LESSON 1.

A TALK ON LANGUAGE.

Let us talk to-day about a language that we never learn from a grammar or from a book of any kind-a language that we come by naturally, and use without thinking of it.

It is a universal language, and consequently needs no interpreter. People of all lands and of all degrees of culture use it; even the brute animals in some measure understand it.

This Natural language is the language of cries, laughter, and tones; the language of the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the whole face; the language of gestures and postures.

The child's cry tells of its wants; its sob, of grief; its scream, of pain; its laugh, of delight. The boy raises his eyebrows in surprise and his nose in disgust, leans forward in expectation, draws back in fear, makes a fist in anger, and calls or drives away his dog simply by the tone in which he speaks.

But feelings and desires are not the only things we wish to com municate. Early in life we begin to acquire knowledge and learn to think, and then we feel the need of a better language.

Suppose, for instance, you have formed an idea of a day; could you express this by a tone, a look, or a gesture?

If you wish to tell me the fact that yesterday was cloudy, or that the days are shorter in winter than in summer, you find it wholly impossible to do this by means of Natural language.

To communicate, then, your thoughts, or even the mental pictures we have called ideas, you need a language more nearly perfect. This language is made up of words.

These words you learn from your mothers, and so Word language is your mother-tongue. You learn them, also, from your friends and teachers, your playmates and companions, and you learn them by reading; for words, as you know, may be written as well as spoken. This Word language we may, from its superiority, call Language Proper.

Natural language, as was said, precedes this Word language, but gives way as Word language comes in and takes its place; yet Natural language may be used, and always should be used, to assist and strengthen Word language. In earnest conversation we enforce what we say in words, by the tone in which we utter them, by the varying expression of the face, and by the movements of the different parts of the body.

The look or the gesture may even dart ahead of the word, or it may contradict it, and thus convict the speaker of ignorance or deception.

The happy union of the two kinds of language is the charm of all good reading and speaking. The teacher of elocution is ever trying to recall the pupil to the tones, the facial expression, and the action, so natural to him in childhood and in animated conversation.

DEFINITION.-Language Proper consists of the spoken and the written words used to communicate ideas and thoughts. DEFINITION.-English Grammar is the science which teaches the forms, uses, and relations of the words of the English language.

LESSON 2.

A TALK ON THOUGHTS AND SENTENCES.

To express a thought we use more than a single word, and the words arranged to express a thought we call a sentence.

But there was a time when, through lack of words, we compressed

our thought into a single word. The child says to his father, up, meaning, Take me up into your lap; or, book, meaning, This thing in my hand is a book.

These first words always deal with the things that can be learned by the senses; they express the child's ideas of these things.

We have spoken of thoughts and sentences; let us see now whether we can find out what a thought is, and what a sentence is.

A sentence is a group of words expressing a thought; it is 2 body of which a thought is the soul. It is something that can be seen or heard, while a thought cannot be. Let us see whether, in studying a sentence, we may not learn what a thought is.

In any such sentence as this, Spiders spin, something is said, or asserted, about something. Here it is said, or asserted, of the animals, spiders, that they spin.

The sentence, then, consists of two parts,—the name of that of which something is said, and that which is said of it.

The first of these parts we call the Subject of the sentence; the second, the Predicate.

Now, if the sentence, composed of two parts, expresses the thought, there must be in the thought two parts to be expressed. And there are two; viz., something of which we think, and that which we think of it. In the thought expressed by Spiders spin, the animals, spiders, are the something of which we think, and their spinning is what we think of them. In the sentence expressing this thought, the word spiders names that of which we think, and the word spin tells what we think of spiders.

Not every group of words is necessarily a sentence, because it may not be the expression of a thought. Spiders spinning is not a sentence. There is nothing in this expression to show that we have formed a judgment, i. e., that we have really made up our minds that spiders do spin. The spinning is not asserted of the spiders.

reasons.

Soft feathers, The shining sun are not sentences, and for similar Feathers are soft, The sun shines are sentences. Here the asserting word is supplied, and something is said of something else. The shines sun is not a sentence; for, though it contains the asserting word shines, the arrangement is such that no assertion is made, and no thought is expressed.

LESSON 3.

A TALK ON SOUNDS AND LETTERS.

We have already told you that in expressing our ideas and thoughts we use two kinds of words, spoken words and written words.

We learned the spoken words first. Mankind spoke long before they wrote. Not until people wished to communicate with those at a distance, or had thought out something worth handing down to aftertimes, did they need to write.

But speaking was easy. The air, the lungs, and the organs of the throat and mouth were at hand. The first cry was a suggestion. Sounds and noises were heard on every side, provoking imitation, and the need of speech for the purposes of communication was imperative.

Spoken words are made up of sounds. There are over forty sounds in the English language. The different combinations of these give us all the words of our spoken tongue. That you may clearly understand these sounds, we will tell you something about the human voice.

In talking, the air driven out from your lungs beats against two flat muscles, stretched, like bands, across the top of the windpipe, and causes them to vibrate up and down. This vibration makes sound. Take a thread, put one end between your teeth, hold the other with thumb and finger, draw it tight and strike it, and you will understand how voice is made. The shorter the string, or the tighter

it is drawn, the faster will it vibrate, and the higher will be the pitch of the sound. The more violent the blow, the farther will the string vibrate, and the louder will be the sound. Just so with these vocal bands, or cords. The varying force with which the breath strikes them, and their different tensions and lengths at different times, explain the different degrees of loudness and the varying pitch of the voice.

If the voice thus produced comes out through the mouth held well open, a class of sounds is formed which we call vowel sounds.

But if the voice is held back or obstructed by the palate, tongue, teeth, or lips, one kind of the sounds called consonant sounds is made. If the breath is driven out without voice, and is held back by these same parts of the mouth, the other kind of consonant sounds is formed.

The written word is made up of characters, or letters, which represent to the eye these sounds that address the ear.

You are now prepared to understand us when we say that vowels are the letters that stand for the open sounds of the voice, and that consonants are the letters that stand for the sounds made by the obstructed voice and the obstructed breath.

A per

The alphabet of a language is a complete list of its letters. fect alphabet would have one letter for each sound, and only one. Our alphabet is imperfect in at least these three ways:—

1. Some of the letters are superfluous; c stands for the sound of s or of k, as in city and can; q has the sound of k, as in quit; and x that of ks, gz, or z, as in expel, exist, and Xenophon.

2. Combinations of letters sometimes represent single sounds; as, th in thine, th in thin, ng in sing, and sh in shut.

3. Some letters stand each for many sounds. Twenty-three letters represent over forty sounds. Every vowel does more than single duty; e stands for two sounds, as in mete and met; i for two, as in

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