2002-04-12 11:17

In praise of R J McClean

Monarchy matrimonial motherlode

Enough of royalty for the time being - I've been comprehensively upstaged by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. They've got more detailed photo-stories on Norwegian royalty than you can shake a stick at. They're in English, too!

In praise of R J McClean

I like old books on foreign languages; they offer insights into the pasts of two cultures at once. The old Teach Yourself Swedish by R J McClean (no relation to the modern book of the same title) was first published in 1947 and was in print with only minor changes until at least 1973.

It's a cultural artifact from another world; one where schoolboys learned Latin as a matter of course but where tape-recorders didn't exist and convenient access to native speakers was inconvenient at best.

The Latin-primer influence can be gruelling; on page 57 the follwing table of the present tense of the verb "to be" is presented:

Swedish	English
jag �r	I am
du �r	you (sing.) are (informal)
ni �r	you (sing.) are (polite)
han �r	he is
hon �r	she is
den �r	it is
det �r	it is
vi �r(o)	we are
ni �r(o)	you (plur.) are
de �r(o)	they are

McClean then concedes that the plural form "�ro" is obsolete except in the most formal written language. The reader is left with the impression that he had to tabulate the conjugation - surely all languages have conjugations that one can tabulate? It's some ten pages later when we first encounter the plural form in use, in the proverb "Sm� smulor �ro ocks� br�d" ("Small crumbs are also bread").

But modern courses don't it have it all their own way; McClean's description of phonetics is superb. No description of phonetics can be a substitute for actually hearing the language, of course, but the converse is truer than you might expect. For those of us who don't have intimate access to the mouth parts of a sympathetic native speaker a description of the mechanics of the sounds is invaluable.

Besides, there's a reassuring thoroughness to the grammatical exercises; they plod through their paradigms with a refreshing unconcern for such degenerate modern gimmicks as narrative and intrinsic interest of content. Besides, when taken in small doses they're not without a certain guileless charm.

So it's goodnight from me, and a hearty "Nils, where are our forks?" from him. See you Monday.