Vocabulary —Parts of Speech— Requisites
It is very easy to learn how to speak and write correctly, as for all purposes of ordinary conversation and communication, only about 2,000 different words are required. The mastery of just twenty hundred words, the knowing where to place them, will make us not masters of the English language, but masters of correct speaking and writing. Small number, you will say, compared with what is in the dictionary! But nobody ever uses all the words in the dictionary or could use them did he live to be the age of Methuselah, and there is no necessity for using them.
There are upwards of 200,000 words in the recent editions of the large dictionaries, but the one-hundredth part of this number will suffice for all your wants. Of course you may think not, and you may not be content to call things by their common names; you may be ambitious to show superiority over others and display your learning or, rather, your pedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it. It has stood the test of time, and old friends are always good friends.
To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance. Great scholars and writers and polite speakers use simple words.
To go back to the number necessary for all purposes of conversation correspondence and writing, 2,000, we find that a great many people who pass in society as being polished, refined and educated use less, for they know less. The greatest scholar alive hasn't more than four thousand different words at his command, and he never has occasion to use half the number.
In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has ever known, there is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost 10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today.
Every person of intelligence should be able to use his mother tongue correctly. It only requires a little pains, a little care, a little study to enable one to do so, and the recompense is great.
Consider the contrast between the well-bred, polite man who knows how to choose and use his words correctly and the underbred, vulgar boor, whose language grates upon the ear and jars the sensitiveness of the finer feelings. The blunders of the latter, his infringement of all the canons of grammar, his absurdities and monstrosities of language, make his very presence a pain, and one is glad to escape from his company.
The proper grammatical formation of the English language, so that one may acquit himself as a correct conversationalist in the best society or be able to write and express his thoughts and ideas upon paper in the right manner, may be acquired in a few lessons.
It is the purpose of this book, as briefly and concisely as possible, to direct the reader along a straight course, pointing out the mistakes he must avoid and giving him such assistance as will enable him to reach the goal of a correct knowledge of the English language. It is not a Grammar in any sense, but a guide, a silent signal-post pointing the way in the right direction.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN A NUTSHELL
All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either thought or idea. There are two kinds of Nouns, Proper and Common. Common Nouns are names which belong in common to a race or class, as man, city. Proper Nouns distinguish individual members of a race or class as John, Philadelphia. In the former case man is a name which belongs in common to the whole race of mankind, and city is also a name which is common to all large centres of population, but John signifies a particular individual of the race, while Philadelphia denotes a particular one from among the cities of the world.
Nouns are varied by Person, Number, Gender, and Case. Person is that relation existing between the speaker, those addressed and the subject under consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence. The Persons are First, Second and Third and they represent respectively the speaker, the person addressed and the person or thing mentioned or under consideration.
Number is the distinction of one from more than one. There are two numbers, singular and plural; the singular denotes one, the plural two or more. The plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of s or es.
Gender has the same relation to nouns that sex has to individuals, but while there are only two sexes, there are four genders, viz., masculine, feminine, neuter and common. The masculine gender denotes all those of the male kind, the feminine gender all those of the female kind, the neuter gender denotes inanimate things or whatever is without life, and common gender is applied to animate beings, the sex of which for the time being is indeterminable, such as fish, mouse, bird, etc. Sometimes things which are without life as we conceive it and which, properly speaking, belong to the neuter gender, are, by a figure of speech called Personification, changed into either the masculine or feminine gender, as, for instance, we say of the sun, He is rising; of the moon, She is setting.
Case is the relation one noun bears to another or to a verb or to a preposition. There are three cases, the Nominative, the Possessive and the Objective. The nominative is the subject of which we are speaking or the agent which directs the action of the verb; the possessive case denotes possession, while the objective indicates the person or thing which is affected by the action of the verb.
An Article is a word placed before a noun to show whether the latter is used in a particular or general sense. There are but two articles, a or an and the.
An Adjective is a word which qualifies a noun, that is, which shows some distinguishing mark or characteristic belonging to the noun.
DEFINITIONS
A Pronoun is a word used for or instead of a noun to keep us from repeating the same noun too often. Pronouns, like nouns, have case, number, gender and person. There are three kinds of pronouns, personal, relative and adjective.
A verb is a word which signifies action or the doing of something. A verb is inflected by tense and mood and by number and person, though the latter two belong strictly to the subject of the verb.
An adverb is a word which modifies a verb, an adjective and sometimes another adverb.
A preposition serves to connect words and to show the relation between the objects which the words express.
A conjunction is a word which joins words, phrases, clauses and sentences together.
An interjection is a word which expresses surprise or some sudden emotion of the mind.
THREE ESSENTIALS
The three essentials of the English language are: Purity, Perspicuity and Precision.
By Purity is signified the use of good English. It precludes the use of all slang words, vulgar phrases, obsolete terms, foreign idioms, ambiguous expressions or any ungrammatical language whatsoever. Neither does it sanction the use of any newly coined word until such word is adopted by the best writers and speakers.
