English Idioms and Grammar [antikvár]

PrefaceThe English language, having but little systematized grammar and but few word-inflections, makes up for this paucity by an abundance of idiomatic phrases with which the various shades of meaning may be expressed. We have, therefore, devoted the greater part of this book to the teaching of idioms (for mnemonic reasons in the shape of anecdotes) and have thought it sufficient to give merely a limited space to such parts of theoretic grammar as may be of practical value to a foreigner learning English.Though the entire Berlitz Method, when correctly taught, consists of conversation lessons, many advanced pupils desire additional practice in conversation. They imagine that, if they discard all books, and talk at random on any subject they happen to think of, they acquire greater facility in conversing. The fact, however, is that in such unsystematic drill the pupil naturally practises only what he already knows, repeating the same mistakes over and over until they become ineradicable. His vocabulary and phraseology remain almost stationary and, as he tries to say in the foreign language what he would say in his mother-tongue, he carries the idioms of the latter into the former and thus corrupts it.1*