n-ch01.htm
A. P. R. Howatt. Oxford University Press. 1984, 2001.
Scanned from the printed book and edited by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for staff and students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR
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Contents of this page
Contents of this page
Part One: Practical language teaching to 1800
01. Early Years
UKT notes
• catechistic technique
(the monastic method)
• John of Trevisa
• vernacular languages of Myanmar
The teaching of modern vernacular languages [{see UKT note on vernacular languages of Myanmar) began in England towards the end of the Middle Ages when French died out as the second language of the kingdom and gradually surrendered to English. The processes of linguistic change in England from a bilingual feudal community ruled by the Anglo-French Plantagenet dynasty to a largely monolingual nation under the Tudors were slow but irreversible. In 1385 John of Trevisa complained that English children knew no more French than 'their left heel' and it was necessary for them to construe their Latin lessons in English. He blamed the Black Death of 1356 for this dislocation of traditional linguistic patterns, but saw certain advantages in the change: 'they learneth their grammar in less time than children were i-woned (used) to do'. However, there were also disadvantages in this new linguistic independence when Englishmen 'shall pass the sea and travel in strange lands and in many other places'. (Ref.01.01) From now on French was a foreign language and would have to be learnt. So, mutatis mutandis, was English.
Trevisa was writing in the reign of Richard II and was a contemporary of Chaucer who traditionally represents the waxing mood of English self-confidence at the end of the fourteenth century. Before the end of Richard's reign the earliest extant manual for the teaching of French in England had been written by an unknown East Anglian author in Bury St. Edmunds on Whitsun Eve, May 29th 1396. (Ref.01.02) It is a collection of useful everyday dialogues for travellers to France and was the first of a number of similar manuals, or manières de langage as they are usually called, which appeared during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and were the forerunners of the situational language teaching textbooks of the Tudor period which we shall discuss later.
The break with the past, represented by the usurpation of the throne from Richard II by the House of Lancaster in 1399, expressed itself in overt linguistic terms. The order deposing Richard was read in English and Henry IV himself elected to use English both in claiming the crown and later in his acceptance speech. (Ref.01.03). The tradition was carried on by his son Henry V who adopted English as the language of royal correspondence in place of French. If there is a fulcrum in the swing away from French and Latin as the normal means of written communication towards their replacement by English, it is probably the reign of [{p004end}] Henry V which witnessed a rising consciousness of nationhood engendered by Henry's legendary victory at Agincourt in 1415. Although Shakespeare's portrait of Henry is obviously an Elizabethan glamorization of 'the star of England', the touches of linguistic self-consciousness : he gives his hero in his dealings with his French bride ('Fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true English, I love thee, Kate') (Ref.01.04) are not without some historical reality. The first extant council record written in English dates from his reign (1417) (Ref.01.05), and his decision to follow his father's example and publish his will in English also made a public impact. (Ref.01.06) The London brewers, for instance, adopted Henry's attitude as a precedent in making their decision to record their proceedings in English in 1422:
Where as our mother tongue, to wit the English tongue, has in modern days begun to be honourably enlarged and adorned, because our most excellent lord, King Henry V, has in his letters missive and divers affairs touching his own person, more willingly chosen to declare the secrets of his will, and for the better understanding of his people, has with a diligent mind procured the common idiom (setting aside others) to be commended by the exercise of writing: and there are many of our craft of Brewers who have the knowledge of writing and reading in the said English idiom, but in others, to wit, the Latin and French, used before these times, they do not in any wise understand. (Ref.01.07)
By the end of the fifteenth century even the statutes of the realm were written in English, and the affairs of state handled through the royal secretariat were conducted in the vernacular. During the same period dialect of the East-Central Midlands established itself as the prestige variety of English pronunciation used among the nobility and others associated with the power that gathered round the new Tudor dynasty. (Ref.01.08) Orthographical standardization was also well advanced in so far as it was subject to the scribal disciplines of the royal chancery, but suffered a setback after the introduction of printing (1476) which, in the early years of the trade, had no tradition of uniformity in craft training or practices. To the Tudors, English was the language of the nation, spoken all from the King himself downwards. French was seen as a prestigious accomplishment necessary for anyone with ambition towards culture or advancement in high places, and Latin remained secure as the mark of a properly educated man or woman. Going to school meant learning Latin grammar and, in a sense, Latin was the only language that had a grammar. French was about to acquire one in John Palsgrave's monumental Lesclaircissement de la langue francoyse published in 1530. English, on the other hand, had to wait until the beginning of the next century before any serious attempt was made to produce a scholarly description of the language, though William Bullokar's Pamphlet for Grammar, a brief sketch for a longer work, had appeared a little earlier in 1586. (Ref.01.09)
