4. Children can speak several languages exactly like natives, but in succession, never simultaneously. They forget the first in acquiring the second, and so on.
5. A language cannot be learned by an adult without five years’ residence in the country where it is spoken, and without habits of close observation a residence of twenty years is insufficient.
This is not encouraging, but it is the truth. Happily, a knowledge which falls far short of mastery may be of much practical use in the common affairs of life, and may even afford some initiation into foreign literatures. I do not argue that because perfection is denied of us by the circumstances of our lives or the necessities of our organization we are therefore to abandon the study to every language but the mother tongue. It may be of use to us to know several languages imperfectly, if only we confess the hopelessness of absolute attainment. That which is truly, and deeply, and seriously an injury to our intellectual life, is the foolishness of the too common vanity which first deludes itself with childish expectations and then tortures itself with late regret for failure which might have been easily foreseen.
LETTER IX.
TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.
Cases known to the Author—Opinion of an English linguist—Family conditions—An Englishman who lived forty years in France—Influence of children—An Italian in France—Displacement of one language by another. English lady married to a Frenchman—An Italian in Garibaldi’s army—Corruption of languages by the uneducated when they learn more than one—Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman—A Scotch servant-woman—The author’s eldest boy—Substitution of one language for another—In mature life we lose facility—The resisting power of adults—Seen in international marriages—Case of a retired English officer—Two Germans in France—Germans in London—The innocence of the ear—Imperfect attainment of little intellectual use—Too many languages attempted in education—Polyglot waiters—Indirect benefits.
My five propositions about learning modern languages appear from your answer to have rather surprised you, and you ask for some instances in illustration. I am aware that my last letter was dogmatic, so let me begin by begging your pardon for its dogmatism. The present communication may steer clear of that rock of offence, for it shall confine itself to an account of cases that I have known.
One of the most accomplished of English linguists remarked to me that after much observation of the labors of others, and a fair estimate of his own, he had come to the rather discouraging conclusion that it was not possible to learn a foreign language. He did not take account of the one exceptional class of cases where the family conditions make the use of two languages habitual. The most favorable family conditions are not in themselves sufficient to ensure the acquisition of a language, but wherever an instance of perfect acquisition is to be found, these family conditions are always found along with it. My friend W., an English artist living in Paris, speaks French with quite absolute accuracy as to grammar and choice of expression, and with accuracy of pronunciation so nearly absolute that the best French ears can detect nothing wrong but the pronunciation of the letter “r.” He has lived in France for the space of forty years, but it may be doubted whether in forty years he could have mastered the language as he has done if he had not married a native. French has been his home language for 30 years and more, and the perfect ease and naturalness of his diction are due to the powerful home influences, especially to the influence of children. A child is born that speaks the foreign tongue from the first inarticulate beginnings It makes its own child language, and the father as he hears it is born over again in the foreign land by tender paternal sympathy. Gradually the sweet child-talk gives place to the perfect tongue and the father follows it by insensible gradations, himself the most docile of pupils, led onward rather than instructed by the winning and playful little master, incomparably the best of masters. The process here is nature’s own inimitable process. Every new child that is born to a man so situated carries him through a repetition of that marvellous course of teaching. The language grows in his brain from the first rudiments—the real natural rudiments, not the hard rudiments of the grammarian—just as plants grow naturally from their seeds. It has not been built by human processes of piecing together, but has developed itself like a living creature. This way of learning a language possesses over the dictionary process exactly the kind of superiority which a living man, developed naturally from the foetus, possesses over the elastic anatomical man-model of the ingenious doctor Auzoux. The doctor’s models are remarkably perfect in construction, they have all the organs, but they have not life.
When, however, this natural process of growth is allowed to go forward without watchful care, it is likely to displace the mother tongue. It is sometimes affirmed that the impressions of childhood are never effaced, that the mother tongue is never forgotten. It may be that it is never wholly forgotten, except in the case of young children, but it may become so imperfect as to be practically of little use. I knew an Italian who came to France as a young man and learned his profession there. He was afterwards naturalized, married a French lady, had several children, pursued a very successful career in Paris, and became ultimately French Ambassador at the court of Victor Emmanuel. His French was so perfect that it was quite impossible for any one to detect the usual Italian accents. I used to count him as a remarkable and almost solitary instance of a man speaking two languages in their perfection, but I learned since then that his French had displaced his Italian, and so completely that he was quite unable to speak Italian correctly, and made use of French invariably when in Italy. The risk of this displacement is always greatest in cases where the native tongue is not kept up by means of literature. Byron and Shelley, or our contemporary Charles Lever, would run little risk of losing English by continental residence, but people not accustomed to reading and writing often forget the mother tongue in a few years, even when the foreign one which has displaced it is still in a state of imperfection. Madame L. is an English lady who married a Frenchman; neither her husband nor her children speak English, and as her relatives live in one of our most distant colonies, she has been separated from them for many years. Isolated thus from English society, living in a part of France rarely visited by her countrymen, never reading English, and writing it little and at long intervals, she speaks it now with much difficulty and diffidence. Her French is not grammatical, though she has lived for many years with people who speak grammatically; but then her French is fluent and alive, truly her own living language now, whilst English is, if not wholly forgotten, dead almost as our Latin is dead. She and I always speak French together when we meet, because it is easier for her than English, and a more natural expression. I have known some other cases of displacement of the native tongue, and have lately had the opportunity of watching a case of such displacement during its progress. A sergeant in the Italian army deserted to join Garibaldi in the campaign of 1870. On the conclusion of peace it was impossible for him to return to Italy, so he settled in France and married there. I found some work for him, and for some months saw him frequently. Up to the date of his marriage he spoke no language but Italian, which he could read and write correctly, but after his marriage the process of displacement of the native tongue began immediately by the corruption of it. He did not keep his Italian safely by itself, putting the French in a place of its own as he gradually acquired it, but he mixed the two inextricably together. Imagine the case of a man who, having a bottle half full of wine, gets some beer given him and pours it immediately into the wine-bottle. The beer will never be pure beer, but it will effectually spoil the wine. This process is not so much one of displacement as of corruption, it takes place readily in uncultivated minds, with feeble separating powers. Another example of this was a Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman, who mixed his Italian twice, first with French and afterwards with English, producing a compound intelligible to nobody but himself, if indeed he himself understood it. At the time I knew him, the man had no means of communication with his species. When his master told him to do anything, he made a guess at what was likely to be for the moment his master’s most probable want, and sometimes hit the mark, but more generally missed it. The man’s name was Alberino, and I remember on one occasion profiting by a mistaken guess of his. After a visit to Alberino’s master, my servant brought forth a magnificent basket of trout, which surprised me, as nothing had been said about them. However, we ate them, and only discovered afterwards that the present was due to an illusion of Alberino’s. His master had never told him to give me the trout, but he had interpreted some other order in that sense. When you asked him for mustard, he would first touch the salt, and then the pepper, etc., looking at you inquiringly till you nodded assent. Any attempt at conversation with Alberino was sure to lead to a perfect comedy of misunderstandings. He never had the remotest idea of what his interlocutor was talking about; but he pretended to catch your meaning, and answered at haphazard. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself, “but in a tongue no man could understand.”