LEARNING Not to bo Thoroughly Acquired From Text-Books Alone.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 181, 4 December 1886, Page 8

LEARNING Not to bo Thoroughly Acquired From Text-Books Alone.

The Prime Necessity of Teaching a LanguagebyEau—Beginning atthe Wrong Bisr> of tuk Lxnk —Easy to Teach a Baby TO TaljK CoRRKCTIA't M. Michael Brkal delivered before the Sorbonne a noteworthy Jecture upon the method of learning foreign languages, in which he boldly condomned all scientific systems in vogue, and declared to hia Parisian auditors that if he himself knew bow to speak very few languages, although he could read a number, it was owing to the imperfection of his early linguistic training. Some of his remarks will have much interest for American readers. The main point he attempted to establish in his lecture, reproduced by The " Revue JPolitique et Literature," was the prime necessity of toaching a language by ear. Teaching a living language by the eye, according to any system, no matter how scholarly the method or how apt the pupil, wa3 likely to produce very indifferent results—for the simple reason that such a system itself is a subversion of the natural law. Speech being the primitive medium of the communication of ideas by sounds, and written language only the subsequently developed art of fixing those ideas by durable signs, it is obviously contioveiting natuie —commencing at the wrong end of the line -to attempt to teach language fir3t by the eye. The consequencos of this false method in educational establishments are truly lamentable. In the French lycees, according to M. Bieal, it is held that ten years' study are requisite for the learning of English !

Not Learned from Books alone. The French Government haslearned to appreciate the impossibility of thoroughly learning a foreign language out of books alone ; and those public-school instructors who areeducated by thestate are now cent to England to learn English, to Germany to learn German. They are placed in private families, and generally learn the language tolerably well in one year, very well in two years. To be able to read a language is on* thing, to speak it another The Germans seem to recogniao that speaking is rather a question of mental habit than learning : they do not say "he knows French." but 11 he can French,"—er kann franzosish. A language should bo learned by the adult just as it is acquired by the child. This too-much-ignoied truth is well manifested by the facility with which soldiers, servants, mechanics and others master an idiom during a comparatively brief sojourn in a foreign country And when a language has thus been acquired orally, it becomes easy enough for any educated person to learn its orthography, its grammatical lawa and nicetieß, and the beauties of its literature. But let ib be well understood that no book can teach pronunciation — that no cabinet study can ever teach one to think in another language than one's own ; —and this it is ab.-olutely necessaiy to do before a language can be thoroughly mastered.

The Time to Teach Languages. The time to teach languages, then, is not after the mind has become well developed, but while it is still shaping. It is as easy to teach a baby to speak in two or three lan guages as in one. Suppose, also, the cabe of a father who always talks English. The child, says M. Breal, is not all astonished because hia mother speaks a different language from the other people whom he knows. He simply thinks that is his mother's way of talking ;—this is the way his mother calls things—all the acts of his life have another name when his mother mentions them In his little head there develop a special group of representative ideas, of which the figure of his mother fo ms tho centie. The child does not translate ; he does not know what translating moans ;—he does not know that he is speaking two languages, nor evon what a language is. Pie only knows that his mother will not answer him if ho calls his doll a poupee instead of a " doll." Children have been known to evince the greatest amazement on hearing other persons speak the very language which they had thought to be the unique and special idiom of their mother,—so intimately woro the two idotis associated for them, Let the years pasf, — let the came education continue, and the two languages are at the child's disposition. They are developed together, but in a parallel way and without intermixing. — " New Orleans Times Democrat."