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containing the grammar.” In this supplement the rules are but of a few lines each, and so the finding of the proper grammatical forms will consume no more time than the hunting up of a word in a dictionary.
This matter, apparently so simple, is yet one of prime importance in a practical point of view. It is an evident matter that no one can make himself understood in a foreign language (which he has never studied) even with the help of the very best dictionary; to use a dictionary we must know more or less of the language.
To find a desired word we must know its root, yet in speech and writing almost every word is subject to a grammatical change, after which it has undergone so much variation from its original form that it recalls little or nothing of its pristine condition; often to roots are joined prefixes and suffixes, changing their appearance and signification, so that without a previous knowledge of the language none of those words as they stand can be found in the dictionary, and if found, will either an to give an exact rendering of the phrase, or else an erroneous one.
Take, for example, the phrase I have already given and put it into German: Ich weiss nicht wo ich den Stock gelassen habe; haben Sie ihn nicht gesehen?
Take the dictionary and hunt up the words; this will be the result of your investigations: “I–white–not–where–I–?–story, cane–coldblooded–property–to have–she, they, you–?–not–?” [Here the marks of interrogation stand for grammatical forms not usually to be found in dictionaries.] I lay great stress on the fact of the usual vast size of dictionaries of the most common languages, in which, after hunting for two or three words, one becomes tired; according to the method of disarticulation that I have introduced, my dictionary is very small and portable. Indeed, in most languages, after
