FALLACIES EXPLODED

Evening Star, Issue 22631, 24 April 1937, Page 1

FALLACIES EXPLODED

A horse dealer who handles thousands of horses a year gave me one of those shocks which shake one’s confidence in the benefits of education, says a writer in the ‘ Daily Mail.’ We, were lookihg at some foals. Ho Eoihted to two of them, and told' mo w ;big they would grow. I asked him how he was able to predict. _ “ A_ horse’s legs never grow from tho time it is foaled,” he replied with a wise smile. “ It’s depth of body is usually exactly the same as the length of its leg from the fetlock. So if you' measure the leg of a foal the day it is foaled you will know .that double that length will be, its height a H maturity.” He imparted this.knowledge with tho hush-hush manner suitable to the utterance of deep wisdom. I had heard the theory many times before. It is absolutely false. . I told him so. He was offended and offered to give £5 to charity if he were wrongs I wrote to the Royal Veterinary College, and received a complete and courteous answer from Professor William Miller.. The legs of a foal grow from! four centres. Yet here was a man who had made a fortune out of horseflesh prepared to. wager.! Fallacies of this sort abound, and E . have noticed that the people who hold' to them most strongly have-come by them from somebody else and have never sought knowledge at the . source. The proprietor of a restaurant with’ a deserved reputation for. the tenderness of its steaks once told me the “ secret ” of them.

“ I always have them cut from the' left side of the .animal,” he told me with the right amount of hush-hush in, his' voice. “ Cattle rest, and sleep on their right sides,- .and consequently the meat, is tougher on that side.” Stuff and _ rubbish again. Gourmets have , often whispered that " secret ” t» me,. . ,

Cattle rest and sleep quite impartially on neither side, I told him so. He laughed at me, so rooted was his belief in his absurd theory. Dozens of people have told me that! their chief difficulty with the French language was the speed with which French people speak. . Popularly, French is believed to be a much faster lanugage than English. ' : This is a fallacy. Ask any reporter who has done verbatim work in the Chambre and in the Commons, in French and English law courts., A speed of HBO words a minute is ample for any French shorthand writer. Gallery reporters in the House of Commons frequently have to do bursts of 2SO words a minute and more. •

The truth is that in French every syllable is-equally stressed and all are pronounced, not swallowed; and consequently a poly-syllabic word in. French may Sound like two or three words-to anyone with only ,an elementary, knowledge of the language^ 1 ■ 'Another general fallacy describes English people, as the worst linguists on earth. It .is not true. Few English people speak any other language than, their own, but when an Englishman speaks another language well, he does so exceedingly well, . The French never; lose their French accent in any language. Americans are similarly handicapped, and are dreadful linguists. By far the worst of European linguists are the Spanish and Italians. .