Excerpt from A Short Comparative Grammar of English and German: As Traced Back to Their Common Origin and Contrasted With the Classical Languages The present work, as my friendly critic points out in the review already referred to, is intended to introduce the com parative method to students who have already some knowledge of both the English and German languages. An English reader will find it accessible if he has mastered the general outlines of the grammatical structure of German. So much indeed is necessary - for the comparative method does not pre tend to teach the rudiments - but at the same time it is amply sufficient and I venture to emphasize this point at the outset, lest the student should fear to be unequal to the task and should decline to undertake it for lack of knowledge, which, far from being required beforehand, is presented to him as it becomes necessary in each chapter of this Grammar. He must, too, bear in mind that the comparative study of the Germanic languages forms an independent whole in itself and does not necessarily presuppose a knowledge either of Sanskrit, or Greek, or even Latin, and that all the instances quoted in the following pages from foreign languages are intended to aid those who are already acquainted with them, not to disconcert those to whom they are unfamiliar. It must further be re membered that, while a teacher may sometimes be compelled to enter into minute details in order to provide for the wants of more mature students, the beginner may very well pass these over, or at any rate need not remember them. He must use his own tact and judgment in making a choice between the facts and ideas suggested to him, in dwelling upon those which will aid his memory and in overlooking such as might encumber it, and, in a word, in limiting his researches to the objects he has in view, - according as he intends merely to compare German and English, or to obtain a general idea of the complete history of the Germanic languages, or even to glance at the primitive features of the indo-european mother-tongue. 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.