Life and work in India; an account of the conditions, methods, difficulties, results, future prospects and reflex influence of missionary labor in India, especially in the Punjab mission of the United Presbyterian Church of North America . language of themasses. As for the English of poor whites and uncultured Eurasians,that often shows sad degeneration and, with its local idioms andpeculiar accent, seems like a travesty of what it is intended to be. Urdu, or Hindustani, is the tongue which missionaries generallyfirst undertake to learn when they go to India ; but in our scheme ofstudies Punja
Life and work in India; an account of the conditions, methods, difficulties, results, future prospects and reflex influence of missionary labor in India, especially in the Punjab mission of the United Presbyterian Church of North America . language of themasses. As for the English of poor whites and uncultured Eurasians,that often shows sad degeneration and, with its local idioms andpeculiar accent, seems like a travesty of what it is intended to be. Urdu, or Hindustani, is the tongue which missionaries generallyfirst undertake to learn when they go to India ; but in our scheme ofstudies Punjabi is early introduced and, as the years roll on, will beused more and more. A preacher, or a zenana worker, can accom-plish very little in our villages through any other language. As ameans of understanding better the spoken tongues of the people,missionaries sometimes study also the Persian and the Arabic, or theHindi and the Sanskrit. A breadth of view and a wealth of wordsare thus acquired which often prove highly beneficial. The acquisition of a language, so as to think, speak and write in itwith fluency and power, is a great work and generally requires severalyears of patient labor. The eye, the ear, the hand, the tongue and. LEARNING FOREIGN TONGUES 87 the throat must all be trained. And never perhaps does a foreigner,commencing the study after he is twenty years of age, so learn it thathis origin cannot be detected by a native. Generally, indeed, he hasa marked alien accent. Hence the necessity of learning the tongue (or tongues) of thepeople is one of the great difficulties lying in the pathway of the mis-sionary who enters our foreign fields and one of the great obstacles tohis success as a Christian laborer. Although English idioms, tonesand defects (being those of the governing race) are as free from offenseas any, and althougli, unlike the vernacular Arabic in Egypt andSyria, Indian vernaculars are not by any means regarded as sacred,or perfect, by those who speak
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectmissionsindia, bookye
