Re: French and German (jara: An introduction)

Joe scripsit:

> However, the actual language has changed so much from the eighteenth century
> that actually reading much in it is hideously boring.
Perhaps you are reading the wrong things.  I grant that the paragraphing
conventions of the 18th century made for distressingly long paragraphs,
which I have broken up below:

SIR A[lexander Macdonald]:  "I think, Sir, almost all great lawyers, such
at least as have written upon law, have known only law, and nothing else."

JOHNSON:  "Why no, Sir; Judge Hale was a great lawyer, and wrote upon
law; and yet he knew a great many other things; and has written upon
other things.  Selden too."

SIR A:  "Very true, Sir; and Lord Bacon.  But was not Lord Coke a mere
lawyer?"

JOHNSON:  "Why, I am afraid he was; but he would have taken it very ill
if you had told him so.  He would have prosecuted you for scandal."

BOSWELL:  "Lord Mansfield is not a mere lawyer."

JOHNSON:  "No, Sir.  I never was in Lord Mansfield's company; but Lord
Mansfield was distinguished at the University.  Lord Mansfield, when
he first came to town, 'drank champagne with the wits,' as Prior says.
He was the friend of Pope."

SIR A:  "Barristers, I believe, are not so abusive now as they were
formerly.  I fancy they had less law long ago, and so were obliged to
take to abuse, to fill up the time.  Now they have such a number of
precedents, they have no occasion for abuse."

JOHNSON:  "Nay, Sir, they had more law long ago than they have now.
As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time;
but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law;
that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles."

SIR A:  "I have been correcting several Scotch accents in my friend
Boswell.  I doubt, Sir, if any Scotchman ever attains to a perfect
English pronunciation."

JOHNSON:  "Why, Sir, few of them do, because they do not persevere
after acquiring a certain degree of it.  But, Sir, there can be no doubt
that they may attain to a perfect English pronunciation, if they will.
We find how near they come to it; and certainly, a man who conquers
nineteen parts of the Scottish accent, may conquer the twentieth.

"But, Sir, when a man has got the better of nine tenths he grows weary,
he relaxes his diligence, he finds he has corrected his accent so far as
not to be disagreeable, and he no longer desires his friends to tell him
when he is wrong; nor does he choose to be told.  Sir, when people watch
me narrowly, and I do not watch myself, they will find me out to be of
a particular county [Staffordshire].  In the same manner, Dunning may
be found out to be a Devonshire man.  So most Scotchmen may be found out.

"But, Sir, little aberrations are of no disadvantage.  I never catched Mallet
in a Scotch accent; and yet Mallet, I suppose, was past five-and-twenty
before he came to London."
        --Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ for 1772

Before I hear about it for "Scotch" and "Scotchman", I will point out
that Boswell, a Boswell of Auchinleck and most certainly a Scot of the
Scots, uses these forms himself.

--
HB )B�ggledy-p�ggledy / XML programmers            John Cowan
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