In the absence of grammatical and other descriptions of vernacular languages, it is not surprising to find that early language teaching materials relied mainly on texts, and the dialogue form as a 'slice of linguistic life', was the obvious type to choose. There were, however, other reasons. In the first place, the use of dialogues was a long-established tradition in the teaching of spoken Latin in the Middle Ages. The best-known example of a Latin-teaching dialogue, or colloquy, as they were usually called, is one by Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham, written in the eleventh century, before the Norman Conquest.' (Ref.01.10) The Latin text, which is accompanied by an interlinear translation in Anglo-Saxon, consists of a series of questions and answers relating to topics and activities of everyday rural life, farming, hunting, trading, and so on. These were familiar to the youngsters who were being trained in elementary Latin before moving on to higher studies in grammar and rhetoric. The question-and-answer format itself derives from an even more basic teaching technique common in orate communities where verbatim learning of written texts is required in the education of the young to preserve essential texts from the linguistic variation which otherwise accompanies oral traditions of learning. This is the catechistic technique whereby questions are used as prompts to the memory and serve to break the text into digestible chunks which can be learnt by heart. It was a common procedure in textbooks throughout the whole period to 1800, and sometimes later as well. Joseph Priestley's Rudiments of English Grammar written in the late eighteenth century (1761) is a typical example:
Q What is Grammar ?
A Grammar is the art of using words properly.
Q Of how many parts doth Grammar consist?
A Of four: Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody.
Q What is Orthography?
A Orthography is the art of combining letters into syllables, and syllables into words. (Ref.01.11)
Modern language teaching dialogues did not of course adopt all the features of the catechistic method, but they grew out of the same procedural tradition and shared some of its advantages for the teacher. The learners had to do all the work of memorization and the teacher merely had to prompt them with questions in order to 'hear' the lesson. The following extract shows traces of a catechistic origin. It comes from a manière de langage written in the same year as Agincourt (1415). The battle is actually mentioned in an earlier section of the text, underlining the interest of these manuals in contemporary life and events. In this [{p006end}] section, it is quite clear who the manual was written for: merchants in the all-important wool trade as well as other traders in agricultural products. I have included the rather lengthy list of things for sale in order to emphasize the importance of commerce in the early stages of modern language teaching. It is likely that the book was written by William of Kingsmill, a noted teacher of French in fifteenth-century Oxford. (Ref.01.12)
Lady, where is your master?
By God, sir, he has gone to the fair at Woodstock, which is ten miles from here.
Lady, what goods does he wish to buy or sell there?
Sir, he has to sell there, bulls, cows, oxen, calves, bullocks, old and young pigs, boars, sows, horses, mares, foals, sheep, rams, and ewes, tups, Iambs, kids, she-kids, asses, mules, and other beasts. He also has to sell there 20 sacks, 3 tods, 4 stones, and 5 cloves of wool, 200 woolfells, 14 long cloths and 10 dozen Oxford mixtures, 20 Abingdon kerseys, 10 Witney blankets, 6 Castlecombe reds, 4 Colchester russets, scarlets, celestial blues or perses, sanguine and violet plunkets in ray grain, Salisbury motleys, and other various colours of several kinds of cloth to be delivered as well to lords, abbots, and priors, as to other folk of the countryside.'
The first textbooks designed solely to teach English as a foreign language do not appear until the late sixteenth century after the arrival of large numbers of French Huguenot refugees in the 1570s and 1580s, but there are signs of an interest in learning the language among members of the mercantile community on the other side of the Channel, particularly in Flanders, well before this. Double-manuals in the manière tradition aiming to teach English to French-speakers as well as the other way round, started to appear at the end of the fifteenth century, though it is unlikely that the market for English was particularly extensive. The customers for these manuals may have included merchants using French as a lingua franca as well as native French speakers. Perhaps they found the French of their English counterparts difficult to understand at times and so decided to learn English themselves. More likely, however, they recognized the old truth that even a smattering of your client's mother tongue works wonders in business. It also helps to safeguard against sharp practice.
