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that teachers should not allow them to be placed after their nouns. It should be the duty of the teacher in schools to enforce English syntax, so as to accustom the youth of the country to think in the European manner, and to the adoption of our order for the words.
The method have recommended for use is the reverse of “pigeon English.” The characteristic of that jargon is that it uses English words in a Chinese order. The Japanese in learning Chinese were guilty of the same mistake, they read Chinese in a Japanese order. They would have done better if they had adopted the Chinese grammar with the Chinese words. Had they early insisted in native schools on reading Chinese in its order instead of altering it as they now do into a Japanese order, they would long since have introduced into their native tongue principles from which their language would have derived the greatest benefit. By this time the whole nation would have been accustomed to freedom in the place of the verb and of the case marks. There would then be a better prospect of progress in the formation of a good native literature.
The introduction of English words into the Japanese language should also by all means be encouraged. It is not an opprobrium to a vocabulary to be rich in words, derived from various sources. Poverty in a vocabulary indicates poverty in ideas. Our English words are instinct with the life of modern science, art, and learning. The appetite of the Japanese youth for foreign words and knowledge is a happy circumstance and should be gratified. Thus their language will be enriched and may achieve some thing more in the world than it has yet been able to do under the painful restrictions to which it has been subjected. Let it not be said that the vocabulary will become heterogeneous in character. Is not our own English eminently so? All languages are liable to this charge if carefully examined. If we take the Japanese vocabulary as it is and compare it with the Chinese and Mongol, it is seen to be of the most composite character. I do not here refer to Chinese words intro-
