ABSTRACT
English and French have many words in common but treat them in a totally different way. Take the word excuse, which is spelt in the same way in the two languages. But the pronunciation is different, the vowel in the last syllable of the French word being unknown in English. In English we make a difference in pronunciation between to excuse and an excuse, but no such difference is made in French. Still greater differences appear when we make up complete sentences. Compare, for instance, the following:
1.12. The grammar of each language constitutes a system of its own, each element of which stands in a certain relation to, and is more or less dependent on, all the others. No linguistic system, however, is either completely rigid or perfectly harmonious, and we shall see in some of the subsequent chapters that there are loopholes and deficiencies in the English grammatical system.
