Excerpt from A Companion Reader to Arden's Progressive Tamil Grammar, Vol. 1: Consisting of Part I. Companion Exercises to the Grammar, Illustrating the Successive Rules; Part II. Easy Stories, Being Book I of "Pope's Tamil Prose Reading Book," With Notes, Translation, and References to the Grammar

This book is intended as a Companion Reader to the Author's Progressive Tamil Grammar. It consists Of two parts.

Part I gives a series of exercises in illustration Of the successive rules of the Grammar, and should be studied at the same time. They contain nothing but words and sentences in common use. They will enable the student, whilst mastering the Grammar, to gain at the same time a considerable knowledge Of Tamil words and phrases.

Part II consists of the short stories given in 'pope's Tamil Prose Reading Book, ' the copyright of which the Author has purchased from Dr. Pope.' Being taken from native sources, they are excellent Specimens of ordinary Tamil, and form a most useful introduction to the language. Notes are given to explain any difficulties, and constant references are made to the para graphs of the Grammar. A translation is added. It will be found a profitable exercise frequently to select passages from it, and retranslate them into Tamil, and then compare them with the original text.

It is hardly necessary to remark that the study of a living language must be pursued in a somewhat different manner to that of a dead one, especially where the student is not a mere child, and time is more or less limited. For this reason, the Author is of Opinion that in studying a living language, the use of a translation, especially at the commencement, is, in most cases, advisable. The time Spent in looking out words in a dictionary and working out the meaning Of a passage, though an excellent exercise in itself, is generally better employed in committing vocabularies and passages of the new language to memory and thus storing the mind with words and idioms which can be readily reproduced, and which should be put into practical use on every possible occasion.

Though a translation obviates, to a great extent, the necessity for a dictionary, yet if the student is to gain any considerable knowledge of the language, and thoroughly to master such a work, as, for instance, the first book of 'the Panchatantra, ' (one of the subjects set for the I. C. S. Examination, ) it will ere long be necessary for him to provide himself with a Tamil dictionary. For this reason, the Author has not thought it advisable to supply a special vocabulary to this Reading Book. It only imposes an additional expense on the student, and as a dictionary must eventually be procured, it may as well be purchased at once, and the full benefit Of it reaped.

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