LETTER VIII.
TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.
Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in ancient ones—Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions—Prevalent illusion about the facility of modern languages—Easy to speak them badly—Some propositions based upon experience—Expectations and disappointments.
Had your main purpose in the education of yourself (I do not say self-education, for you wisely accept all help from others) been the attainment of classical scholarship, I might have observed that as the received standard in that kind of learning is not a very elevated one, you might reasonably hope to reach it with a certain calculable quantity of effort. The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may “level up” by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from protracted application. But the student of modern languages has to contend against advantages of situation, as the gardeners of an inhospitable climate contend against the natural sunshine of the south. How easy it is to have a fruitful date-tree in Arabia, how difficult in England! How easy for the Florentine to speak Italian, how difficult for us! The modern linguist can never fence himself behind that stately unquestionableness which shields the classical scholar. His knowledge may at any time be put to the severest of all tests, to a test incomparably more severe than the strictest university examination. The first native that he meets is his examiner, the first foreign city is his Oxford. And this is probably one reason why accomplishment in modern languages has been rather a matter of utility than of dignity, for it is difficult to keep up great pretensions in the face of a multitude of critics. What would the most learned-looking gown avail, if a malicious foreigner were laughing at us?
But there is a deep satisfaction in the severity of the test. An honest and courageous student likes to be clearly aware of the exact value of his acquisitions. He takes his French to Paris and has it tested there as we take our plate to the silversmith, and after that he knows, or may know, quite accurately what it is worth. He has not the dignity of scholarship, he is not held to be a learned man, but he has acquired something which may be of daily use to him in society, or in commerce, or in literature; and there are thousands of educated natives who can accurately estimate his attainment and help him to a higher perfection. All this is deeply satisfying to a lover of intellectual realities. The modern linguist is always on firm ground, and in broad daylight. He may impede his own progress by the illusions of solitary self-conceit, but the atmosphere outside is not favorable to such illusions. It is well for him that the temptations to charlatanism are so few, that the risks of exposure are so frequent.
Still there are illusions, and the commonest of them is that a modern language may be very easily mastered. There is a popular idea that French is easy, that Italian is easy, that German is more difficult, yet by no means insuperably difficult. It is believed that when an Englishman has spent all the best years of his youth in attempting to learn Latin and Greek, he may acquire one or two modern languages with little effort during a brief residence on the Continent. It is certainly true that we may learn any number of foreign languages so as to speak them badly, but it surely cannot be easy to speak them well. It may be inferred that this is not easy because the accomplishment is so rare. The inducements are common, the accomplishment is rare. Thousands of English people have very strong reasons for learning French, thousands of French people could improve their position by learning English; but rare indeed are the men and women who know both languages thoroughly.
The following propositions, based on much observation of a kind wholly unprejudiced and tested by a not inconsiderable experience will be found, I believe, unassailable.
1. Whenever a foreign language is perfectly acquired there are peculiar family conditions. The person has either married a person of the other nation, or is of mixed blood.
2. When a foreign language has been acquired (there are instances of this) in quite absolute perfection, there is almost always some loss in the native tongue. Either the native tongue is not spoken correctly, or it is not spoken with perfect ease.
3. A man sometimes speaks two languages correctly, his father’s and his mother’s, or his own and his wife’s, but never three.