Perspicuity demands the clearest expression of thought conveyed in unequivocal language, so that there may be no misunderstanding whatever of the thought or idea the speaker or writer wishes to convey. All ambiguous words, words of double meaning and words that might possibly be construed in a sense different from that intended, are strictly forbidden. Perspicuity requires a style at once clear and comprehensive and entirely free from pomp and pedantry and affectation or any straining after effect.
Precision requires concise and exact expression, free from redundancy and tautology, a style terse and clear and simple enough to enable the hearer or reader to comprehend immediately the meaning of the speaker or writer. It forbids, on the one hand, all long and involved sentences, and, on the other, those that are too short and abrupt. Its object is to strike the golden mean in such a way as to rivet the attention of the hearer or reader on the words uttered or written.
词汇 —词性— 要求
要学好正确的发音和书写其实非常简单，因为对于日常交流和沟通而言，只需要大约 2000 个不同的单词即可。只要掌握这大约两千个单词，并知道如何正确使用它们，我们就能成为英语的行家，而非仅仅是英语的使用者而已。有人会说，与词典中的词汇数量相比，这实在是少得可怜！但没有人会用完词典中的所有词汇，即便一个人活到梅瑟萨勒的时代（传说中人类寿命最长的个体），他也无法全部记住并使用这些词汇，而且也没有必要去使用它们。
最新版的大词典里包含的词汇数量超过 20 万个，但其中百分之一的词汇就足以满足您的所有需求了。当然，您可能会不同意这种看法，您可能不愿意用常见的名称来称呼事物；您可能渴望超越他人，炫耀自己的学识，或者更确切地说，是炫耀自己的教养和无知。例如，您可能不想把铁锹称作铁锹。您可能会更倾向于称其为一种用于刮平土壤表面的粗糙工具。不过，还是最好坚持使用您祖父所用的那套老式的、简单的称呼更为妥当。它经受住了时间的考验，老朋友向来都是好朋友。
如果在表达中使用一个大词或一个外来词，而用一个简单的词和一个熟悉的词就能达到同样的效果，这就表明说话者缺乏知识。伟大的学者、作家和有礼貌的演讲者都会使用简单的词汇。
回到用于各种交流、通信和写作所必需的数字上来，即 2000 个单词，我们发现许多在社会上被视为举止优雅、素质高雅和受过良好教育的人使用的词汇却很少，因为他们所知甚少。当今世上最博学的学者也不超过 4000 个不同的词汇可供使用，而且他几乎从未用到其中一半的词汇量。
在莎士比亚的作品中，这位世界上有史以来最杰出的天才所使用的词汇多达 15000 个之多，然而其中近 10000 个词汇在如今已变得过时或毫无意义。
每个有智慧的人都应该能够正确地使用自己的母语。这只需要付出一点努力、给予一点关注、进行一些学习就能做到，而回报是巨大的。
请比较一下这两种人：一种是举止优雅、彬彬有礼，懂得如何恰当地选择和运用语言的人；另一种则是粗俗无礼、语言粗鄙不堪的人，其言语刺耳，会伤害人们细腻的情感。后者的错误百出，违反了所有的语法规则，其语言的荒谬和怪异令人厌恶，他的存在本身就是一种痛苦，人们也乐于避开与他相处。
英语语言的正确语法结构，使得一个人能够在最上层的社会中成为一位得体的交谈者，或者能够以恰当的方式在纸上表达自己的思想和观点，这些都可以通过少量的学习掌握。
本书的目的在于尽可能简洁明了地引导读者沿着正确的道路前行，指出他们必须避免的错误，并为他们提供必要的帮助，使他们能够达到对英语语言正确理解的目标。本书并非任何意义上的语法书，而是一份指南，是一面无声的路标，指引着正确的方向。
简而言之，英语语言
英语中的所有词汇都被分为九个主要类别。这些类别被称为词类。它们分别是：冠词、名词、形容词、代词、动词、副词、介词、连词和感叹词。其中，名词是最为重要的，因为其他所有词类或多或少都依赖于它。名词表示任何人的名字、地点或事物，实际上，任何我们能够有思想或概念的事物都可以用它来表示。名词有两类，即专有名词和普通名词。普通名词是属于某个种族或类别共有的名称，比如“人”“城市”。专有名词则用来区分某个种族或类别的个体成员，比如“约翰”“费城”。在前者的情况下，“人”是一个属于整个人类种族的共用名称，“城市”也是一个属于所有大型人口聚集地的共用名称，但“约翰”表示这个种族中的某个特定个体，而“费城”则表示世界众多城市中的某个特定城市。
名词的分类依据包括人称、数、性别和格。人称指的是说话者、被提及者以及所讨论的主体之间存在的关系，这种关系无论是在对话还是书信中都存在。人称分为第一人称、第二人称和第三人称，分别代表说话者、被提及者以及被提及或被讨论的人或事物。
数字指的是“一”与“多个”的区别。数字有单数和复数两种形式；单数表示“一”，复数表示“两个或更多”。复数通常通过在单数形式后加“s”或“es”来构成。
性别与名词之间的关系与性别与个体之间的关系是相同的，不过尽管存在两种性别之分，但名词却可以有多种不同的形式。