128 The Loom oj Language

company. Before bothering about the tense-forms given m other books
you may read, you should make sure that those which other books give
you* are necessary m ordinary speech or correspondence, The only
useful flexions which have not come up for discussion are those of
comparison. These have disappeared m die Romance languages (French,
Italian, and Spanish). In all the Teutonic languages they are like our
own, and will therefore offer little difficulty. Above all, stick to the
following rules

(i) Get a Ws-tfye iww oi the grammatical peculiarities of a language
before trying to mcmome anything

(n) Do not waste time trying to memorise the case-endings of the
Sj or any of the flexions of the adjective (other than com-
)) till you have made a start m reading They contribute
little if anything to the meaning oi a statement m most Luropean
languages which you are likely to want to learn It is doubtful
whether they ever had a clear-cut use m the spoken language, and
any use they once had in Ac written language is now iullilled by
other rules, winch we shall learn in the next chaplez,

FUCTGhR RKADING

GRAY Foundation of Language
JAGGLR Modern Ent*li\h

bigltthjot the Put we

PAlMLK An Introduction to Modem Linguistic
fli Language fo) Wat and

The Gift of Tangtw

Grammar and Thinking*

* They sometimes divulge this m a footnote, if not w the text