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The Study of Languages

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 14, 1910

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 87, No. 15.

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The Study of Languages

THE following quotation from a recent life of the late Sir Richard Burton may be of interest to our missionaries who are hard at work learning other languages. Mr. Burton, the English soldier, traveler, and writer, was one of the best linguists of recent times. He it was who many years ago visited Mecca, disguised as an Arab pilgrim. Of his method of language study while on the march, he said:—
I get a grammar and a vocabulary, mark out the forms and words which I know are absolutely necessary, and learn them by heart by carrying them in my pocket and looking over them at spare moments during the day. I never work more than a quarter of an hour at a time, for after that time the brain loses its freshness. After learning some three hundred words, easily done in a week, I stumble through some easy book-work (one of the Gospels is the most come-at-able), and underline every word I wish to recollect, in order to read over my pencilings at least once a day. Having finished my volume, I then carefully work up the grammar minutiae, and I then choose some other book whose subject most interests me. The neck of the language is now broken, and progress is rapid. If I come across a new sound like the Arabic Ghayn, I train my tongue to it by repeating it so many hundred times a day. When I read, I invariably read out loud, so that the ear may aid memory. I am delighted with the most difficult characters, Chinese and cuneiform, because I feel that they impress themselves more strongly upon the eye than the eternal Roman letters. This, by the by, made me resolutely stand aloof from the hundred schemes for transliterating Eastern languages, such as Arabic, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Syriac, into Latin letters. Whenever I converse with any one in a language that I am learning, I take the trouble to repeat his words inaudibly after him, and so to learn the trick of pronunciation and emphasis.