governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that
English has no grammar. A good many English people would seem to have
come to the same conclusion; but they are wrong. As a matter of fact,
there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will
recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children, penetrating
maybe even into literary and journalistic circles. But at present we
appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity neglectable.
English pronunciation is the stumbling-block to our progress. English
spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to
pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on
the part of the foreigner; but for that he would learn it in a year.

For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not our way,
and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the
gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in Germany one conveniently
may say) can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning. In
England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at
the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps
unequalled. An English boy who has been through a good middle-class
school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty,
about female gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed
perhaps of neither, is liable to pall. Possibly, if he be a bright
exception, he may be able to tell the time, or make a few guarded
observations concerning the weather. No doubt he could repeat a goodly
number of irregular verbs by heart; only, as a matter of fact, few
foreigners care to listen to their own irregular verbs, recited by young
Englishmen. Likewise he might be able to remember a choice selection of
grotesquely involved French idioms, such as no modern Frenchman has ever
heard or understands when he does hear.