eth in all these

all its words ns; while with

les of meaning no way but by very truth, to most the entire

to its elemen

of surpassing o to those "in ad showing of

the phonetic historic forms aurus of tech the imperish hemselves the they are emuperscription an unapplied

orthography, le, or even ed, cannot be ain, and the n if he can, estionings of gments of his hod so effectno scheme , and for us, istory which present with which some e principle re sounded. ated to the

› pervading sity that it nces, as a er for the

or even to

and in a ost as uni

THE MASSACHUSETTS TEACHER.

49

versal as speaking, words exist as much perhaps for the first as the last. That in the written, is the permanence and continuity of language and learning, and that the connection is most intimate of a true orthography, with all this, is affirmed in our words, letters, literature, unlettered, even as in other languages by words entirely corresponding with these, as in the Latin litterae' and the Greek grammata.'

"Words have now an ancestry, and the ancestry of words, as of men, is often a very noble part of them, making them capable of great things, because those from whom they are descended have done great things before them; but phonetics would deface their scutcheon, and bring them all to the same ignoble level. Words are now a nation, grouped into tribes and families, some smaller, some larger. But phonetics would go far to reduce them to a promiscuous and barbarous horde. Words are now often translucent with their idea, as an alabaster vase is lighted up by a lamp placed within it? In how many cases would this inner light be quenched by phonetics? Words have now a body and a soul, and the soul looking through the body; but if phonetics prevail, then nothing but the body, not seldom nothing but the carcass of the word remains. Lord Bacon long ago characterized this so-called reformation that writing should be consonant to speaking,' as a branch of unprofitable subtlety,' and especially urges that thereby the derivations of words, especially from foreign languages, are utterly defaced and extinguished.

"Indeed the slightest tendency towards the phonetic mode of writing is to be objected to, in respect to all classical words. We have lost rather than gained by our approximation towards that system. When fancy was spelled phantsy, by the old scholars, no one could doubt of its connection, or rather its original identity, with phantasy, as no Greek scholar could miss its relation with pavracia. Spell analyze as I have sometimes seen it, and as phonetically it ought to be, analize, and the tap root is cut off. What numbers of readers will recognize in it then, the image of dissolving and resolving aught into its elements, and use it with a more or less conscious reference to this?

"It may be urged that few do so now, even among those who use the word. Then the more need they should not be fewer -for those few do in fact retain the word in its place, prevent it from gradually drifting from it, and preserve its vitality, not for themselves only, but for others who have not this knowledge. In phonetic spelling there is in fact the proposal, that the educated should voluntarily place themselves in the conditions and under the disadvantages of the ignorant and uneducated, instead of seeking to elevate these last to theirs."

All which is respectfully submitted.

4

CHARLES HAMMOND,
J. D. PHILBRICK.

REMARKS ON THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGI

Orthography.-The Anglo Saxon alphabet contains 2: It wants j, k, q, v, and z, and has distinct characters sent the sharp and smooth sounds of th. Owing to t acquaintance of writers with each other, the errors of tra and other causes, the orthography is very irregular, t word being often spelled in half a dozen or more differe We may notice two particulars in which our language Anglo-Saxon differ, and in which we think the latter ha vantage. 1st. In the Anglo-Saxon, we have hw instea combination wh, as in English; as, hwa, who; hwit, wh Our termination le, was in Anglo-Saxon el; as aeppe botel, bottle.

Etymology.-There are nine parts of speech. Th Pronoun, Article, Adjective, and Verb, declinable; the Preposition, Conjunction, and Interjection, indeclinabl Substantive parts of speech were declined with three four Cases and two Numbers.

The Article.-There are two articles; both definite se, seo thaet. Th has the sharp sound. We give the de of the Article se, seo, thaet.

to, for, with

Plural, Nom. tha, Gen. thara, Dat. tham, Acc. tha genders. The articles were also used for the relati which, and thaet.

The Noun.-The Nouns have three declensions, depe the termination of the Genitive singular, in es, an, or general rule, the Dative singular is like the Genitive, s when the latter ends in es; the Accusative singular i Nominative, except in the 2d declension, when it ends Genitive. The Genitive plural always ends in a, and th in um, or on; the Accusative is like the Nominative. the declension of a Noun of the 1st Declension, Mascu der. Se ende, the end.

tha end-as the end thara end-a of the tham end-um to th tha end-as the end

M

This will serve as a general specimen, there being, of course, many special rules. The termination of the possessive in English seems to be derived from the Genitive in es above given, although some grammarians have supposed it to be a contraction of his, denoting possession. We may mention, as somewhat curious, that mona, moon, is masculine, sunne, sun, feminine, and wif, woman, neuter.

The Adjective.-Adjectives are declined, to correspond with the nouns they describe. They have two forms of declension, the indefinite, and definite. The former, when the adjective stands alone with its noun; the latter, when it is preceded by an article, or pronoun. The declension of the article will give a sufficient idea of that of the adjective. Adjectives are compared by adding ra or re for the comparative, and ost, est, or esta, este, for the superlative. As, smael, smael-ra, smal-est.; small, smaller, smallest. Some are irregularly compared, corresponding with similar ones in English. As, god, betera, betst, good, better, best: lytel, laessa, laest, little, less, least.