The first of these double-manuals was a short book of dialogues
and other texts prepared by William Caxton and printed on his newly-established
printing press in Westminster in 1483 or thereabouts. The title-page of the book
has been lost but it is known by its sub-heading as Tres bonne doctrine pour
aprendre briefment fiansoys et engloys or
Right good lernyng for to lerne shortly frenssh and englyssh. According
to Henry Bradley, who prepared an edition of the work for the Early English Text
Society in 1900, it was almost certainly a reworking by Caxton of a much older
Flemish-French manual written in Bruges in the fourteenth century. Caxton had
been a leading member of the English merchant community in Bruges for much of
his life and had presumably brought the manual back to England with him. Perhaps
his experience in the textile trade in Flanders convinced him that there was a
market for English, and he may have wanted to do his former associates a good
turn by promoting their language. There is no doubt, however, that he had the
commercial needs of his learners in mind: 'Who this booke shall wylle lerne may
well enterprise or take on honde marchandises fro one land to anothir'.
(Ref.01.13)
The Caxton manual follows the traditions of the older manières except that, unlike then, it is bilingual. It is severely practical in its aims and contains no linguistic information about either French or English. It opens with a set of customary greetings: 'Syre, god you kepe! ...I haue not seen you in longe tyme ...Syre, gramercy of your courtoys (courteous) wordes and of your good wyll', (Ref.01.14) and so on. It then moves on to very simple texts which are designed to introduce useful vocabulary for household equipment ('ketellis, pannes, basyns') (Ref.01.15), servants, family relationships, etc. A shopping dialogue follows with lists of words for meat, birds, fish, fruit, herbs, etc. and a very detailed dialogue on the buying and selling of textiles of various kinds, mainly wool but also hides, skins, and other materials.
The second half of the book is more interesting and original. It contains an alphabetically arranged series of vignette portraits, mainly of trades-people, such as 'Agnes our maid', 'Colard the goldsmyth', 'David the bridelmaker', 'George the booke sellar' and the following extract concerning 'Martin the grocer':
After a dialogue about finding and paying for lodgings, the book ends with a short prayer that it will enlighten the hearts of its readers. (Ref.01.17)
Caxton's assistant in his printing shop, Wynken de Worde, produced another double-manual about fifteen years later along similar lines called A Lytell treatyse for to lerne Englisshe and Frensshe (c.1498). The text is laid out in alternating lines of English and French rather than in columns. The opening is interesting because of the reference to the use of French as a commercial lingua franca in the last three lines of the [{p008end}] extract: 'so that I may do my merchandise in France, and elsewhere in other lands, there as the folk speak French':
Here is a good boke to lerne to speke Frenshe
Vecy ung bon livre apprendre parler fran~oysIn the name of the fader and the sone
En nom du pere et du filzAnd of the holy goost, I wyll begynne
Et du saint esperit, je vueil commencerTo lerne to speke Frensshe,
A apprendre a parler françoys,Soo that I maye doo my marchandise
Affin que je puisse faire ma marchandiseIn Fraunce & elles where in other londes,
En France et ailieurs en aultre pays,There as the folk speke Frensshe.
La ou les gens parlent françoys. (Ref.01.18)
There were other signs of a growing interest in learning English in the early sixteenth century; The polyglot dictionaries and phrasebooks, which were a popular device for acquiring a 'survival knowledge' of foreign languages in Renaissance times, began to include English alongside the more widely-known languages like French, Italian, and Latin. The earliest listed in the Alston Bibliography is a seven-language dictionary of 1540 (Ref.01.19) (Latin, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and High- Dutch (Ref.01.20) as well as English) published, as one might expect, in Antwerp, the busy multilingual meeting-place of north European cloth merchants in the sixteenth century; It was followed by many others.
Double-manuals originating on the continent are perhaps a rather better guide to the demand for English as a foreign language than those produced in England itself. An early example is by a Frenchman called Gabriel Meurier who made his living as a language teacher in Antwerp in the mid-sixteenth century; Meurier can claim to be the first teacher of English as a foreign language we know by name since the other books we have been discussing were written anonymously, though it is unlikely that he had as many customers for English as for French. Meurier's double-manual was called A Treatise for to Learn to Speak French and English and was originally published in Antwerp in 1553. The last known copy unfortunately perished in the bombing of Nuremberg during the last war, but a later edition, published in Rouen in 1641, survives and the title-page includes the further information that the book contains: 'a form for making letters, indentures and obligations, quittances, letters of exchange, very necessary for all Merchants that do occupy trade of merchandise'. The commercial interests of Meurier's students are very clear from this list of extras that the book promises.
