is a considerable advantage in a language that has so many terminations still extant, as the German. Has it ever occurred to you, to digress for a moment, what a blessing the Norman Conquest proved to our mother tongue? You may or you may not think an inflectional language a more beautiful instrument of speech than an analytical one like the English of the present day, but you must admit that one which is almost wholly analytical is much better than one that gives you all the trouble of learning terminations, and yet treats speech mainly analytically, as the German does. Now at the time of the Norman Conquest the English tongue went underground so to speak for some two hundred years and became literally the vernacular. It was not spoken in any courts of Law, nor in Church, nor by anyone of gentle birth. It was spoken chiefly by the serfs, and it was hardly written at all. As a result it dropped its terminations with very great rapidity. When it emerged again into literature with the revivified feeling of nationality at the beginning of the Hundred Years War it had lost the greater part of its terminations, and it has now nearly lost them all. If only we had adopted or could adopt a system of phonetic spelling, the English Language would be the easiest to learn in the whole world. It is destined probably-if any language is—to be the universal language of mankind, and though this is not the subject of my lecture, I cannot forbear to say that it is for you who belong to the younger generation to consider whether you will not make the sacrifice--a great one I admit-involved in the adoption of a phonetic system, for the sake of adding at least one whole year of intellectual work to the school time of all the children in all the Board Schools in England, or if you decide that that year is not wanted, for the sake of letting them start in their career of bread-winning one year earlier. But that is by the way. Meantime there is German with all its inflections waiting to be learned. Prepositions. Prepositions cannot but be as troublesome as genders. You have not only three cases that they may govern, but some of them govern two each, and some are placed after their case. I recommend a clearly printed list in your grammar and that this list be referred to, and the prepositions learnt gradually by exercises and above all by the proverbs and examples which you will have committed to memory. But this is not all. There is the syntax of the prepositions, and you may treat this from the German side, or you may group the prepositions by their English use, which has its advantages for composition. A complete grammar must certainly contain a syntax from the German side, that your pupil may know where to find his information; but the other arrangement is so useful, that you will probably use both plans. They are extremely well done in at least half a dozen grammars. You clearly do not want boys to learn all this by heart, but it is pleasant reading for your elder boys. They see at once how useful it is; it lends itself to questions; and the examples, if well chosen, will illustrate much else besides the use of the prepositions, and form a substantial part of your teaching. If you have a boy with a quick memory, and a turn for poetry, you may show him two stanzas of four lines each in which some ingenious German has grouped all the commoner prepositions PHILEMON AN SEINEN FREUND. Durch dich ist die Welt mir schön, ohne dich würde ich sie hassen; Für dich lebe ich ganz allein, um dich will ich gern erblassen; Gegen dich soll kein Verleumder ungestraft sich je vergeh'n, Wider dich kein Feind sich waffnen; ich will dir zur Seite steh'n. DAPHNIS AN DIE QUELLE. Nach dir schmachte ich, zu dir eile ich, du geliebte Quelle du ! Irregular Verbs. The strong verbs are now quite rightly not called irregular, but they must be placed in alphabetical order in the grammar, and, as in French, you will find that alphabetical order is better than the grouping by similar soundchanges. And you will not find them a serious difficulty. The verbs themselves come extremely often in ordinary speech and writing: they learn themselves if you give three minutes in your construing lesson to running through the principal parts of them. The really irregular verbs in German are few, and they also are common. The passive verb in German must take a little longer than in French because of its peculiar use of werden. Tell an intelligent boy that where we use 'to be' the German says 'to become', and that he must say worden not geworden; and he will work them out correctly. But you will probably find it best to have the tenses said rather often in the form of easy sentences so that they may become familiar. Similarly with the subjunctive, point out to a clever boy the difference between one present subjunctive and its present indicative, and for him the subject is practically at an end, except indeed for the verbs, which will be in his list, which modify. And the past subjunctive is easier still; you simply tell him that the strong verb modifies if it can, and that others do not. As in French, the short form of the Compound Conditional must be dwelt upon and taught by instances. Just because it is short you will find boys pick it up readily. There remains the formation of words in German both by suffix and prefix. This will form a chapter in your grammar, that will be set to be read, then questioned on. If well treated, it is extremely interesting, and every teacher will have a pet selection of instances, especially of such very idiomatic prefixes as erver- ent-. Syntax. Before running through the chief points in the syntax of the two languages, it is worth while to say that here you will only use the second kind of memory and not the first— that is to say, you will have the rules read and expounded and attended to, the examples translated and dissected, small exercises set on them, and all this enforced by each construing lesson. By this backward and forward process, this analysis and synthesis, you will gradually work up to the fullest amount of knowledge that the time and the pupils' brains will admit of. Above all things remember that the rule is only useful as a clear statement—as a clear grouping of facts; that the instance is more valuable than the rule, and that the power to apply the instance to make fresh examples is the test of real and fruitful knowledge. That process if any may be fitly called the 'training faculty'. Never be a slave to your rules, and you must take great care that your pupils do not become slaves. Do you know the story of Jean Paul Richter's quarrel with his teacher? "Why is that so?" said the teacher. No answer. "You have a splendid memory and I know you can tell me why don't you do so?" No answer. as Heine says, Es regnete Prügel. And When the storm was over and the head boy had been in disgrace for the whole day, he confessed why he had not answered. "He wanted me to say 'because the rule is so and so', and it is not because the rule says so, it is so because it is, and the rule only states the fact." Now remember that the boy was right, wholly right, and if for shortness' sake you may say "because the rule says so", do not forget that it is only for shortness' sake. Every now and then you must make your pupils talk rationally about the rules. I have been so much impressed by the necessity of this as a part of the intellectual training, that I have long had drawn up a set of grammar questions of an easy kind which lead up to the well-known rules in a slightly different way, and which I expect my boys to be able to talk about reasonably. I make them pass an examination in this kind of syntax once a term, and there is no doubt that this important part of the language, when you really are beginning to use it as a conscious instrument of speech, needs the teacher's personal and so far as possible individual attention more than any other. Boys, even clever boys, will not learn for themselves. True, you may set them the exercises on the syntax in a good exercise book based on a good grammar, but you must well talk about them first and you must go over this process again and again. All teachers know how at the beginning of each term they feel as if ། |