It has often been pointed out that even to the most uneducated amongst our people Latin is never a dead language to Catholics, and that the familiar prayers at Mass and public devotions make them at home in the furthest countries of the earth as soon as they are within the church doors. So far as this, it is a universal language for us, and even if it went no further than the world-wide home feeling of the poor in our churches it would make us grateful for every word of Latin that has a familiar sound to them, and this alone might make us anxious to teach Catholic children at school, for the use of prayer and devotion, as much Latin as they can learn even if they never touch a classic.
Our attitude towards the study of modern languages has had its high and low tides within the last century. We have had our submissive and our obstinate moods; at present we are rather well and affably disposed. French used to be acknowledged without a rival as the universal language; it was a necessity, and in general the older generation learned it carefully and spoke it well. At that time Italian was learned from taste and German was exceptional. Queen Victoria's German marriage and all the close connexion that followed from it pressed the study of German to the front; the influence of Carlyle told in the same direction, and the study of Italian declined. Then in our enthusiasm for physical sciences for a time we read more German, but not German of the best quality, and in another line we were influenced by German literary criticism. Now, the balance of things has altered again. For scholarship and criticism German is in great request; in commercial education it is being outrun by Spanish; for the intercourse of ordinary life Germans are learning English much more eagerly than we are learning German. We have had a fit of—let us call it—shyness, but we are trying to do better. We recognize that these fits of shyness are not altogether to our credit, not wholly reasonable, and that we are not incapable of learning foreign languages well. We know the story of the little boy reprimanded by the magistrate for his folly in running away from home because he was obliged to learn French, and his haughty reply that if foreigners wished to speak to him they might learn his language. But our children have outgrown him, as to his declaration if not as to his want of diligence, and we are in general reforming our methods of teaching so much that it will soon be inexcusable not to speak one or two languages well, besides our own.
The question of pronunciation and accent has been haunted by curious prejudices. An English accent in a foreign tongue has been for some speakers a refuge for their shyness, and for others a stronghold of their patriotism. The first of these feared that they would not be truly themselves unless their personality could take shelter beneath an accent that was unmistakably from England, and the others felt that it was like hauling down the British flag to renounce the long-drawn English "A-o-o." And, curiously, at the other extreme, the slightest tinge of an English accent is rather liked in Paris, perhaps only among those touched with Anglomania. But now we ought to be able to acquire whatever accent we choose, even when living far away from every instructor, having the gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish "manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers of modern languages to let the old English faults prevail.
We have had our succession of methods too. The old method of learning French, with a bonne in the nursery first, and then a severely academic governess or tutor, produced French of unsurpassed quality-But it belonged to home education, it required a great deal of leisure, it did not adapt itself to school curricula in which each child, to use the expressive American phrase, "carries" so many subjects that the hours and minutes for each have to be jealously counted out. There have been a series of methods succeeding one another which can scarcely be called more than quack methods of learning languages, claiming to be the natural method, the maternal method, the only rational method, etc. Educational advertisements of these have been magnificent in their promise, but opinions are not entirely at one as to the results.
The conclusions which suggest themselves after seeing several of these methods at work are:—
1. That good teachers can make use of almost any method with excellent results but that they generally evolve one of their own.
2. That if the teachers and the children take a great deal of trouble the progress will be very remarkable, whatever method is employed, and that without this both the classical and the "natural" methods can accomplish very little.
3. That teachers with fixed ideas about children and about methods arrest development.
4. That the self-instruction courses which "work out at a penny a lesson" (the lesson lasts ten minutes and is especially recommended for use in trams), and the gramophone with the most elaborate records, still bear witness to the old doctrine that there is no royal road to the learning of languages, and that it is not cheap in the end. In proportion to the value we set upon perfect acquirement of them will be our willingness to spend much labour upon foundations. By this road we arrive again at the fundamentals of an educator's calling, love and labour.
The value to the mind of acquiring languages is so great that all our trouble is repaid. It is not utilitarian value: what is merely for usefulness can be easily acquired, it has very little beauty. It is not for the sake of that commonplace usefulness that we should care to spend trouble upon permanent foundations in any tongue. The mind is satisfied only by the genius of the language, its choicest forms, its characteristic movement, and, most of all, the possession of its literature from within, that is to say of the spirit as it speaks to its own, and in which the language is most completely itself.