Very closely connected with the idiomatical elements of a language are its characteristics of style, and in this respect too our schoolbooks are clumsy enough, for words which belong merely to elevated or specially poetical style are bundled together with every-day words in the very beginning of the first primer without any caution to the pupil against using them. A foreigner who wants to learn English has first of all use for words like “grief, sorrow,” but he had better postpone acquaintance with “woe,” otherwise he is as likely as not to make himself ridiculous by saying “it was a great woe to me.” “Unwilling” is more necessary than “loth,” “wash” than “lave,” “lonely” or “forsaken” than “forlorn,” etc. But on one of the very first pages of Listov’s English Reader which is written for beginners, we find “I bid him go,” which is altogether old-fashioned, stiff and bookish (for: I told him to go, I asked him to go, or I ordered ...), and in the same book “foe” is preferred to the ordinary, indispensable “enemy.” And in several English primers the unnatural “commence” is used all the way through instead of the natural “begin”; likewise the rare “purchase” for the everyday “buy”--the only reason which I can think of is that the ordinary, indispensable words follow irregular declensions and inflexions.
The beginner has only use for the most everyday words; he ought to have nothing to do with the vocabulary of poetry or even of more elevated prose; like everything superfluous, it is detrimental, because it burdens the memory and hinders perfect familiarity with that which is most necessary. It will, moreover, be impossible for him to get a proper conception of the linguistic effectiveness of poetry and elevated prose, when he is so far advanced as to read the good writers, because from his very first lesson in the language he has learned the literary expressions side by side with the phrases of normal prose and everyday conversation. But even among words not belonging to the language of literature, many may without scruple be postponed in order to make room for the most necessary words, which must be learned in such a manner that one always may have them on hand without the slightest hesitation. In Miss Goldschmidt’s picture-method (which is now used a good deal outside of its native land, Denmark, and also in large part deserves the popularity and praise which it has won), I find, for instance, not less than 58 words for that many more or less intimate articles of women’s clothing; and when I in the same book under the heading “cuisine” find 46 words, among others, “bouilloire tamis, passoire, pelle à main, puisoire, lavette, canelle évier, coquetier, écumoire, entonnoir, pilon, râtelier, râpe, billot, manne,” I cannot help feeling thankful that no one ever tormented me with learning them; it seems to me I have got along pretty well in Paris and elsewhere in French conversations, just as I have read many French books, without knowing all these technical words. But, on the other hand, I have a strong notion that I should not have got along so well in conversation, and should not have been able to read French so well, if my vocabulary had been limited to the one in Miss Goldschmidt’s pictures.