OF GERMAN COMPOSITION FIRST COURSE PARALLEL GERMAN-ENGLISH EXTRACTS AND PARALLEL ENGLISH-GERMAN SYNTAX BY G. EUGÈNE-FASNACHT LATE ASSISTANT-MASTER, WESTMINSTER SCHOOL London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1890 All rights reserved PREFACE FRAMED on the same plan as the compiler's French Composition, this class-book aims at linking the pupil's first attempts at German Composition with the course of his German Readings -making the writing of connected passages go hand in hand with Translation, and alongside with, instead of after, the systematic study of Syntax. Experience has shown that familiarity with Grammatical Rules alone-indispensable though these are--is not a sufficient equipment for the mastery of the far greater difficulties of Diction: Syntax is reducible to Rules, whilst Diction, defying every attempt at classification, will yield its secrets to none but the sympathetic student to whom the study of a foreign language is a matter of feeling as well as of understanding. Nor is it in the crammed columns of a Dictionary, teeming with snares and pitfalls, that the Beginner may fairly be expected to find the suitable brick and mortar for building up a workmanlike structure. * It is only by immersing himself headlong, as it were, in the extraneous atmosphere that he can nerve himself for the struggle; and for this process of immersion to yield its full benefits, it is necessary that the readings in the foreign language should bear upon topics akin to the subject-matter of the composition. It is with a view to meet this want that the First Part has been elaborated. The stimulating effects of such a reciprocal process of assimilation and reproduction are obvious: the pupil, aware that on the * A good Dictionary is, of course, in any case indispensable, though for purposes of composition the shortcomings of even the best of them are glaring; to mention one instance only, how is the student to work out the idiomatic rendering of "the squire's broad acres from the literal equivalents for squire, broad, and acre? " |
