Trained speakers use with great effect the principle underlying such groups of words.  When Burke argued before the House of Commons for a plan to secure harmony with the American colonies he described the scheme he considered necessary by showing what it should not be.  “No partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object.”  Describing the peace he hoped would be secured he used this principle of opposites.  “Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations, not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government.”

We are told by an investigator that one of the reasons for a Frenchman’s keen insight into the capabilities of his language is the early training received in schools covering differences among words.  This continual weighing of the meaning or the suitability of an expression is bound to result in a delicate appreciation of its value as a means of effective communication.  In all mental action the sense of contrast is an especially lively one.  In a later chapter this principle, as applied to explanation and argument, will be discussed.  Just here, the point is that the constant study of contrasts will sharpen the language sense and rapidly enlarge the vocabulary.

EXERCISES

1.  Put down a group of five words having similar meanings.  Explain the differences among them.

2.  Choose any word.  Give its exact opposite.

3.  From any short paragraph copy all the nouns.  In a parallel column put opposites or contrasts.

4.  Do the same for the adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.

5.  Write down all the common nouns which correspond to a man, a girl, a leader, a house, a costume, a crime.

Composition of the English Language.  Turning now from the means of improving the speaker’s language equipment let us pass to some remarks upon his use of words.  The English language is the largest, the most varied in the universe.  Almost entirely free from difficulties of inflection and conjugation, with a simplified grammar, and a great freedom of construction, it suffers from only two signal drawbacks—­its spelling and its pronunciation.  While it has preserved to a great degree its original Anglo-Saxon grammar, it has enriched its vocabulary by borrowings from everywhere.  Its words have no distinctive forms, so every foreign word can usually be naturalized by a mere change of sound.  No matter what their origin, all belong to one family now; gnu is as much English as knew, japan as pogrom, fete as papoose, batik as radii, ohm as marconigram,