INFLECTED AND UNINFLECTED LANGUAGES.

Somewhere in some Catholic shrine, behind the principal altar, stood a large painting which daily received the homage-almost the worship-of the faithful there congregated. It represented a saint decked out in all the paraphernalia of monkish saintship, robe, cape, belt, rosary, and a glory encircled his head.

Behind another altar was a smaller painting of a more youthful personage, a saint in the bud, as it were, but similarly accoutred. This was intended for the devotions of younger worshipers,—a sort of primary guide or introduction to a more thorough course.

One day a foreign artist was called on to make some alterations in the larger painting, which had suffered somewhat from the lapse of time and from injudicious additions and repairs. He took it to his studio, and began to wash off some coarse daubs of paint, and, in so doing, laid bare a portion of what seemed the original design, executed by a master. He went on until he had completely obliterated all the trappings laid on by well-meaning but indiscreet hands, and there stood revealed to his wondering and delighted gaze an angelic being in all its unadorned beauty.

The artist lost no time in proclaiming his discovery, and inviting the dignitaries of the church to come and behold that master-piece of genius. But they only glanced at it with disdain as too simple and common-place, and bade him take it away in payment for his trouble. They then invited another artist of more orthodox taste to paint for them another saint, as like the former as possible.

Now, whether this be a true anecdote, or only a kind of allegory, matters little, provided the application be to the point.

There is one class of languages in which the principal grammatical relations are indicated by changes of termination. Latin is probably the language of that class with which most of my readers are more or less familiar.

In a Latin noun not only are the gender and number more or less clearly indicated by the termination, but also the principal functions which the noun has to perform, as subject of the sentence, object to a verb or preposition.

The adnoun (adjective) exhibits still more complexity, as it has to conform to the gender, number, and case of whatever noun it

is called upon, for the time being, to modify. The adnoun is, in fact, a kind of servant that has to wear the livery of its lord.

When we come to the verb, the complexity is greater still. Not only are there different classes of verbs, called conjugations, as there are different classes of nouns and adnouns, called declensions, each characterized by a different set of terminations, but each transitive verb, at least, is capable of existing in two conditions or voices, active and passive; each voice is duly divided into modes; each mode into tenses, and these into persons both singular and plural. These different functions of the verb are more or less strikingly distinguishable by different terminations, with which the learner, if he values his peace of mind, must make himself thoroughly familiar; so that, no matter into what diversity of arrangement the whim or oratorical purpose of the writer may have cast the words of his period, separating by a wider or narrower interval the noun from its adnoun, the verb from its subject or object, the reader must, by an instantaneous flash, as it were, of his intelligence, reconstruct the disjecta membra (scattered limbs) into a logical or analytical order.

Not to speak of the labor which we, modern barbarians, have to undergo, in order to secure even a very superficial acquaintance with so intricate a linguistic structure, what bitter tears must the young Roman patrician have shed over his waxen tablets or Virgilian scroll, under the ferule of his stern preceptor; and, in the Forum and other places of popular resort, what monstrous barbarisms and solecisms, issuing from Plebeian mouths, must have burdened and polluted the air of classical Rome!

The principal daughters of Latin - Italian, Spanish, and French-have a much less elaborate grammatical structure than their venerable mother; but the family likeness is too strong not to strike the most superficial observer.

Such languages are called inflected. The exposition of the changes which the words undergo, and of the laws of concord and government, which regulate those changes, constitute a necessarily complicated system of grammar.

Turn we now to a very different family, the Teutonic, and let us select as our type the member of it in which we are all most interested, our own glorious Anglo-Saxon, with its large admixture of Norman-Gallic blood.

What a change of physiognomy! The utmost simplicity takes the place of complexity, and the guileless student would, at once, in his ignorance, infer that the exposition of the grammatical

system of a language so beautiful in its simplicity, must partake of the same characteristic. For instance, the noun, with very few exceptions, is made plural simply by the addition of an s. Declensions, there are none. Cases or inflections to indicate differences of grammatical relation have disappeared, with the shadowy exception of 's, to denote what is called the possessive relation, which, in all cases, may be almost equally well represented by means of the preposition of.

English is one of the very few languages in which the learner is saved the drudgery of memorizing the gender; since in it the natural distinction is observed, the names of all lifeless things having no gender or being neuter.

The adnoun (adjective) has but one invariable form, whatever noun it may have to modify, and its relation to that noun is known only by its position with regard to it. So that, were it not for the personal pronoun of the third person singular and the relative or conjunctive pronoun who and which, the distinction of gender might be altogether ignored.

