The Art of Writing Speaking the English Language | Page 4

by which we may
study and master any subject. As applied to an art, this method has
proved highly successful in the case of music. It has not been applied to
language because there was a well fixed method of language study in
existence long before modern science was even dreamed of, and that

ancient method has held on with wonderful tenacity. The great fault
with it is that it was invented to apply to languages entirely different
from our own. Latin grammar and Greek grammar were mechanical
systems of endings by which the relationships of words were indicated.
Of course the relationship of words was at bottom logical, but the
mechanical form was the chief thing to be learned. Our language
depends wholly (or very nearly so) on arrangement of words, and the
key is the logical relationship. A man who knows all the forms of the
Latin or Greek language can write it with substantial accuracy; but the
man who would master the English language must go deeper, he must
master the logic of sentence structure or word relations. We must begin
our study at just the opposite end from the Latin or Greek; but our
teachers of language have balked at a complete reversal of method, the
power of custom and time has been too strong, and in the matter of
grammar we are still the slaves of the ancient world. As for spelling,
the irregularities of our language seem to have driven us to one sole
method, memorizing: and to memorize every word in a language is an
appalling task. Our rhetoric we have inherited from the middle ages,
from scholiasts, refiners, and theological logicians, a race of men who
got their living by inventing distinctions and splitting hairs. The fact is,
prose has had a very low place in the literature of the world until within
a century; all that was worth saying was said in poetry, which the
rhetoricians were forced to leave severely alone, or in oratory, from
which all their rules were derived; and since written prose language
became a universal possession through the printing press and the
newspaper we have been too busy to invent a new rhetoric.
Now, language is just as much a natural growth as trees or rocks or
human bodies, and it can have no more irregularities, even in the matter
of spelling, than these have. Science would laugh at the notion of
memorizing every individual form of rock. It seeks the fundamental
laws, it classifies and groups, and even if the number of classes or
groups is large, still they have a limit and can be mastered. Here we
have a solution of the spelling problem. In grammar we find seven
fundamental logical relationships, and when we have mastered these
and their chief modifications and combinations, we have the essence of
grammar as truly as if we knew the name for every possible

combination which our seven fundamental relationships might have.
Since rhetoric is the art of appealing to the emotions and intelligence of
our hearers, we need to know, not the names of all the different artifices
which may be employed, but the nature and laws of emotion and
intelligence as they may be reached through language; for if we know
what we are hitting at, a little practice will enable us to hit accurately;
whereas if we knew the name of every kind of blow, and yet were
ignorant of the thing we were hitting at, namely the intelligence and
emotion of our fellow man, we would be forever striking into the
air,---striking cleverly perhaps, but ineffectively.
Having got our bearings, we find before us a purely practical problem,
that of leading the student through the maze of a new science and
teaching him the skill of an old art, exemplified in a long line of
masters.
By way of preface we may say that the mastery of the English language
(or any language) is almost the task of a lifetime. A few easy lessons
will have no effect. We must form a habit of language study that will
grow upon us as we grow older, and little by little, but never by leaps,
shall we mount up to the full expression of all that is in us.
WORD-STUDY
INTRODUCTION
THE STUDY OF SPELLING.
The mastery of English spelling is a serious under-taking. In the first
place, we must actually memorize from one to three thousand words
which are spelled in more or less irregular ways. The best that can be
done with these words is to classify them as much as possible and
suggest methods of association which will aid the memory. But after all,
the drudgery of memorizing must be gone through with.
Again, those words called homonyms, which are pronounced alike but
spelled