Re: French and German (jara: An introduction)

 --- Sally Caves skrzypszy:

> Somebody Jan was responding to:
Andreas it was.

> Are you sure these people are not referring to the old German orthography,
> i.e., the printing customs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that
> were reformed?  Look at any old book in German circa 1870.  The flourishes.
> The conjoined letters, especially the double ss.  There is a term for this
> kind of German printing that I can't recall at the moment, but it's fiendish
> to the outsider.
Fraktur, IIRC. Personally, I find them very pretty. No, then try German
hand-written text from those years... Pure horror!

> A friend of mine who visited me in Geneva told me, chortling, about her faux
> pas in "Old Town."  She was on the road to Old Town, but wasn't sure of the
> directions.  So she asked this elderly woman, "Pardonnez moi, madame; ou est
> la vieille ville?"  Only she pronounced "ville" as "vie."  "Excuse me,
> madam, where is the old life?"  The woman looked at her in baffled
> irritation.   I've made similar errors in Geneva.
LOL.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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