[To be continued in the next No.]

Y. Y.

LETTER FROM THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.

HONOLULU, Sandwich Is., Sept. 3d, 1852.

You ask about the arrangements of my school. I hope you may see them for yourself, in the course of six or eight months. If you should not, though they are hardly worth recording, and though you will find little in them worthy of imitation, perhaps you may find some things to be avoided, so I will give you a hasty description. All the pupils study in school during school hours. Every scholar is expected to be in his seat at nine o'clock, A. M., without being called. No bell is rung for them at that hour-I speak now of only my department; the other scholars are too young to tell the time by the town clock, which is in plain sight of the school-house. Two or three or five minutes before nine you will see the scholars coming in from their sports and getting quiet in their seats. Every one not in his seat at nine is marked tardy, or absent, as the case may be, which appears in the report, and every one who is tardy loses his morning recess. There is to be silence. at nine, no more talking or leaving seats. Any who are found talking or whispering, or communicating in any way, after nine, are marked for misconduct, which appears in the weekly report. A quarter of an hour is spent in devotions,-reading the Bible, singing, and prayer. The school reads in turn, each pupil

reading one verse. Sometimes we read a whole cha sometimes not more than a dozen verses. I take o make explanations or general remarks, from time to tim scholar keeps his own place, and remembers when it is to commence. Nothing is said, but, as soon as school read a verse, and then he whose turn it is follows. O tions follow in order, its own time being allotted to ea tion. Some pupil keeps the watch and the bell, and by one or two strokes of the bell that the time for that has almost expired. In two or three minutes the be again, when the clsss are expected to have had the assigned and to have passed to their seats, and the comes immediately up. The classes sit at the time of r but each pupil stands when called upon to recite. So classes, such as those in mental arithmetic, stand d whole recitation. In conducting recitations, pupils s recite by topics, and sometimes by questions, as I se adopt neither extreme in this respect. I have a grea criticising each other, both in respect to the manner of and the matter recited, and it works admirably. I all or rather desire them, to criticise everything which place, in position, or in the manner of holding their anything which may properly be criticised. I have ne an instance in which the person criticised did not take part, although the criticisms are sometimes very sever are many advantages in this; two in particular are v mention. It secures the attention of every member of as nothing else will that I have tried. It also leads study their lessons so as to understand them. I do not difficulty in their making improper criticisms, and I times surprised at the minuteness and justness of th carry this practice into our reading exercise more than other, and the effect is wonderful. I rarely have any in keeping the attention of the class fixed on the lesson will often see all the hands up for some criticism as so has finished reading. In this exercise I generally pupil re-read till he has corrected the faults pointed vary the reading exercise from time to time. Some whole class read in concert-sometimes I give out a them to commit to memory, and then have them re separately and in concert-sometimes I give out a piec by some particular person and require them to learn can about him and his works. For instance, I tell learn Longfellow's Psalm of Life, and then we discuss low and his works. One object I have in this is to di attention to the literary world, and introduce them a it. Sometimes I give them a lesson and request them

ter, and

asion to

. Each

his turn

pens, I

recita

recita

licates

ercise

strikes

esson

class

tion,

nes

I

it with reference to describing the picture presented, and ask such as choose, to draw pictures of the scene represented. They have made drawings which illustrated some of the pieces very well, much better than most of the illustrations of the popular works of the day. I have one lad in particular who illustrates to the life, and he is only fourteen years old. Sometimes we read a piece with reference to its literary merits, examining and analyzing it critically. But I will speak no further of this point except to say that our reading exercise is generally an interesting one.

In arithmetic I generally call up the subject under consider ation and see that they understand it, sometimes asking ques tions, and sometimes calling upon pupils to explain the whole subject. After the subject is clearly understood, I send the whole class to the blackboards, sometimes giving them all the same problem, and at other times assigning different problems to different individuals, either original problems made up for the occasion, or from the book. We spend a considerable time in mental arithmetic with the first class, not having regular lessons in it, but calling upon the class to add, multiply, divide, &c., with rapidity, such numbers as I choose to give out or write on the board.

In grammar I can hardly tell what my plan is, We have no book as a text-book, though I shall put a class into "Greene's Analysis" as soon as our books come. We have given out lessons upon the different parts of speech, letting them learn their lessons wherever they choose, and then at the recitation we discussed the points and settled what we thought was correct. For instance, speaking of gender, the class would say there are four genders. Then we would correct them something after this manner. "What is gender?" "Gender is a distinction

in nouns with reference to sex." "Is it a distinction with ref

erence to anything else besides sex?" "No." "How many
sexes are there ?" "Two." "Then how many genders are
"Two." "What are they?"
"Masculine and

there ?"

feminine."

no,"

"But is there no neuter gender?" "No,""yes," 66 "Silence."-" Do nouns which are called neuter represent objects which have sex ?" "They do not." "Have they, then, any gender, since gender refers only to sex ?" "They have not." "But why have grammarians almost universally fallen into the error of giving a neuter gender to English nouns ?" No reply. "Probably because they have tried to extend the similarity between our language and others -as the Latin, for example-too far. In Latin, gender is not merely a distinction in regard to sex, but also in regard to the form of the word, a certain form of termination in the noun requiring a certain form of the adjective to agree with it, and