Book Description

Excerpt from An Urdu Manual by the Phonetic Inductive Method The publication of another "help" to Urdu is justified by the success of this method during the eight years that it has been under trial. By the aid of type-writer and mimeograph, the lessons have so proved their utility that the Mission ordered all new missionaries to use this method, and that the Manual should be published. The author regrets the necessity of publishing, while so far from India, and without having brought the book up to his ideal of what it ought to be. That the principles of the Manual are final is beyond question. That the application is so, is too much to hope for. The principles are: 1. A scientific application of phonetics, through diagrams and practical examples, to the solution of the difficulties of pronunciation. 2. The sentence, the unit of speech. 3. The ear, the medium of instruction and the governor of the tongue. 4. A limited vocabulary, a prime necessity. 5. Thoroughness, a repetition of idioms until they are absolutely fixed in the memory. 6. Grammar teaching, not by paradigms, but by concrete examples. 7. Oral composition, within a small vocabulary, to lead up to the mastery of all ordinary expression. 8. Ready, fluent, accurate speech and hearing to be attained, within narrow limits, as the basis of the ability to use Urdu well. Thanks are due to Prof. A. Graham Bell for permission to use his cuts, illustrative of the position of the organs of speech and to Miss M. R. Martin for valuable assistance in reading the MS. 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.