The Elements of French Composition (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Elements of French Composition In presenting this little manual to the teachers and students of French, the author is not venturing upon an untried innovation. The principles upon which it has been constructed have been submitted to the test of experience since the beginning of the year 1895, when the author, in collaboration with Professor Squair of Toronto, published a similar work for use in the High Schools and Colleges of Canada. Both that manual and the present one - which is an entirely new work - proceed from a recognition of the fact that the accurate translation of connected English prose into a living foreign language is an exceedingly delicate operation, and much more difficult than the immediate expression of one's own thoughts through a foreign medium. There is no doubt that, even at a comparatively early stage in the pupil's progress, this practice of translation, as distinguished from original composition, has its value, particularly in cultivating accuracy as regards grammatical form and discrimination in the use of terms. But the English to be translated must be of a decidedly simple order; otherwise the pupil is either discouraged by the amount of assistance he requires, or allowed, in his happy ignorance, to produce a rendering that can not fail to be barbarous and uncouth. And that this is especially the case with a language possessing the extreme precision of French, no one who has seriously attempted to master that speech will think of denying. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.