Chapter V: Appendix: II

VOCABULARIES

In accordance with the principle set forth in the preface, these vocabularies, containing the names of the most familiar objects, are to be taken with him as a _vade mecum_ wherever the student goes. He must in no wise be content with the lazy habit of recognising a word only in a passive recipient style when he meets with it in a book, but he must stamp it directly on every object that comes in his way, and repeat it frequently without the intervention of the mother tongue, till he uses it as familiarly as a workman handles his tools. The language will thus become his familiar friend, not, as in the mere bookish method, an occasional visitor. Of course, such a catalogue of words is not intended to be exhaustive; but the learner, after training himself to the habit of thinking and speaking in the foreign idiom, may supply the deficiency by consulting any good English-Greek dictionary, such as Arnold and Browne’s, London 1856, and for modern Greek, where that may be necessary, Lascarides’s English-Greek dictionary, London 1882. From these sources also, and from his own reading, which must in no wise be neglected, he will be able to pick out appropriate verbs with which he may put the Hellenised objects around him, so to speak, into motion, and hold a conversation with a fellow-student trained to the colloquial method, or with himself, solus cum solo, if he can find no partner in his colloquial exercise.