Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff

Who was Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff?

Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff was a German grammarian and language educator.

Ollendorff is heavily indebted to an early 'modern method' teacher, Jean Manesca, who appears to have written the first fully developed modern language course in the early 1820s—designed for French, Ollendorff was keen to see it adopted for the classics, and actively promoted the idea. His Oral system of teaching Living Languages Illustrated by a Practical Course of Lessons in the French through the medium of English was entered at the library of Congress in 1834.

In his introduction, on pg xix, Manesca writes,

If I have not spoken of the advantages that may be derived from the present mode of teaching applied to dead languages, it is not because I entertain the smallest doubt of its efficacy in that particular; for, on the contrary, I am confident that many years of toilsome, tedious, and almost fruitless labours, would be saved by the adoption of such a method for these languages. A well disposed young man, between eighteen and twenty, well versed in the principles of his mother tongue, would, in twelve months, acquire a sufficient knowledge of Latin or Greek for all the purposes of life. Such a consideration well deserves the attention of the few scholars competent for a task which would prove so beneficial to the present and future generation of collegiate students. The present modes of teaching the dead languages are sadly defective. It is high time that a rational, uniform method should be adopted.