Author: Charles Halsey
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2013-11
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9781493704224
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An excerpt from the beginning of the Author's Preface: The following work had its origin in a felt want. Many students of the classical languages, all along the early part of their course, use text-books provided with vocabularies. These vocabularies, from the necessity of their limits, are brief and imperfect, and they enter but little into the subject of etymology. Even when afterwards the lexicon is used, the etymology is often studied only for separate words as they occur in reading; and the scattered and fragmentary information given in the lexicons produces a corresponding state of knowledge in the mind even of a diligent student. No connected, systematic, or thorough knowledge of etymology is thus acquired. In the grammar something may be done for historical etymology; but the requirements of other topics in a school grammar must always prevent this subject from receiving there the full treatment which its importance demands. There remain the larger works expressly devoted to the subject, nearly all of them in German, excellent when one gets to them and is prepared for them, but by their style and fulness, as well as size and cost, not adapted to the wants of an American school-room or of the ordinary student. They will be studied only by the few, and the benefit to be derived from them will generally come only when the student is far advanced in his course, and after years of study of other works. But historical etymology, that gives the original and central meaning of related words, and, gathering the words themselves together, unites them by the natural bond of their common origin, should not be so long deferred, nor should it be pursued only as a higher range of study. Itself the historical foundation of all the structure of language, certainly it should form a prominent part in the foundation of the course of study. Presented in a simple form, it can be made to furnish a large vocabulary of the most practical words, and these not arranged for comparison in the separate language merely, Greek with Greek, Latin with Latin, but placed side by side, each language throwing light upon the other. A wider comparison enriches with knowledge and enlarges the mind; a deeper comprehension of the laws of progress in language reveals new and interesting truth, arousing curiosity and stimulating to further investigations....
