understood” by the one who has learned that it is an irregular plural belonging to the singular œil, etc.; in short, to “understand” means here to know where the form in question belongs in the grammatical system; and the forms must be given in exactly the same order in which they are arranged in the grammar, the present before the past tense, etc. But what has the beginner got to do with all this system? The idea is not carried out consistently either, for when all the exercises on accidence have been gone through, it is generally the rule to pass over to connected (unrevised) texts, where such a form as puisse may occur, but the only thing that the pupils get to know about it is that it is subjunctive, for it may easily take a year or two before they learn why the subjunctive is used. Why is syntax less important than accidence? To be quite consistent, it ought no more to be permissible for a syntactical phenomenon than for a form in accidence to occur before the corresponding grammatical section has been learned. But since it seems to be inevitable that we must be inconsistent on some point or other, it is no use beating about the bush; in other words, we must not be afraid of using irregular forms in the very first selection.

      Grammatical irregularities, viewed from a pedagogical point of view, fall into two entirely different classes, which are too apt to be treated as if they were co-ordinate. In the first place, all languages contain a number of irregularities which play a most insignificant part both in life and in literature, because they occur so seldom. When the users of the language produce them at long intervals, it is generally with the utmost caution, because they merely have a hazy conception of what the proper form of the expressions ought to be. But they are taken up in the grammars, and as soon as one grammarian has caught sight of one of them, it is carefully copied in all succeeding grammars for the sake of completeness. Foreign grammarians are even more inclined than the natives to pay attention to everything of that kind because they have no instinctive feeling of what is rare and what is common. In some English grammars which are used on the Continent, there may still be found I catched, I digged, I shined, I writ, as the preterite forms of I catch, I dig, I shine, I write; in one, I find given as two different verbs I weet, wit or wot, past tense wot, and I wis, past tense I wist. What a big mistake it is to include such musty and impracticable forms, we can best judge from our own language—but in those French and German grammars which we ourselves write there are things which are just as bad as the above offences in English. When I went to school, I learned the following rule about the plural of travail, “Travail has travails in the plural when it means a report from a minister to the king or from a subordinate official to the minister; likewise when it means a machine to hold unruly horses, while they are being shoed.” This rule is thus criticized by Storm: “Now I must say I have read many hundreds of French books in my day, but so far as I remember, I have never come across travails in modern literature! In the sense of report, it occurs in Mme. de Sévigné. An educated Frenchman, when asked if the word was used with that meaning, answered me that he thought it was no longer used. So one would expect that the word had long ago ceased to have any show in modern grammars, but it seems to be continually creeping in again.”

      However, it is easy enough to take a position with respect to this first kind of irregularities; they ought to be removed from the instruction as radically as possible; they ought to be weeded out root and all to a far greater extent than has yet been done in most text-books, even if it must be admitted that something has been done in this direction of late years. It is quite another matter when we come to the other kind of irregularities, which are found in the very commonest words, in words like German ist war, kann konnte, geht ging, ich mein, mann männer. Those irregularities the pupil must learn, and learn thoroughly—there is no doubt about that. The only question is, at what stage? before or after the regular inflections? Most teachers will answer, after. That a systematic grammar first gives what is normal, that which can be expressed in general, comprehensive rules, and then afterwards mentions the exceptions, the isolated phenomena, that of course is all right. But it does not necessarily follow that the pupils ought to familiarize themselves with the forms in the same order. What is won thereby? Perhaps some advantage for the theoretical knowledge about the language. But the loss incurred by this method of procedure is undoubtedly far greater. For it will be found to be absolutely impossible to arrange texts which are the least bit suitable without using irregularly inflected words, so indispensable are they. The dread of being unsystematic by taking up exceptions immediately is one of the causes of the prevalence of the disheartening series of detached sentences without any sensible meaning. It is only by freeing ourselves from this principle which requires rules first and exceptions later that we shall be able to get good texts for the teaching of beginners. Furthermore, by beginning with the regular forms, we perhaps run the risk that the pupils will analogically apply the rule even to the exceptional words, whereas the irregular forms generally deviate so much that they preclude the possibility of such mistakes. Those who have learned that the plural in English is formed by adding s, may perhaps construct such improper forms as mans, childs, but the plural forms men and children are not apt to tempt the pupils to inflect other words after the same pattern. But the moral of this is not that we are to turn the customary method of procedure upside down, and systematically learn the exceptions first. Here, too, nature must be our guide; just as persons talking within a child’s hearing never stop to consider if the words they are using are regular or not, so we ought not to be too painfully careful in selecting or arranging the first reading-exercises in a foreign language; we ought to choose what is otherwise good and take the forms as they come, wasting no words at this stage to explain their place in the system. In other words, the deviating forms must be learned as if they were merely matters of vocabulary. If in one of the first pieces there stands Il y avait une fois un roi et une reine, it is enough for the time being if the pupil is told that il y avait = there was; the forms for “there is” and “there has been” he can learn another time when he has use for them, and then the teacher can refer back to this early piece and remind the pupil about the related form which he learned before. For beginners in French, peux—“can” is just as difficult (or easy) as peu—“little,” and faire—“make, do,” as fer—“iron,” and it makes no difference if the one is regular and the other irregular. Indeed, an irregular plural like geese is even easier for Danes than the regular bees (on account of the z-sound); likewise, it is easier for an Englishman to learn the German irregular forms of comparison besser best than regular forms like süsser süssest. Later when the time has come for a more systematic study of the grammar, it will be rather an advantage that a number of the “exceptions” already have occurred at so early a stage that they are not at all felt to be strange and unusual.[4]

      On the other hand, the beginner ought to be spared such grammatical difficulties as are due to complicated sentence-structure. All sentences ought from the very beginning to be constructed as evenly, simply and clearly as possible; co-ordinate independent clauses ought to be, if not the only, at least the predominating type of sentence. Not even, for instance, in the second year of Latin instruction, although there are just as many hours devoted to Latin in a year as generally fall to the share of modern languages in the course of two or three years, is it justifiable to let the pupils read the long passages of indirect discourse in Cæsar; they ought not to occur until the pupils are so far advanced that they could easily understand the same matter when directly presented. This is also a point to be kept in mind for any one who undertakes to revise the selections for reading according to the suggestions given above.

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