,
S. I. APRIL 2, '98.]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
261
LONDON, SATUEDAY, APE1L 2, 1898.
CONTENTS. -No. 14.
I* OTBS : The Study of Foreign Languages, 261 Scott on Grimms' 'Popular Stories,' 262 Chelsea, 264 Biblio- graphies Mead, 265 Anglicized Words" To the lamp- p 08 t "Burning Trees at Funerals, 26B Marifer "Who stole the donkey ? " Scott's ' Antiquary ' Scraps of Nursery Lore, 267.
QUERIES : " Dar bon " " Mela Britannicus " Bishop Morton" Esprit d'escalier," 267 Alfred Wigan=Leonora Pincott Robert FitzStephen "Spalt" Law Terms Henderson Dray cot Autographs Chambers's ' Index of Next of Kin' Portrait ot Serjeant Glynn Coins- Heralds' Visitation of Hampshire Duchies of Slesvig- Holstein, 268 Arms of De Kellygrew Hugh Massey Heraldic Castles Battle-axes Latin Ambiguities The Woodlands Novels with the same Name Hogarth Howard & Gibbs Christening New Vessels " Stron- gullion," 269.
REPLIES : The Possessive Case Samuel Wilderspin, 270 Source of Quotation Daniel Hooper W. Wentworth " Broaching the admiral" " Carnafor," 271 Ancestors- Sculptors Dante and Hindley ' Kockingham ' ' The Chaldee MS.' Plant-names Todmorden Rev. Richard Johnson, 272 Giraldi Cinthio " Grouse "Mr. Hansom Inscription Caen Wood " Hesmel," 273 "Trod" Registers of Guildhall Chapel Lancashire Customs " Plurality "Host eaten by Mice Wife v. Family, 274 Place-names Shakspeare's Grandfather, 275 "Dag daw" "By Jingo" "Culamite," 276 " Merry " Josiah Child, 277 Bumble in Literature "Scalinga" Words- worth and Bums, 278.
NOTESON BOOKS :BonwickV Australia's First Preacher' Harcourt's ' An Eton Bibliography 'Sweeting's ' Cathe- dral Church of Peterborough ' Quennell's 'Cathedral Church of Norwich' Bayne's 'James Thomson' Ser- geant's ' The Franks ' Tyack's ' Book about Bells ' Buchheim's ' Heinrich Heine's Lieder und Gedicbte.'
THE STUDY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES.
A PARAGRAPH which has been going round
the papers to the effect that the officers on
board the Volta, bound for the Niger, are
taking with them grammars of the Hausa
and Yoruba tongues to study en route, raises
very pertinently the question of how far
England is abreast of other great colonizing
powers in the possession of means for the
study of Asiatic and African languages. The
French plan of giving gratuitous public
instruction is good only for residents in Paris,
otherwise nobody can deny that a teacher
(preferably a native) is always superior to a
book. I myself learned more Yoruba in
the course of a short personal acquaintance
with the grandson of Bishop Crowther than
I had ever been able to acquire from his
grandfather's now classical Yoruba Grammar.
What I have in my eye is, however, the man
who cannot get a teacher, or cannot afford
one, or from any other circumstance is driven
- o rely upon his book alone. Here the advan-
tage comes in of the German system of writing all grammars with the home student n view. That the English publisher does lot do this, and is therefore by so much nferior, is patent to every philologist who
has had anything like a long or varied expe-
rience of grammars. There are two things
wanting in a good grammar knowledge of
the language taught and the capability for
teaching. Of the two the latter is the more
important, but, with a few brilliant exceptions,
our books display only the former. In Allen's
series of manuals, expensively got up as they
are, and under the wing, as it were, of our
Government, this is particularly conspicuous.
They are written by men of the deepest
learning so much is almost painfully visible
on every page but I have failed to discern
in a single one of them that magical prescience
of the requirements of the learner without
which no book which aspires to teach is com-
plete. With the best will in the world, the
English people seem incapable of realizing
this. There was a little sixpenny book printed
in "Yiddish" a few years ago, and circulated
by philanthropists with a view of dissemi-
nating a better knowledge of English among
the East-End Jews. I read it from the
first page to the last with deepening pity
that a work of charity so well intended should
have been carried out so badly. The trail of
the amateur was all over it. The writer, of
course, knew English well, but he had not the
ghost of an idea now to impart it to others.
The excellence of the Germans is not that
they know more about languages than we do
because, as a matter of fact, many German
publications are actually founded upon infor-
mation taken from our books but they know
how to teach, and therefore a German retailing the facts of a language second hand will
always improve on the original English work
from which they were acquired. Take the
case of the Sua'heli tongue, which is the lingua
franca of the east of Africa, as Hausa is of the
west. Steere is the accepted authority in
English, but his work is absurdly pedantic
when compared with the little two-shilling
book, mainly founded on him, which is widely
circulated by a Leipzig firm for the use of
those going out to German East Africa. For
a fraction of the price of Steere here is a
handbook of nearly two hundred pages, which
is superior to him in every respect, and with
which a man would learn more in a month
than the Englishman can teach him in a year.
Uniform with this work the same German
author (Seidel) has produced a far more prac-
tical Malay Grammar than any we have, and
this in spite of the fact that Germany has no
interests in Malacca to compare with ours.
In Persia Germany has also no interests,
while to us, as the guardians of India, the
Persian language (the French of the East) is
all-important, yet we possess no such adequate
