to pay close attention to them, we should be astonished at the
exactness with which they follow certain analogies, very faulty if you
will, but very regular, that are displeasing only because harsh, or
because usage does not recognize them.

It is unbearable pedantry, and a most useless labor, to attempt
correcting in children every little fault against usage; they never
fail themselves to correct these faults in time. Always speak
correctly in their presence; order it so that they are never so happy
with any one as with you; and rest assured their language will
insensibly be purified by your own, without your having ever reproved
them.

But another error, which has an entirely different bearing on the
matter, and is no less easy to prevent, is our being over-anxious to
make them speak, as if we feared they might not of their own accord
learn to do so. Our injudicious haste has an effect exactly contrary
to what we wish. On account of it they learn more slowly and speak
more indistinctly. The marked attention paid to everything they utter
makes it unnecessary for them to articulate distinctly. As they hardly
condescend to open their lips, many retain throughout life an imperfect
pronunciation and a confused manner of speaking, which makes them
nearly unintelligible.

Children who are too much urged to speak have not time sufficient for
learning either to pronounce carefully or to understand thoroughly what
they are made to say. If, instead, they are left to themselves, they
at first practise using the syllables they can most readily utter; and
gradually attaching to these some meaning that can be gathered from
their gestures, they give you their own words before acquiring yours.
Thus they receive yours only after they understand them. Not being
urged to use them, they notice carefully what meaning you give them;
and, when they are sure of this, they adopt it as their own.

The greatest evil arising from our haste to make children speak before
they are old enough is not that our first talks with them, and the
first words they use, have no meaning to them, but that they have a
meaning different from ours, without our being able to perceive it.
Thus, while they seem to be answering us very correctly, they are
really addressing us without understanding us, and without our
understanding them. To such ambiguous discourse is due the surprise we
sometimes feel at their sayings, to which we attach ideas the children