Ybarra A. - A Practical Method for Learning Spanish / Практический метод для освоения испанского языка [1885, DjVu, SPA / ENG]

AT the request of many of my pupils, and of several teachers and professors who know of the method I have pursued
in giving instruction to private pupils, and also at Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute, I have decided to give to the public what I deem the most practical method of learning and teaching Spanish, French, and Italian.

Already many who have learned Spanish by this method have gone from this city to employments on the railroads and in the mines of Mexico, or to carry out business enterprises in South and Central America and the West Indies ; others to travel in Spain and other couutiies where Spanish is spoken. Foreign buyers and agents of well-known firms have transacted business in France, in French, after only one year's instruction in the language according to this method, and those who have selected the Italian language have obtained the same results.

The usual course is to teach a language by beginning with the rules and exceptions, and compelling the pupil to learn long
lists of irregular verbs, or of nouns that form the plural in this or that manner, and the reason for the cousti^uction in idiomatic
phrases ; and, although this be well learned, the pupil is not generally able to ask for a glass of water in the language he is studing, so as to be understood, or to answer the simplest questions with the necessary promptness and facility. On going, in a foreign country, to buy a railroad or diligence ticket, or to engage passage in a steamer, it is of little use to know by heart all the rules of the s3-ntax of the language which one wishes to use. In a hotel it avails but little, in order to ask for what one wants,

to know the derivation of the words, — the greater number of business men do not know whether the words they use in
their business transactions are derived from Greek, Latin, Saxon, Arabic, or Sanskrit. Most of those who express them-
selves perfectly well in their own language cannot give an explanation of all its niceties. And if this happens to people who
have been accustomed to speak, understand, and write their language all their lives, how can it be expected that, upon
beginning to study one entirely unknown to them, they should take in all that is most difficult. By the ordinary method of
teaching foreign languages the teacher and pupil both work very hard, but with little result. The one teaches and the other
learns things that certainly ought to be known, but not until the pupil speaks and understands the language well. A child
learns first to speak and understand what is said to him, and then goes to school to learn the reason and the rules of all that
he already knows how to say. The same happens to people who, although not children, do not know grammar theoretically,
but who seldom commit an error in speaking, on account of the practice they have in speaking and hearing the language well
spoken. On this principle my system is based. Often one finds students in the most advanced classes of universities and
colleges who read Cervantes and Lope de Vega in their classes in Spanish ; Racine, if they study French ; Dante and Tasso,
if Italian ; Shakespeare, if English ; and Goethe and Schiller, if German ; and nevertheless, they say, they do not speak these
languages because they are afraid of making errors, and they do not understand the language when spoken because the French speak very fast, the Germans in such guttural tones, the English in a very strange way, and the Spaniards and Italians so as to be understood only among themselves.

Of course, I do not wish by this to say that a language can be thoroughly learned without studying its grammar or reading
the best works of its authors. I have only attempted to teach my pupils to speak and understand readily the language they
studied before entering upon the study of the grammar and the reading of more difficult works, which they can afterwards do
with much more pleasure.

The present volume will enable the student who follows it to learn afterwards, without the aid of a teacher, the Spanish
grammar written in that language. (Among the best that have been published in Spain and Spanish- American countiies,
I recommend the following : —
' Gramdtica Castellan a de la Academia Espauola."
" Gramdtica Castellana para el uso de los Americanos," por Don Andres Bello.
" Gramdtica Castellana," por Don Vicente Salvd.)

Also, to read the best Spanish authors alone, using a dictionary to find only such words as are not in general use.
By the help of this book the student may pursue his labors unaided ; but it is a much better and a more rapid way to
study it with a teacher, who can use it in private lessons or in classes. To travellers it will be a great help. In studying
with a teacher there is this great advantage, that the pupil gets accustomed to hearing Spanish spoken well, and thus naturally acquires a correct pronunciation. I think that at least ten lessons ought to be taken with a teacher, in order to acquire a correct pronunciation, since this can never be well acquired alone.

The second volume of this series will embrace French, and the third, Italian.

Boston, Jane 1, 1884.