The final example of early handbooks for the teaching of English to foreigners before the more serious work with the Huguenot refugees began was a manual discovered by Alston in his bibliographical research called A Very Profitable Book to Learn the Manner of Reading, Writing and Speaking English and Spanish {1554). It is reproduced in the Scolar series along with a vocabulary found bound with it. The background to the Very Profitable Book is rather curious. It is, as the title indicates, a double-manual, but both the languages have been translated from different earlier editions, the Spanish from Flemish and the English probably from Latin. It is a version of a famous sixteenth-century manual known as 'the Vocabulary of Barlement' which appeared in various guises at different times. According to Alston, the original of this version was probably a Flemish-Latin edition of 1551. It was clearly a rush job brought out to catch the market in 1554, when large numbers of Spaniards were expected in London to attend the wedding of Philip II of Spain and Mary I, a kind of Tudor Royal Wedding souvenir. The signs of haste are evident enough. The vocabulary list at the end of the book claims to be 'set in order of the Alphabet a.b.c.d.' It was in alphabetical order in the original Flemish but in translation the order disappeared and nobody bothered to rearrange it. More importantly, the situational background to the dialogues and commercial texts was reproduced unaltered, with the bizarre result that students are asked to arrange the sale of houses in Antwerp to landlords posing as Flemish entrepreneurs:
I John of Barlement witness that I have let out to Peter Marschalco my house at Antwerp in the market, being at the sign of the Hare, with the ground and well, for six years. (Ref.01.21)
The 'John of Barlement' mentioned in the text is, presumably, an indirect reference to the author of the original Vocabulaire on which the manual was based, Noël de Barlement. He was another Antwerp language teacher working in the city a little before Meurier. Once the Spanish learners got used to addressing Tom of Wapping, for example, rather than some Low-Dutch property agent, they would find much of practical value in the book. It is fairly short and most of the first part is taken up with a conversation over dinner which gives all the useful phrases of everyday communication. The second half is almost entirely concerned with commercial affairs including buying and selling, ways of 'calling upon your debtors' and 'writing epistles', etc. It concludes with the vocabulary list already mentioned, and the standard church texts including, diplomatically enough, the Ave Maria.
Compared to some of the later manuals the dialogues are rather primitive, but serviceable. The following is part of the dining scene (the Spanish text is printed in a parallel column as usual): [{p010end}]
By the end of the century, teaching-dialogues were to become very much livelier and more entertaining than the efforts of John and Hermes.
The next stage in the development of English language teaching after these humble beginnings on the Antwerp quaysides was determined by major events in the mainstream of late sixteenth-century religious politics.
Ref.01.01 Polychronicon quoted in Trevelyan (1956:234). Ref01-01b
Ref.01.02 Myers (ed. 1969: 1212), Doc. 714. The title of the manual is La maniere de language qui t'enseignera bien a droit parler et escrire doulz françois. A considerable number of manuscript copies have survived, indicating the popularity of the book (see Lambley (1920: 35-8)) Ref01-02b
Ref.01.03 Baugh and Cable (1978: 148). Ref01-03b
Ref.01.04 Henry V, Act V, scene ii. Ref01-04b
Ref.01.05 Myers (ed. 1969: 1084), Doc. 634, footnote. Ref01-05b
Ref.01.06 Baugh and Cable (1978: 153). Ref01-06b
Ref.01.07 Myers (ed. 1969: 1084), Doc. 634. Ref01-07b
Ref.01.08 Baugh and Cable (1978: 191-6). The East Midlands district was a large area taking in most of eastern England between the Thames and the Humber. Of particular importance for the development of Standard English was the dialect spoken in and around London. Ref01-08b
Ref.01.09 The Pamphlet for Grammar is sometimes referred to, inappropriately, as the Bref Grammar, a sub-title taken from the running page-heading. See Turner (ed. 1980). Ref01-09b
Ref.01.10 Garmonsway (ed. 1947). Ref01-10b
Ref.01.11 Priestley (1761: 1). Ref01-11b
Ref.01.12 Unlike the later manuals, the original has no English gloss. The translation comes from A. R. Myers (ed. 1969: 1195), Doc. 701. See also Lambley (1920: 39-40). The text includes some unfamiliar terms, mainly connected with the wool trade: tups (rams), tods and cloves (units of measurement of weight), kerseys (lengths of coarse narrow cloth), perses (dark purple cloth), plunkets (blankets), and ray (striped) grain (scarlet). Ref01-12b
