The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1886-10-11
The Meisterschaft system.

A good audience showed much interest in
hearing what DR.. Rosenthal had to say on
Saturday in favor of his method of learning
foreign languages, the so-caled Meisterschaft
system. The word means mastery and DR..
Rosenthal claims that this is the only system
by which one acquires practical knowledge
of any foreign language.
Everybody knows that most methods are
not practical; that college French and Ger
man are SO impractical as to be practical
joke; and the many people who care about it
at all are interested to find practical meth
cd if there is one-for us who are so far re-
moved from everyday speaking and hearing
the thing we want to know. 1t will be
agreeable to believe all that is claimed for
the Meisterschaft system, but, in spite of the
ridicule which, under such circumstances, it
is always easy to heap upon other systems,
and i'll spite of the undoubted weakness and
Stiffness of Ollendorf and ''old methods" in
general, and in spite of the equallysundoubt-
ed facts in favor OF this system, it reminds
one of the System" by which one was to
'learn the piano in twenty-f0ur lessons"
For instance, when DR.. Rosenthal says that
he doesn't bother much about German gen.
ders and that irregular verbs will take care
of themselves" one can't help wondering
what he will do about German genders and
irregular verbs Absurd it may be to call
the fact and that German adjectivee, ETC.,
must agree with the nouns. Also fact,
somebody must bother with German gen.
ders" upon the educated classes" will want
us to try our German on them for hours at
a time. Fair it seems impossible to be under
such circumstances and to praise one is to
abuse another. DR.. Rosenthal is no excep-
ton 10 this rule and one is led to wish that
if he is to speak from three O'Clock to four,
DR.. Sauveur might follow him on the "natur-
al method" from four o'clock to five and the
listener be allowed to judge for himself.
The main points made by the Doctor are
these: Language is divided into two classes
the language of every day life and the
language of literature; verbs, into two
classes-necessary and unnecessary. The
vocabulary of every day includes only about
three or four thousand words. These are
the words this system deals with every day
language and necessary verbs. 1t begins not
with baby sentences, L am, L have" etc.
1t takes foundation sentence to be well
learned; cuts this sentence up into small
parts and repeats, combines and amplifes
these parts till all ''unconsciously, the
student is speaking foreign language"
DR.. Rosenthafs publishers claim that ten
weeks will give entire mastery OF every
day and business conversations" DR..
n bat cIaias 9st Without teacher one can
learn more by his books than he can learn In
any other way under the sun without a
teacher. This is undoubtedly true That it
teacher may or may not be true. 1t remains
to be proved.
He makes the point that American teach
ers are the best teachers for Americans and
insists that no foreign teacher should ever be
employed who does not speak English thor
oughly well. lie argues that the German
schools and universities, with the exception
of one teacher, employ German teachers for
all languages, a most interesting fact and
in view of the excellence of German
methods" a most suggestive one In
answer to the question, "But how shall we
acquire the true accent?" he says, cruelty
but truly, You never will! You can't any
more than we foreigners can acquire the
true English or American accent. But you
can learn to speak and speak wei, and that
is practical and my Meisterschaft system
will do it for you"
Today, DR.. Rosenthal gives free lesson
at 4 o'clock and much interest will be felt in
seeing it done. A lesson in Spanish or
Italian would be more satisfactory test
than one in French or German as being less
familiar to those interested. We understand
that DR.. Rosenthal prefers an unfamiliar
language as showing far better how much
one may learn of wholly unknown thing in
twenty lessons and, as the circular says,
with scarcely an effort"