Beside the possessive 's in the noun, the only other case-inflection is the objective in personal and relative pronouns, whenever such pronoun depends on, or is the complement (object) of a verb or preposition.

The verb itself, so bristled with difficulties in Latin and even in French, exhibits still more strikingly the characteristic simplicity of our language. If we only overlook the second person singular, now unused except in the language of poetry and devotion and of our friends, the Quakers, the only inflection remaining in each tense is the s (or th), which marks the third person singular. The distinction of mode and tense is indicated by a few auxiliary verbs; so that the only points to be memorized for each verb are—the root or indicative present, as I write; the indicative past, I wrote; and the two participles, writing and written.

If this be a correct statement of the anatomy of the verb (and who can deny it?) I ask, in the name of common sense, what can be the use of that clumsy and nauseous iteration, called the conjugation of an English verb?

I might, could, would, or should write,

Thou might'st, could'st, would'st, or should'st write, etc., etc.

Am I wrong, then, when I say, that all the grammatical forms necessary to be memorized by the young learner, may be com

prised within three or four pages of "elementary grammar," or, better still, may be made familiar by a judicious selection of model sentences to be imitated by him in sentences of his own construction?

[To be Continued.]

T. E. S.

PHONIC ANALYSIS.

BY PROF. THOMAS METCALF.

[This is the concluding portion of an article in the Illinois Teacher :] No child in school is too young to note differences in vocal sounds; hence none is too young to begin to utter and name them. Call it study or drill or both,-call the phonic work one of the fine arts, if you will,—the youngest pupil is not too young to enter upon it. The primal question is, Is the teacher ready to guide him? The ear will not become more susceptible by delay, nor the vocal organs more pliable; while, on the other hand, the evils to be eradicated will become more deeply rooted. Begin, then, with the youngest-not necessarily by putting a book and a pencil into his hands. Rather, gain his attention to two familiar words having one sound in common, as, tall corn. By some device (if playfully winning, all the better), lead him to pick out this common sound and to utter it clearly. Let this sound be identified again and again, now in one word, now in another. Afterward you ask the child to listen for the sound while you pronounce two words one of which contains it. If he is sure that he hears the sound, you permit him to shout it.

Perhaps you have had the children listening for ō, and shouting it aloud every time you utter it, as you say, "Rose, do go to the door and ask old Bose to come in out of the cold and lie on the floor by the stove." You now turn to the blackboard, and, as you say ō, ō, you form neatly the shape which is to stand for the merry o'. To turn to good account the minutes that would else be given to idleness or mischief, the children may be asked to form ō's on their slates. Before they begin, however, you tell them that they may bring you to-morrow a word which has the sound ō in it.

At the next lesson, they are eager to speak the words, stove, door, floor, toe, nose, rose. Even if they have been quite atten

tive listeners while at home, they will be less likely to bring you the words, coat, colt, bone. Whether they do or not, it will be well for the children to learn how to speak these words correctly -with a full 'long o in each. After a while, the list will have grown quite large. It should embrace many common words, such as stone, toad, throat, home, whole, both, only, bolster, poultry.

After two or three vowels and as many consonants have been thus thought about and practiced upon, one word containing two or more of these sounds may be given, the children being led to tell what the sounds are, and to give each by itself. Let every sound be named; as, 'long o', 'long Italian a', 'vee', 'ess', and The character to be used in representing the sound should also be associated with the sound and its name.

so on.

I think of no study in which representation is more useful than in phonics. In two ways it is exceedingly valuable: first, the eye is engaged as an ally of the ear, in its effort to individualize the sounds; and, secondly, the pupil is preparing to interpret and use the key to his (perhaps yet unpurchased) dictionary. Still other good ends are subserved by this use of the pencil, among which may be mentioned, first, the ready testimony which the slate can thus be made to bear regarding its owner's ability or faithfulness in analyzing the words assigned for a given lesson; secondly, the additional practice it gives him in the analysis; and, thirdly, the fine opportunity it affords for inculcating habits of neatness and order in written work. Here, however, let the teacher be again admonished that the representation of the vocal elements to the eye is only auxiliary to the grand end in view— accuracy in pronunciation.

Attempt but little at first; that little do. Let nothing once done escape for lack of review. Be thorough. One sound perfectly mastered is an investment-a profitable one, too: your pupils will count it an acquisition at first, and, only a little later, you will find it a cumulative force.

Individual peculiarities in pronunciation are some times singularly tenacious: such errors, too, as are called local are almost equally stubborn. Kindness, accuracy, and patience on the part of the teacher, are requisite to their removal. He should be able to contrast the position of the vocal organs in the correct formation of a given sound with the position allowed them by the erring pupil.

Not individual but common errors should receive most atten