It may be objected that habit-forming is aided by these explanations, that the knowledge of the why and the wherefore is a useful aid to the process of memorizing. There is something to be said for this statement; we are ready to admit that in some instances it is good to point out the nature of the laws that stand behind the sentences which exemplify them; we shall even show later in what cases and for what reasons we counsel the giving of explanations. But we are entirely at issue with those who maintain that explanations are an indispensable concomitant of memorizing, and we give a flat contradiction to those who maintain that “they cannot memorize what they don’t understand.” The most successful linguists have attained their proficiency by memorizing sentences they could not analyse. The temptation to replace habit-forming by analysis and synthesis is so strong that the teacher must continually react against it.
As we have already seen, instead of acquiring the habit of using the French sound é the English student persists in replacing it by some form of the English ay; conversely, the French student of English tends to replace the English ay by the French é. Most of these acts of substitution are illegitimate; French eu is a very poor substitute for English u in but, the English word air is a mere caricature of the French word air; of the six sounds contained in the word thoroughly [θʌrəli], only two, [ə] and [l], are in any way equivalent to French sounds. About half of the forty-six sounds (or rather ‘phones’) contained in the English phonetic system have no equivalent in French, and about the same proportion of the thirty-seven French sounds are absent from English. Yet most French users of English and most English users of French endeavour respectively to speak the foreign language with no other sounds than their native sounds. The French system of stress and intonation is entirely different from the English system, but most English students will use their native system when speaking French. The average English student replaces French habits of sentence-building by his previously acquired English habits, and also attributes to French words or word-compounds the meanings (or connotations) possessed by what he imagines to be their English equivalents.
In many cases he is undoubtedly justified; his efforts are not all misplaced; some foreign sounds are actually identical with some native sounds, some foreign constructions are actually parallel with some native constructions, and some foreign words and expressions do possess an exact counterpart in the native language. But the trouble is that the student fails to realize in what cases these identities exist; untrained in observation and discrimination, he considers as equivalents things which are not, and fails to identify as equivalents things which are. French a in patte is frequently not far removed from a perfectly English variety of u in cut, but the average Frenchman pronounces cut with the French vowel eu in veuve, and the average Englishman pronounces patte either with the vowel of pat or of part. The last syllable of pleasure is practically identical with the French word je, but the average Frenchman does not know this, and substitutes some sort of French ure or eure. The French words souhaite, semelle, laine, dialecte are very similar to the (real or imaginary) English words sweat, smell, len, d’yullect, but the average English student does not know this, and uses pronunciations such as soohate, semell, lane, dee-ah-lect instead.
In these and all parallel cases the student is utilizing certain of his previously acquired habits, but unfortunately he has selected the wrong ones instead of the right ones; it is for the skilful language-teacher to ascertain which of the student’s known habits can be most nearly adapted to what is required.
The same thing holds good in the case of construction, choice of words, etc. The English student constructs the sentence Je marcherai à la gare on the wrong model; if he must use an English habit at all, he should in this case proceed from I shall go on foot to the station and not from I shall walk to the station. Some may inquire at this point, “Why drag in English at all? Why not think in the foreign language without reference to the mother-tongue?” We would reply that this is hardly relevant to the matter under immediate consideration; we are simply showing that the average student, if left to himself, will tend not only to utilize his native linguistic habits, but to select very unsuitable ones. We would, however, add that cases do undoubtedly exist in which the student would be well advised to enlist some of his previously acquired habits; a judiciously selected native form will produce better results than a badly constructed foreign form.[3]
CHAPTER IX
ACCURACY
Let us be quite sure we understand what we mean by the term ‘accuracy.’ There is, of course, no such thing as intrinsic or unconditioned accuracy; the term is a relative and not an absolute one; this word, and its synonyms ‘correctness,’ ‘rightness,’ and the adjectives ‘accurate,’ ‘correct,’ ‘right,’ ‘good,’ ‘proper,’ etc., all imply conformity with a given standard or model. If the dialect we are learning is an unclassical one, differing appreciably from the literary form, then accuracy will consist, among other things, in not using the literary or traditionally correct forms. Therefore, if we are learning colloquial French we shall be guilty of inaccuracies every time we use cela instead of ça and every time we use the passé défini (or whatever the present name of this tense may be) or the imparfait du subjonctif. Whether the French Academician approves of the colloquial forms does not concern us from the moment that we have set out to learn the colloquial forms. Du bon pain, c’est pas ça, i’ m’a dit que’qu’chose may or may not be typical of educated speech, but if, for reasons of our own, we have decided to acquire the type of speech exemplified, then de bon pain, ce n’est pas cela, il m’a dit quelque chose will be inaccurate as not being in conformity with the standard we have chosen.
Who do you give it to? What have you got? It’s me, Under the circumstances, etc., etc., may or may not represent an atrocious English dialect; but we may decide to teach this dialect to our foreign students, if only because this is the dialect most often used by the average educated speaker. Once we have made this decision we shall consider as inaccuracies such forms as To whom did you give it? What have you? It is I, In the circumstances.