Ref.01.13 The exact date of the Caxton manual is unknown. Bradley (ed. 1900: 3-4) and Lambley (1920: 42-6) give 1483 as the probable date. Others have placed it slightly earlier, around 1480. There is also an argument that Caxton may have printed a translation written by another (unknown) Bruges merchant rather than his own, (see Blake (1965)). Ref01-13b
Ref.01.14 Bradley (ed. 1900: 4-5). Ref01-14b
Ref.01.16 Ibid.: 41. Ref01-16b
Ref.01.17 Ibid.: 51-2. Ref01-17b
Ref.01.18 Quoted in Lambley (1920: 48-9). Ref01-18b
Ref.01.19 The dictionary was called Septem Linguarum. Ref01-19b
Ref.01.20 (Low) Dutch = modern Dutch or Flemish; High Dutch = modern German. Ref01-20b
Ref.01.21 Anon., A Very Profitable Book (1554: Dv verso). Ref01-21b
Ref.01.22 Ibid.: Aii verso - Aiii recto. Ref01-22b
by UKT
The monastic method of teaching. This was and still is the technique used to teach Burmese-Myanmar language and Buddhism to young children in monasteries who might be as young as six. Though I had never gone to a monastic school, the school which I attended during World War II in Kungyangon (now incorporated into Greater Yangon area) was a school which had originated in a Buddhist monastery. The school was called after the name of the monastery gya: kyaung: The staff were all laymen and the principal was U Po Hlaing. It was a vernacular school and was under the supervision of the Department of Education. This school was the alma mater of U Wun (penname: Min Thu Wun) a noted writer and lecturer of Burmese of Rangoon University.
Go back catechistic-tech-note-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Trevisa 080308
John Trevisa or John of Trevis (1342-1402), translator, was a Cornishman,
educated at Oxford, who became Vicar of Berkely, Gloucestershire, chaplain to
the 4th Lord Berkeley, and Canon of Westbury on Trym.
He translated for his patron the Polychonicon of Ranulf Higden, adding remarks of his own, and prefacing it with a Dialogue on Translation between a Lord and a Clerk. He likewise made various other translations, including Bartholomaeus Anglicus' On the Properties of Things (De Proprietatibus Rerum), a medieval forerunner of the encyclopedia.
A fellow of Queen's College, Oxford from 1372-76 at the same time as John Wycliff and Nicholas of Herefore, Trevisa may well have been one of the contributors to the Early Version of Wyclif's Bible. The preface to the King James Version of 1611 singles him out as a translator amongst others at that time: "even in our King Richard the second's days, John Trevisa translated them (the Gospels) into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age". Subsequently he translated a number of books of the Bible into French for Lord Berkeley, including a version of the Book of Revelation, which his patron had written up onto the ceiling of the chapel at Berkeley Castle.
Father of Mary Trevisa with wife, Amicia.
UKT: On the right is shown an inscription in Burmese-Myanmar in stone discovered
outside the country of Myanmar in Buddh Gya, in Behar, in India. From Journal of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal May, 1834, SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol.
1, No. 2, Autumn 2003, ISSN 1479-8484. Revised 27 March 2004.
http://web.soas.ac.uk/burma/1.2%20PDF%20FILES/1.2%2003%20inscription-revised.pdf
080118
SOAS Bulletin Editorial note: "After the initial posting of this
reprint, Dr. Tilman Frasch (Manchester Metropolitan University) sent the
following useful and cautionary note on the 19th century translation below:
"This is the first of several attempts to read and translate the text of an
inscription Burmese monks left at Bodhgaya when visiting the site in 1296-98
AD. Burney had reached Bodhgaya in the company of a Burmese delegation to
the Governor-General of India, and presumably he was helped by the Burmese in
his translation. ..."
UKT: If we are to believe the date 1296-98 AD as true, it
shows that the written Burmese-Myanmar, written before the time John Travisa was
doing his translations in England, has remained virtually unchanged. Any modern
Burmese-Myanmar can read the inscription!
Go back J-Trevis-note-b
by UKT
Traditionally, the peoples of the Myanmar are descended from four original groups: Pyu (pyu), Kanyan (kan: yan) and Thet (thak). The Pyus had their own language which is different from Burmese {ba.ma}, Mon {mwan}/{mun} and Pali as evidenced from Myazedi inscription (A.D. 1113). Even though direct descendants of the group still exist in areas around Mindon {ming:doan:}, the Pyu script is now extinct. In all probability the spoken language itself still exist in the form a dialect. (It is my intention to do a research on this myself if nobody is interested in the project.).
Go back vern-lang-Myan-note-b
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